Crazy Day......

So today is day 2 of 4 that my husband is out of town. I normally don't have the kids (or house) 24/7 and my husband has had the kids by himself for far more overnights than I have (although I am pretty sure I have more clock hours of solo duty). Normally my week includes a workout Monday through Friday from 6-7:00 AM followed by a shower and then I take over the kids for the day by 8:00. That's the deal we have. Well this week is crazy, my husband was picked up at 4:50 AM on Monday to catch his flight to Kansas City, MO for a ministry conference with our church. This week also happens to be the week before my first ever Half Ironman Triathlon. If you know anything about endurance training you may know a little about the taper. The taper week is a rough week because you feel physically sluggish (I must be doing something right) and emotionally crazy. It's really hard to cut back workouts drastically but that is what the taper calls for. So this week I had planned a run workout on Monday evening which I did, slower and shorter than I had planned. I was supposed to take it easy and go to spin class tomorrow and then a short easy run on Friday. Well I went to bed on Monday night late (about 11:30) and then my youngest coughed around 12:15 AM. If Joe were home we would have both stayed in bed but I was on hyper alert and had to get up and check on him. I gave him a drink of water and went back to bed. Then my alarm when off at 4 AM, wait...no...that's not my alarm, that's Joe's alarm going off at the time he needed to get up YESTERDAY to make that flight! I turned if off and went back to sleep for a bit before the real thing went off at 5:45 AM. We had planned to go to a natural water slide today with some friends and the kids were all really looking forward to it. When Gus finally woke up it was clear he wasn't feeling great. I had to be the mean mommy and cancel the trip. I told them I would let them do a short day of school and we could rent the Hannah Montana movie (that mom has secretly been dying to see for a while). So once the bus came for my daycare kid I loaded up the kids (sicko included) and went to Fred Meyer where I could buy cereal with a store coupon and a manufacturer's coupon as well as rent a movie at 8:30 AM from the Movie Cube vending machine. I am a mom that has it all figured out.

So we walk past the ice cream cases and the kids ask for ice cream (what the heck, it's a sick day and we are still doing some school) but I told them I would each let them pick a half gallon of $.99 "frozen dairy dessert" but we had to get it on the way out or it would melt. We run around the store getting our items, check out and forgot the ice cream (I mean "frozen dairy dessert") so we had to go pick out flavors and run the FDD through the self check.

Now to the Movie Cube...there's a sign saying that it is only set up for returns, no Hannah Montana and it is not even 9:00 so there aren't any video stores open (even though we can see one from Fred Meyer). Well I have gotten us this far we might as well take the quest to the other movie vending machine Red Box 5 miles away. Score, we get Hannah, and while I am there I may as well grab something for after the kids go to bed. So I got The Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Feeling indulgent with two $1 movies in one night. This never happens when Joe is home!!!

We get home, hammer through...I mean thoroughly cover several topics for school and then we bust out the movie. It's cute we are about 30 minutes into it when BOOM (literally "BOOM") the power goes out (a transformer blew close enough that our neighbor heard it). We sat on the couch for about a minute to make sure it was going to stay out. Hmmmm... now what? So we had lunch. Then we played some Life. Bridget was a teacher with a summer job as an accountant. I was an artist, Joey a doctor and Gus a computer fix it guy of some sort. This is the new game of Life where there are lots of extra perks for different jobs. For example whenever anyone rolls a "1" that means they just bought a piece of art from the artist for $10,000. Bridget was funny she rolled a "1" and I requested payment for my artwork and she handed me $100,000. I said "whoa I am glad I don't have any kids in your school if that's how you teach money" (yeah, I am a good encouraging mom) and then Joey said "yeah and she's an accountant too!" It was pretty funny that he caught that and we all laughed for a while about that one and Bridget said I couldn't put it on Facebook (but she didn't say anything about my blog). The power was still out so we were getting a little loopy and hot as it was in the 80's today on the first day of Fall.

The power came on about 4 1/2 hours after it went out. The kids also realized when the power came on that we no longer get Cartoon Network or Animal Planet as there have been some cable changes implemented today, while the power was out. So we decided to get pizza and take it to the park. While the boys were playing, Bridget was trying to describe something funny that the boys were saying and doing. When it was apparent I wasn't getting it she just said "it only makes sense in my head". If only everyone could be that introspective!

We made it home, finished the Hannah Montana movie and now I finally know what Miley decided to do. It was killing me all day!

My 7 year old learned how to "hock a lugee" today. His being sick is causing him lots of mucus and he was telling me that he was swallowing it. I told him that was his body's way of trying to get rid of it and it wasn't the best idea to swallow it. He spend a large portion of his morning with the garbage spitting into it.

At bedtime we discovered that Bridget was getting sick too. Here we go again. I have 3 days till my race and I cannot get sick!

It was a long crazy day with way more going on than usual although I feel like I handled it at least as well as when my husband is here. I do miss the regulation of my schedule that I usually have. I miss waking up to work out every morning (man I miss it!) and I miss the voice of reason turning off the TV and sending us to bed at a decent hour (I ended up staying up till 12:30). But most of all I just miss having my best friend to snuggle with and sleep next to at night.