A long 5 days

Last week Jeremy had a business trip. It was only his second work trip in nearly 5 years with this company. I think that sounds pretty good. Though he will have his third trip before this month is over. He was scheduled to leave bright and early Monday morning and return late on Friday night. Five full days. I knew it would be tiring for me. He helps out a lot around here the moment he walks through the door until the boys are in bed. He typically does some playtime after dinner with the boys, bathtime, bed time story and the whole shebang. He just takes over and I assist. He's a good daddy and husband. I'm thankful that he comes home ready to dive in and help. So it would be five full days without those extra hands. Like I said, I knew that it would be a little tiring but I wasn't all that worried about it. I knew that we would have plenty to keep us occupied and entertained. We would make trips to the waterpark, the library, Nana and Papa J's house, etc. My plan was to stay busier so that my days didn't feel as long. And that all sounded like good plans, until the rain started on Monday morning. And it didn't stop until Friday. Not exactly. That's an exaggeration. But the week was full of sporadic storms and lots of rain that never failed to interrupt our plans. So it felt like a long 5 days. So last week, we had no water park days and very little swimming and outdoor time. I even hired a sitter for Abe and attempted a movie with the big boys. Halfway through the movie the entire theater lost all power due to the storm. They were speculating that lightening had struck the back up generator also. Nice. Here I had thought storms and rain couldn't stop us from seeing a movie and yet I was proved wrong. But we did indeed survive the week. It just didn't go exactly as I had imagined. A few pictures from our long week without daddy.

They loved painting these terracotta pots. And in them, I am now trying to keep alive basil and cilantro to use in my cooking.

 

Pax is really starting to enjoy puzzles so he had some puzzle time.

 

 By far the highlight of their week were these water balloons. At Aldi I purchased a $5 water ballon set the night before Jeremy left town. We've used them several times and still have half a container of balloons left. After this water balloon battle, Holden told me I was his favorite mommy in the world. :) He is my water boy. Water is his love language. ;)

 The big boys took turns sleeping in bed with me. This is a little memory I have of my childhood on the occasion that my dad was out of town. They thought it was pretty special to be sleeping in daddy's spot while he was away.

 

 We went swimming in Nana and Papa J's community pool one evening. There were grey clouds over us the entire time and even some thunder, but we stuck it out. We needed that swim!

This guy pulled his 8th tooth. We texted Jeremy this picture to show him.

One morning they rode bikes for over an hour in the empty school parking lot. I just walked around with Abe in stroller the entire time. The boys loved splashing through the rain puddles and I was just glad to have us all out of the house.

 We made homemade popsicles. 

 I tried out a new style on Abe. I saw a little boy at the water park with a big poofy ponytail on top of his head. I loved it. But I don't think it's the right look for Abe. He gets mistaken for a girl way too often, without the ponytail. The big brothers thought it was hilarious.

 

Most days I had Holden and Pax skip naps so they would crash hard in bed at 7:30. So as soon as they crashed, I turned on an old Netflix movie, poured me a glass of wine and worked on the boy's baby books. I am way behind and this gave me several hours to start playing catch up. Abe's is still in the plastic wrap, so even though I did make progress, but I'm still behind!

On Friday the big boys did take naps so they could stay up extra late to welcome daddy home. They enjoyed a movie night, with pillow forts that Pax had built for them, and stayed up until around 10pm when Jeremy walked through the front door. They were excited that daddy was back home. And so was I!