Playtime!!

Wednesday we had our first visit with Jacob since he went to his Mom's for summer vacation. It was SOOOO good to see him!! We all miss him so much! I picked up Katie from school, then picked up Jake from his Mom's at around 2:30p - Katie greeted Jake with, "Jake is my brother, he's so cute!", ROFL. Then we all returned home. Jake and Katie and I all played with my newest toy (thanks Mike!), the Wii Fit. We still have Jen's Wii Fit here as well, so I put them both on the family room carpet in front of the TV, and the kids mimicked my movements as we played several of the balance and aerobic games together. Jake even tried the skiing game, but since the board was calibrated to my weight it wasn't recognizing when he was leaning. If not for that, I really think he would have done very well at it - he got the hang of it very quickly. Mike went in to work early so he could leave early, so he arrived home about 4p. He played ball with Jake while Katie helped me make the pizzas for dinner (yellow squash hair, green pepper ears, bacon mouth, and pepperoni eyes on Katie's pizza - hey, how else am I supposed to get her to eat squash???). Then Katie joined Mike and Jake and they all three played ball while the pizzas were cooking. We enjoyed our pizza together, and Katie even ate some of the squash hair :) . Mike took the kids upstairs to play a while longer after dinner. Then it was time for Jake to go back to his Mom's.

Getting Stuff Done

We spent Saturday hanging out and playing video games, mostly Super Mario Party 8. Jen and Carlo came over for a while, and we ordered Italian which was very good. Carlo brought Mike a Wii controller and Wii Play game as a birthday present, which was very sweet of him! (thanks Carlo!)

Jen delivered some very happy news, met with much congratulations!

We got Jen watching True Blood, a vampire story based on a series of books called The Southern Vampire Mysteries, to which Mike and I are both addicted - we're anxiously awaiting Season 2. We want to get the book set as well and see the differences. Jen brought over her Wii Fit and demo'd it for us, then left it here for us to borrow (thanks Jen!).

I got up early Sunday and put in about 30 mins on the Wii Fit. I had fun with it, and it's a good workout, but I'm not sure yet I'll be able to cancel my gym membership and use it primarily instead.

Then I went to work on the garage. We still had so many boxes left out there from our April Fool's Day Move! :) Mike came and helped, and we actually got a lot of it done - about half the garage is cleared out now - YEA!!! Garbage day isn't until Tuesday, so once the empty boxes and other bulky trash is put out, it'll be easier to see how much progress we've made, and how much farther we have to go. We got a mirror hung in the living room, unpacked Mike's dishes to assess what we had that was worth keeping (not too much, I'm afraid), and found all of our cameras - yes! - so now we can actually post some higher-quality, more-recent pics with this blog ;-)

Then Mike and I went to see "Land of the Lost" with Will Ferrell. It was a fun movie, but I kept expecting it to trigger some memories from watching the series as a child, and that didn't really happen.

We are all missing Jake. Mike especially, of course. When Katie got home from her visit with her Dad, the first thing she asked was "Where's Jacob?", so we told her he had gone to visit with his Mommy for a few weeks. I don't think she understood, but she did OK last night. I think it will hit her in a few days when he still hasn't returned home. Hopefully we can all learn to deal. I just keep telling myself, "It's only a few weeks!" When I said that yesterday, Mike responded, "It's more than just a few." To which I replied, "I'm in the middle of much-needed self-delusion here, don't interrupt me with the facts!". Harhar.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

Mike turned 39 on Friday, yea!!! I told him next year we'll have to do the whole "over-the-hill" party when he turns 40. This year we kept it pretty low-key. Mike stayed home from work and spent the day with Jacob. After taking Katie to school, I had Jacob decorate a card for Mike. Jake had fun putting lots of stamps on it, and got creative writing his own name inside and "Dad" on the envelope :) (I will scan those in and get them up here tomorrow). Mike loved the card. Then I gave Mike my card and a T-Shirt that says "Gamers do it all night long". That was just so he'd have something to open today - his real gift is I'm going to have the windows on his car tinted for him.

Mike and Jake played video games for a bit while I got some of the kind of work for which I get paid accomplished. Then we all went over to Chuck-E-Cheese's and played more games - Jake is getting good at skee ball! After that, we picked Katie up from school and all came back to the house. We packed up Jake's clothes, toys, favorite books and some pictures of our family so he wouldn't be so homesick. Katie gave Mike her birthday card, then we lit the candles on the cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to Mike. The Banana Layer cake was fabulous (I'll also post that recipe tomorrow). I swear I've never seen half of an entire cake get consumed so quickly!!

Not long after that, Jake's Mom and Katie's Dad arrived to pick them both up. We're all going to miss that Booger so much! *sniff* Mike was already missing Jake, and wasn't really in the mood to go to the dinner we had planned, so we decided to go over to Game Stop and browse instead. After a bit of that, we were looking for someplace to get take-out, when we decided instead to go to a Greek restaurant near the house. I hadn't tried Greek food before, so it was an adventure for me. We really enjoyed our dinner after all, and then came home to vegetate a while before bedtime.

Mike's Birthday and Summer Vacation for Jacob

We are busily preparing for Mike's 39th Birthday tomorrow. I am baking a Banana Layer Cake (yes, from scratch) for him, and Mike is taking the day off work to spend some time with Jacob. Tomorrow is also the last day before Jacob goes to stay with his Mom for six weeks. We know the time with his Mom is important for Jacob, but we are all going to miss him like mad. I'm not sure Katie will know what to do with herself without Jacob around. I'm not sure any of us will. Very busy day for me today. I have three conference calls (two down, still one to go), I have to go grocery shopping for the cake ingredients etc, and I have to pack up Jake's clothes for his visit with his Mom - which means tackling loads of laundry first. Somewhere in there I should fit in a visit to the gym today, but not sure I'll end up with time enough for that. Katie's Dad called to tell me he won't be able to pick her up from daycare Friday, but will need to pick her up here at our house later instead. So, that means I may not be able to take Mike to dinner as I wanted to celebrate his birthday. *sigh* Plan B.

Cowboys and Cowgirls

Jake and Katie's classes at school were both studying Farm life and Farm Animals for the entire month of May 2009. At the end of the month, the school arranged for a petting zoo to come out to the school for all the kids to see and interact with the animals they had been learning about. They asked that we dress the kids up in farm clothes for the big day. I looked for straw farmer's hats, but was only able to find cowboy and cowgirl hats. Here is a pic we took before they left the house that morning, and one taken by a teacher at their school.