babies, boats, travel

We have to go back a week to start this post. On Saturday May 9th, we had quite the busy day going here at the Page household. Savannah and I started the day by participating in a 5K, and that was fun. However, I seem to have a strange injury on my left foot that is especially trying on stairs - fun in heels at church today. Right after the race, Julia and Wyatt were picked up by my sister to attend an event at church where I understand Wyatt was quite the character. Meanwhile, I was cleaning and cleaning to prepare for a baby shower. Before Wyatt and Julia even made it home, Savannah and I were off to a field hockey game. Andy and Julia headed out for a birthday party for one of Julia's friends. 5:00 arrived shortly therafter, and we showered my high school friend Kim with goodies for her upcoming arrival. My friend Stacey arrived with her mom before the shower, and together, they did a beautiful job decorating and setting up. Andy and Zachary were both on hand to help with some of the grunt work.




The shower begins. See what I mean about the nice job done by Stacey and Barbara?
We invited little girls for the party, and as you can see, Wyatt stuck around. Andy and Zachary headed off to shop after we were set up to go, and they returned just in time to help with the last of the clean-up. Wyatt played nicely (mostly) with the girls, and he and several of the girls helped open the gifts. (YIKES)!

Stacey had this sign in storage, and it made a great decoration to lead people to the shower. Stacey and I grew up across the street from each other, and I met Kim in high school. Stacey knew her from grade school, and we have stayed connected all these years. Ironically, Kim and I have the same last name now, but our husbands are not related. (Kim's husband is also a former classmate of ours).
Here are the three of us and some of our kids. Of course you can't see Kim's baby boy, but he is there. Stacey's youngest child, Karlee, is in her arms.

I think the shower was a success. Savannah loved helping with the games. In fact, she ran them for us. We had people guess baby foods (pulled the labels off the jars and numbered them). Then, they had the task of naming that poo! We melted candy bars in diapers, and they had to guess which one was which. This ended up being more disgusting than I thought it would be. If you have never played this game at a shower, you might be surprised at how hard it is. When I revealed our game plans to Andy, his response was, "this is what happens at showers? I had no idea." Now this baby just needs a name, and he has to await his father's return from deployment in Afganistan to arrive.

In other family news, Andy left for the airport right after a somewhat eventful morning at church on Mother's Day. He was gone for the week, and I got to play single mom to four busy kids. For the most part the week went fairly smoothly. When Andy travels, things are very different here at home because half of a team is gone. Normally Andy takes everyone to school because I have to be at work before anyone can be dropped off. I get the pick-up and homework duty in the afternoon, and Andy cooks dinner while I manage the laundry. For the most part, every other chore in this house is done on a crisis basis - sad but true. When Andy is gone, I trade hours with a co-worker, and I get everyone to school and home. I pick Savannah up late because I leave work at the same time I am supposed to be picking her up. This week was the first week that Andy has traveled since Wyatt has switched school systems, so that threw quite a wrench in the schedule as Wyatt leaves for school after I have to be at work even going in an hour late. Sooo, we enrolled him in before school care, and I dropped him off first, took Zachary to the bus stop, and then grabbed the girls and took them to school. Whew! Our biggest issue at home this week was the dog. Normally Andy stops by the house at lunch time and lets her out. In her younger days, she was thrilled to spend the whole day outside - not so anymore, and we had a stormy week here. I made her spend her days outside and had a couple of days where she came in covered in mud in the afternoon - what a mess!

This week held the usual field hockey, wrestling and AHG schedule. In addition, our church held the kick-off to women's summer Bible study. I thoroughly enjoyed that event on Tuesday night and got to spend some time with Stacey while there. I am so excited to be returning to my home church for study this summer, and it looks like a fun study - but very personal.

On Wednesday I scheduled some fun for the crew. The senior class at the school where I teach goes on a boat ride as one of their last events before graduation. That was scheduled this week, and I took all the kids for what we hoped would be a fun night. The skies were threatening as we left our house, but it ended up being a terrific night. I think Zachary and Savannah got bored toward the end, but all the kids did enjoy the boat.

"Give me some quarters Mom, so I can look."

It was a trip watching Wyatt dance. He was so funny, but he got too rowdy toward the end as he was tired. The boys get frisked (you have to check for alcohol at school events) as they get on the boat, so Wyatt held up his hands to be frisked too. The security guard tickled him, and Wyatt spoke to him every time he saw him after that. He talked to the police officer about his gun and told him that he didn't want to be shot. Wyatt told me after the police officer walked away that if you do bad things, the police can shoot you. I wish I had his dance moves on video. Maybe he will repeat them at my brother's wedding reception this summer, and I can get this boy in action.

We got silly with the camera. Julia took this picture of Savannah and me.

the girls

silliness

a beautiful night

On Thursday I took a much needed nap before Savannah's field hockey game. I thought that would do me, but on Friday, I took a 3.5 hour nap. I then slept through the night and struggled to get up to the alarm on Saturday morning. Andy's flight was delayed, so he didn't get back until Saturday. His suitcase arrived this morning, and it had his razor, so he looks like he belongs on Miami Vice right about now. He left a very distraught Julia last week, so he took along one of her stuffed animals and sent pictures home along the way. He is exhausted right now. And to add to the stress that Andy is facing at home, Wyatt and Julia took our storm door apart. Yes, they took it apart while under Zachary's care. If you know Andy, this is a problem because...well, Andy is no handyman.

And to end this post, I HAVE to share this Wyatt story. We served at church this weekend, and friends of ours had their one month old baby with them. Wyatt saw the baby from across a room, and she was all bundled up in a blanket so you really couldn't see her. He said, "that baby is CUTE! We should get one of those!" Yeah, we'll see about that! It has been a baby boom around here. We ran into some other friends from church this weekend, we haven't seen them in a while. They were anxious to introduce their new daughter who was a week old on Saturday. They told us that they were just trying to keep up with us, and it is now a competition. I say "bring it on!" ha, ha - if we are scoring in numbers, we are in the lead by one