Murphy's Law

Random shot:

as Grace would say, "we are the girlie bugs, the girlie, girlie, girlie bugs!"

With the end of the school year coming, I knew things would start rolling -- what with graduation festivities, our house hunting trip, getting ready for our trip to England, and not to mention getting ready for our final move -- what I SHOULD have realized is that for us, when things start to roll, they do so in an avalanche-like fashion.

Last Monday was my first day back running after a week-long hiatus. In case you're wondering, this is what happens when you haven't run (or done any kind of exercise) in 7 days: Basically, you run the first mile, about half of the second mile, some of the third mile, and only the last downhill stretch of the fourth mile. Of course, it didn't help that my iPod went dead about a mile in, and I had finished eating dinner only about an hour earlier. Clearly it took longer than usual to run the route, and by the time I got home it was about 7:30 and I was exhausted. Not too exhausted, however, to run down to the basement to check and see if the TiVo was set up for the night. And this is when the rolling began.

My first step off the stairs into the basement was completely soaking wet. I yelled for Scott and when he came down we discovered the extent of the flooding in the back storage area where Grace's crib was last year. The carpet was completely and totally soaked through and that's when we realized that because we never unhooked the outside garden hoses over the winter, when we turned the outside water back on over the weekend, water started backing up into the house somehow. It was a nightmare -- especially because we were due to leave on Wednesday for our house-hunting trip. And also because the actual homeowners (the ones who are supposed to file the claim for the insurance) are in Ireland which is 7 hours ahead of us. We finally were able to get some people over that night who managed to pull the carpet up, get rid of the carpet pad, and start the industrial fans blowing before leaving a little after midnight.



Tuesday was already going to be a busy day with Scott's last day of classes and getting stuff done before we left, and taking care of the basement flood aftermath, so really, should I have been surprised when that morning Sophie fell in the bathroom and split her eyebrow on the tub necessitating a trip to the emergency room? Luckily she didn't need stitches -- the doctor thought it would leave a bigger scar -- so after putting a surgi-strip on her eyebrow, we were on our way.

Here she is on the way to the hospital.

And here she is IN the hospital. In case you're wondering about the scrape on her nose, the ER folk were wondering about it, too, and for a split-second I was really worried they were going to call the child protection services on me for being a neglectful parent or something. (She's just learning to walk, people!)

The rest of the day consisted of getting Ethan to his last day of preschool, coordinating with the repair people to check on the basement, picking Ethan UP from preschool, and then heading up to the airport to pick-up my sister Sarah who so graciously agreed to watch all three kids for us while we were gone. Oh how I would love to read a blog post about HER experience while we were away. Especially given the 3 page daily schedule that I made out for her so she'd know everything that we usually do in a day. Along with the 1 and 1/2 page set of instructions just for Sophie. Talk about a crash course in motherhood!

Here is Ethan with Miss Dorie

And Miss Raechel

When Wednesday finally came, I was a bit stressed about leaving for our trip. They say that bad things always happen in 3's, and we'd already experienced the basement trouble and Sophie's ER trip. Well, I found out soon enough what that third thing was. Okay, so have any of you ever stayed in a Days Inn? Well, I can now say I have. What I can also say is that I will not be staying in one again. When we first pulled up it was around 9:30 at night or so, and my eyes were immediately drawn to the "J&B Tavern" next door. As soon as we had checked in and gotten in the elevator I started laughing. And I continued laughing for the next half hour. Here are some of the highlights of this Days Inn: the room smelled like a mix of dog and cigarette smoke, the shower was lukewarm at best and it wasn't until the second day that I discovered that if we flushed the toilet every couple of minutes the water would stay nice and hot, there was a safe provided in the room to store valuables at a rate of a dollar a day, the walls were paper thin (I was woken up the first night around 2:30 in the morning by the sound of the TV blaring next door), oh and we saw the cops there a few nights later.

No, thank YOU!

This sign was at the front desk one morning.

Now, in Scott's defense (please let the record show that I did not choose this place), he didn't know how bad it was going to be. He was just trying to save money from our relocation sum. And I was glad we were saving that money on hotels as soon as I saw the most beautiful red jacket in the world on sale at Ann Taylor. I had been eyeing it for over a month and just waiting for it to be marked down. Well, there we were at the mall after meeting some people for dinner, and there was only one left and it was in my size. I told Scott it was a sign and he humored me -- mostly I think because he still felt so bad about how crappy our Days Inn was.

Anyway, this is getting long, but our house-hunting trip was a success! We found the most awesome house ever, and it will be the perfect fit for our family. I don't want to inundate the blog with the hundreds of pictures I took, so if I get around to figuring out how to do a slideshow on here I'll put them all up.

Here is a side-angle of the house.

And the happy, new home-owners!

Okay, here is a slideshow:

In closing, I can't believe that the MBA experience is at the end! Scott graduates this week and it seems like just yesterday that we were starting. I am going to miss the Spouse Association and all the activities so much. Especially Book Club! As a parting shot, here is a photo taken at the very last book club this year.

I love these girls! I only wish all the regulars could have been in the picture.

There you have it! I have tons more pictures from end-of-the-year festivities, but I'll wait and post them all together with the graduation shots. Until next time, here is one last photo of Grace (who is curiously under-represented in this post):