Wild Weekend

The bridal shower was a success. Lots of family, so you know it wasn't quiet. Aly helped with all the games, and the make-your-own sundaes were yummy.
We had brownies, chocolate chip cookies, banana, ice cream (chocolate and vanilla), chocolate syrup, hot fudge & caramel sauce, cool whip, nuts, chocolate chips and sprinkles.
The games were a hit. First, everyone was assigned the name of a dish, taped to their back, and they all had to figure out what dish they were. I was spaghetti and meatballs. Then we had to find a partner that had an ingredient in common. Chris was tuna casserole. I've never seen someone so excited over banana bread and snickerdoodles.
Next we passed around bags of 'white stuff' and guessed what they were. You'd be surprised how much flour, sweet n low, cream of tartar, etc., look when you don't have a label to read.
Most everyone brought a recipe, and I also had them write down a kitchen disaster that Jamie could file away. It was hard to choose just one of mine, but I'm glad to see that everyone there had also had a little trouble in the kitchen.
Jamie was buried in presents and got lots of stuff she really needed. It was a great fun, and once everyone left, Pam, Jamie, mom and I stayed up chatting till after midnight. It was a Phillips girls slumber party.

I had a migraine Saturday morning, but we finally made it to the family reunion. Trina and Mandy had things planned well. We did a scavenger hunt (Aly and I finished second to Pam and Jamie), water balloon toss (my team won), three legged race (winning team: Aly, Zak, Jamie and me), sack races (my team was second), tug-o-war (I was dead by then) and volleyball. The kids went swimming in the lake too. No wonder I was sore this morning.

I need a weekend to recover from the weekend!

Gonna have a wild weekend

It all started today when I decided not to work. Okay so I worked for 30 minutes - but not even all at once.
Aly, Mike & I went to lunch --- I must digress ...

We tend to have emergencies when Mike is out of town. Yesterday, they had one without me. Nothing too horrible, but consider this a PSA: if your husband has an awful, lifelong fear/aversion to bugs and calls to say he found a few little bugs in your kid's hair and he's pretty sure they are just gnats from a tree and you convince him to wash her hair with lice shampoo anyway and he says he combed every inch of her hair and you don't get in till midnight so you believe him--- think again because you will spend at least three hours of your day off re-washing and re-combing every single strand of her hair. At least he washed all the sheets and clothes and bagged the pillows. Oh and btw she slept in the waterbed while you were gone.
Anyone else scratching their heads now?

Okay, where was I? Ah lunch at the Mexican place and a long long nap because we are going to the midnight showing of my favorite movie in the whole world: The Princess Bride. I've never seen it on the big screen and I can't wait. We're all going and I imagine folks will be saying the lines along with the movie. I'm wearing my "I'm in the brut squad" shirt.
After the movie we will come home for a nap because we are going to leave early for Mt Airy (the real Mayberry). We will see the sights around town, check in to the hotel and then head out early to get a good spot at the drive-in. Double feature is Night at the Museum & Terminator Salvation.
It's about a 5 hr drive home Sunday, so Monday will be a day of rest. I'm really looking forward to it. Hope all of you have a great weekend.

Addendum to the Wild Weekend

On the way home from Mt. Airy, we turned left and ended up in Gatlinburg for the day/night. It was a great little trip.

I hope Aly remembers this type of stuff when she's grown and can say she had fun on family trips when she was little. I can remember every trip we took when I was young, and they were such fun. We'd take our hand puppets (mine was a raccoon, Randy, and Pam's was a dog, Oggie) and wave at passing cars. Of course that was back when you could sleep in the back window of the car, or sit in the floorboard. Seat belts, schmeat belts.

The boy was home alone all weekend. I'm sure he will say he had fun when the family went on trips.

WWW - not just the World Wide Web

Wee Willie Winkie
Walla Walla Washington
What Women Want
Wild Wild West
Wicked Witch of the West
Which one Will i Write about? None of the above.

It's the Worst Work Week. Definitely. And I'll bet you want to know What Went Wrong. Let me bring you up to speed.

Mondays stink in general. You all know my feelings about Mondays. I usually get depressed on Sunday night, because Monday is looming. Yes, it is cliche, but who really wants to go back to work after a weekend to yourself? My Mondays are especially stinky nowadays, because I have meetings. Well, yeah, I have meetings everyday, but on Mondays, I have team calls from 11-1 and 2-4. Often, folks will want to talk to me at 10 or -gag- 4. The 1:00 break is spent picking Aly up from school. This Monday was particularly busy because my Director is out of town (biking through the French countryside) and that means I'm in charge. On this particular Monday, I was looking forward to getting some things done before my meetings started when my computer screen froze. Then it worked. Then it froze. Then I got the Blue Screen o' Death. Eh, I've gotten those before. Actually, I've been getting it about once per week. We'll just reboot. This is where the trouble starts. Operating system not found. Crunchy noises coming from the hard drive. Its not going to be a good day.

Mike agreed to pick up Aly, so I got dressed, slapped on some makeup and hit the road for work. I finished my conference call from the road and my extreme irritation leaked out on the call. It wasn't pretty and definitely cemented my status as "harsh and threatening." Let's just say apologizies were issued. On an encouraging note, US IT was impressed by my description of the sounds coming from my machine. And then they said it ... "I'm afraid we have bad news. Really bad news." Yes, my hard drive was shot. Now, the firm keeps backups of everyone's computer with two caveats.
1. You have to actually allow the backup software to run. Since it slows down your reponse time, lots of people cancel it out. Luckily, I let mine run, on Thursday. Yes. All documents created Friday were gone.
2. Only documents are backed up. Any software you had installed is gone. This meant that all of the client software would need to be reinstalled. At the client site. Ugh.
The rest of the bad news? To completely reimage my computer, it would take at least overnight (and by now it was 3:00 pm). I would be without a computer for a while.

In fact, on Tuesday I was scheduled to be downtown for a couple of meetings. The kinda cool part was that I could log on to a computer there and get to my client mail. I set up an away message that said "My computer crashed. Don't bet I'm going to read this any time soon." Actually it didn't say that. I just thought of that. I should change it to that now. But I was being optimistic way back there on Tuesday. So I spent Tuesday in the client office. I haven't sat in a cubicle and worked at a real computer in years. Now I remember why I like working from home (you know, besides wearing my jammies all day and having a little black doggie on my lap) ... people in the office think they can interrupt you at any time, because they can see you. I am going to appreciate my invisibility more now. I spent a grueling hour briefing the client on a presentation she was to make the following morning. Not my project. Not my area of expertise. But remember, I was in charge this week. I had a list of 5 other things to talk to her about but we got to none of them. I was downtown till almost 6 pm and had to stand on the Metro almost all of the way home. Oh, and US IT called at 3 pm to let me know my computer was ready. I got home in time to shove food in the kids, drop Zak off at volleyball practice, and then go pick him back up.

That meant another trip to the Tyson's office on Wednesday. I had actually scheduled a conference room for the day, so this was no big deal. Of course, it took 30 minutes to get my computer back, and I spent the rest of the day getting popups that said "BLAHBLAH is being installed on your computer. Don't touch anything!" and "Do you want to restart now?" Oh, and that backup? It tried to run for hours and couldn't get past my 3,000,000 byte mail archive. At 4:00 the client called and asked for a deliverable by the next day. And the partner emailed me and wanted an updated monthly hours spreadsheet. Traffic was so backed up from the interstate, I couldn't get out of the parking garage. It took an hour to get home. I watched Kid Nation with the kids while I did more work. And drank. I was up till 1:00 am.

I really should have gone back downtown on Thursday, but I was exhausted. My 10:00 meeting went well, even though no one had gotten me their material on time before the call. There were a few crises - Compliance was freaking out over one of our projects so I had to dial into a "calm me down" call. Oh and speaking of compliance, my new hire coachee was about to be suspended for not completing the required training and other administrative duties. D'oh! Way to go Coach Tonya! Ah, and the deliverable I sent wasn't what the client wanted, so I had to re-do it at 4 pm. We didn't have time to go to Burrito Brothers for dinner, so we had hotdog-potato chip combo at the football game. And isn't $5 a head for admission to a high school freshman football game a little high??

Now you would think I'd be happy for Friday, right? Not so much. Friday was my day trip to Charlotte, NC. My flight left at 7:30 am so I was leaving the house at 5:45. Hey, there was definitely less traffic on the parkway; I got to park by the exit at the Metro station; and, I had a seat to myself on the train. My iPod had been left on and my battery was dead. I charged it in my laptop at the airport though. I had selected the exit row window seat the day before and -what a great treat- the seat in front of me had been removed. Talk about leg room! I bought a book at the airport, which I never do, but I was planning on finishing my current book, "The Cat Who Wasn't There" on the trip and I was in no mood to work. The flight was uneventful, the cab ride bearable, and I had time for coffee and email before the interview. Oh, but the guy who was supposed to meet me in Charlotte to tag-team on the interview? Forgot his wallet and didn't have enough gas in the car to make it. He had to dial in. Had a great lunch in Charlotte, Cajun Fish and Red Beans n Rice. The cab ride back to the airport was hair-raising, but I made it in one piece. I had the same seat on the plane for the return trip, but this one was bumpy. Tickle your belly on a roller coaster bumpy. It's been a while since I've flown.

Once again, I got home just in time for volleyball. I'd arranged for someone to pick Zak up for his game so I got to down some dinner before going to catch the last half of the match. We were home by 8:15 and I was in bed by 8:17. Really.

Mike and the kids went to King's Dominion today and I've been working. Yes, I know. Ugh! Anyway, now it is time to relax. I have been eating sushi most of the day and now I'm going to finish that book I bought. And maybe have a little power nap. Heck, if you've read all this, you probably need one too.

PS, No, we still haven't closed on the house. Maybe Tuesday.

more injuries

From car dents to crises with the children (crises in their view, not mine, don't freak!). And, PS, blood is mentioned, so look away if you can't take that and scroll down to section two.

Aly just walked into my bedroom with blood all over her and her eyes as big as saucers, "Mommy ... help me!!!"

It was a bloody nose. We haven't had a lot of experience with bloody noses, but I now know how much blood can come out of one nostril. Apparently "there was a really big booger", not the crusty, pick a scab kind, but "slimy and really really big". She won't be picking her nose anymore, for sure.

I had her cleaned up and the flow mostly staunched when the boys appeared. I thought Zak was going to hurl and Mike almost dialed 911. "Just tell me which body part!! Where is it all coming from?!?" They must not trust the Mommy mode. Zak actually had come to find me to show that he resolved his own issue this evening.

**LOOK DOWN HERE FOR THE NON-BLOODY CRISIS**
Last weekend, Mike took the kids to King's Dominion, again, and Zak won some game and brought home a (second) stuffed camouflage monkey. Apparently Scrappy decided this was a monkey that did not belong in this house, because tonight she chewed it up.

Zakary brought it to me to show how he had amputated the right leg at the knee and closed up the hole in the left heel. He's got mad sewing skillz now that he is in Home Ec at school.

Here's when the camera should have been handy. Would make for a cute scrapbook page, eh?


In other (non-crisis) news, I finally went on a shopping spree for my scrapping Secret Sister. I coordinated my purchases around the Heidi Grace getting places wild daisy rd line, including chipboard alphas and shapes, rubons, ribbon, buttons and a 12x12 album. I also picked up an acrylic stamp set and a pedicure kit. If I get the package out on Tuesday, she might get it before June 1.

With all the other stuff going on with us (um, yeah, we are buying a house, Mike's been interviewing with churches, and I'm getting a promotion), there's been no time to blog. The stress level is high around here, as you can imagine. We purposefully didn't make big plans this holiday weekend to make sure we all just chill out a little bit. We did go see Pirates of the Carribean 3 this afternoon, and we'll go tomorrow night or Monday to see Shrek the Third.

Ohhh, I did some other shopping this week too. We got a $10 coupon in the mail for Kohls and I got this skirt on sale in brown and black as well as three purses (on clearance!). I'll be doing some travel in June and I needed something summery. I'm going to browse tomorrow's sale papers to see if I can find anything else.

I guess I'll have to give the details on the house and the churches tomorrow. Mike's preaching in the morning, so I should have a better feel for how things will be going on that front.

Thanks for catching up with me :)