Recap

Highlights from this week (my apologies....it's a little long):

TUESDAY: Dean's birthday! I was so unprepared for his birthday this year (as I am unprepared for almost everything these days!). I hadn't even thought about a cake until his actual birthday, so the boys and I bought a Boston Creme Pie (Dean's favorite) at Kroger. I set it inside my cute little cake dome and possibly would've gotten away with claiming that I made it, except that Dean was home eating lunch when we got back from the store (he happened to have a training just a few miles from our house that day). The first thing out of Grant's mouth when he saw Dean was "we bought you a birthday cake at the cookie shop!"

The boys were awfully tired and fussy that afternoon, so they were both asleep by 6:45. This never happens at our house (usually bedtime is about an hour later), but it sure was nice having almost an entire evening to ourselves!

WEDNESDAY: Drew and I stopped at Hobby Lobby while Grant was in school. I found the one item I needed , then we walked through the housewares section on our way to the front. Drew was not in a shopping cart (I didn't bother because it was a quick trip), and he was walking with me when we saw an endcap full of decorative glass balls (you probably know where this is going). Drew picked up a ball and I took it away from him, then he reached for another one. So I said, "okay, time to go," and I picked him up. Well, he must have grabbed and held on tight to the piece of glass that was holding those balls in....and as we stood up, the glass came with us, and all of the balls came tumbling out. It seemed like the crashing lasted forever as each one hit the ground and shattered. Shocked and embarrassed, I looked to the left and right, not really knowing what to do. Ladies were walking by, wincing and feeling sorry for me but not saying anything. I would say there were probably 25 balls that fell, and amazingly there were about three that looked intact. They were marked $8.99 a piece. Two workers came within a few seconds, and they were as nice as could be. I apologized profusely and asked if there was anything I could do, but they were very gracious and said not to worry about a thing. I felt so guilty walking to the front of the store to buy my $2.99 item, having just destroyed a couple of hundreds of dollars worth of merchandise. Yikes....

THURSDAY: Not wanting to spend yet another day doing errands and playing at the house, I took the boys to Memorial City Mall up in Houston (it was rainy outside and I'd heard about an inside play area there). Grant acted superbly the entire time...I dragged them into a store and tried on a couple of shirts, and he said, "that's cute, Mommy! You look cute!" And they had fun in the play area, although at one point this strange girl (very cute, but very odd) came up to Drew and was acting kind of weird (she couldn't have been a day over two). Grant noticed it, stopped playing and came to stand behind Drew, putting his arms around him and saying, "this is my brother!" She walked away and everything was fine (although we did see her later and she was acting strangely again). But....when it was time to leave the mall, I picked Drew up to carry him out, and he let out this loud scream. He did this during lunch too, because I wouldn't let him stand in his highchair. It makes me stressed out to now have two kids who can throw fits and embarrass me in public! I could go on about this for a long time, but that's another post. On to...

FRIDAY: My day off! After the previous two days, I told Dean that I needed an entire day away from the boys or I'd go crazy....and I'm not joking. He's starting a 9/80 schedule (he'll get every other Friday off), so this was his off day. I left the house at 8:30am and didn't come home until 7:45pm. Dean was a trooper and didn't complain about having to care for the boys by himself on his day off. I shopped and shopped and spent time browsing inside stores that I never get to visit. It was so nice....I can't even describe it! Fairly regularly I'll leave Dean with the boys for a couple of hours on a weekend so I can do a couple of errands. But I've never had an entire day away like this. It was refreshing and I can't wait to do it again!