Winding down after a busy week

It was a busy week, but also a week filled with old faces. Earlier in the week, Keith, Daniel and I went for a walk on the running trail near our house. We ran into a very old friend of ours, Alan. Keith used to work in his hobby shop nearly 15 years or so ago. Alan was thrilled to find out that Keith and I were married. He was very excited to meet Daniel and then even more excited to find out we have two other children. Alan's store has been closed for many years now, but never fear, he is quite the resourceful fellow and is now helping his brother run some laundromats.

Tuesday night I attended a parent-teacher type meeting for Megan's classroom. The purpose of the meeting was to set the tone for the rest of the school year as far as how helpful the parents could be for potential field trips and upcoming class parties. Megan's class has some pretty fun things coming up. While there, I ran into a friend of mine that I went to college with back in the mid-90's. It was so fun to chit-chat catching up on what happened to different people after college. I get to go to the same type of meeting next week for Joshua's class.

On Fridays, the kids get out of school at 12:30pm. After I dropped them off at school (no school buses!), I was home by 8:30am. Daniel and I were out the door by 9am to go for a walk. Instead of walking on the trail, I decided we would walk around the neighborhood. Somehow I got back wards and couldn't remember where the street was that would lead me back to our house. Fortunately I had my cell phone to call Keith and get directions back to the house. I felt like such a goofball, who gets lost two streets away from their house?

After our walk and a quick shower, Daniel and I were at the mall by 10:30am. Megan is getting so tall that all of her t-shirts seem short on her (I don't like when her belly shows when she raises her arms). Even though she wears uniforms to school, she still needs weekend clothes. A friend suggested Gymboree, so I went to check it out. We scored big at a sale they were having and I was very impressed with the things we got. Daniel picked out a new pair of swimtrunks for $6. We then walked over to The Children's Place and picked up just a couple of things. Daniel did great. Since he was in his stroller for the morning walk, I let him just walk around the mall holding my hand. By the time we finished in those two stores, it was time to go pick the kids up at school.

Once we were all back home, the kids played while I did a gazillion loads of laundry. Then I walked past our entry way and just couldn't handle looking at the mess anymore. We've been on the go non-stop this week and the front door has become a dumping ground for everything.

We are still used to the Kodiak way of life - no shoes on in the house!

There is a large closet directly across from our front door. We are using it as storage, since we don't have a real garage. Today we cleaned out half of the closet and organized the shoes/backpacks/umbrellas/etc all in an area that can be concealed behind closed doors. Ta-da! We are back to having a real entryway, again! It's so nice to open the front door and not be greeted by a mess. Or at least not immediately!