Holy Cow, Life, Slow Down!

Wow.  We have been busy.  Busy, busy, busy.  We've been jumping from one activity to another, mostly with no time to catch our breath in between.  Starting with last week, when we went on a home school field trip to the West Pasco water plant, life is just tumbling together and making things, well, incredibly busy. 

Here's a couple of pictures from the field trip. 

This is the part of the plant that collects all the sludge after it's cleaned from the water.  Usually it's more watery than muddy, but things were temporarily shut down for maintenance while we were there, so all the extra water had drained out.  The tracks across the mud are from a frog that lives there that the workers call Fred.  Looking for Fred was one of the kids' favorite part.

While the kids and I had school and mowed the lawn and went on the field trip, Brian spent most of his Saturday at the bishop's house, cooking half a pig for the ward luau. 

 Brian and Bishop Christensen both agreed that they should have cooked the pig for longer, but they didn't have a huge amount of time to work with.  It was still yummy!

I don't remember what we did Saturday.  Oh, no, I remember.  Saturday was not a busy day.  Brian played something on the computer, I watched a couple episodes of "Castle" on the laptop, and the kids watched a whole ton of things on the TV downstairs.  A while back we went back to our rule of not watching TV on weekdays, and our kids just live it up on Saturdays.  That afternoon we went to Brian's grandma's birthday party at Granny's Buffet, then we went to her house to visit with everyone until way late that night.  Overall, it was a pretty laid back day.

But don't let that non-busy day fool you. We really have been busy.  Monday we had school, then hurried to have lunch in time to get Alyssa to P.E.  The boys and I went grocery shopping, then picked Alyssa up.  Just after getting home and putting the groceries away, we headed to the Empey's farm for Brian's brother's birthday party.  (Eric married Claire Empey, and her family has acres and acres of apple trees and other things, and they make Sheffield Cider, which is fabulous.)  We had a bonfire and barbecue out there, and the kids loved every minute of it.

Tuesday Alyssa went to MCP, the boys went to Cousin Preschool at my sister's house, and I went visiting teaching, and running.  I did some laundry after picking up the boys, then we picked up Alyssa, we all played in the front yard with the neighbor kids, then we had a quick dinner, and I went to Relief Society.

Today the kids and I spent the entire day cleaning the house.  Yes, it was that bad.  It took the entire day to clean it.  We've been focused on home school, and we've also been running to and fro and back and forth so much that the house has definitely suffered.  It feels so good to have everything clean!

So now that I've bored you all to death with the travel logue of our week (I didn't mean to, I promise) I'll try to sum things up pretty quick.  Maybe we haven't been as busy as it feels, but in between everything I've been working on memorizing my part for this year's Tombstone Tales.  This year I am playing a suffragette, and I get to shout things like, "Votes for women!" and "All alcohol created the same ill efffect.  It is from the devil!" 

Tombstone Tales starts bright and early tomorrow morning, and it will consume a huge chunk of my time until Saturday night.  We're also throwing in the Fall Ball, put on by the Pasco Stake, on Friday night, running a 5K race on Saturday morning, and then driving straight to a practice for the Primary program.  This is where life gets really busy.  I found a substitute to teach Gospel Doctrine on Sunday so I don't have to have that going through my head while I'm shouting in a cemetery. 

Even though it's going to be crazy, I'm looking forward to this weekend.  It's going to be great!