what a week!

allen returned home saturday after being gone on mission trip for a week. a mission trip to paradise....texas. population 450. heres a picture i got from my google images search of paradise, texas....

do i even need to comment?

at any rate it was an overall good week for them. i on the other hand, not so much. it started saturday night when colby wakes up around 10:30 with what i'm told was a night terror. then again at midnight at which time i put him in bed with me and subjected myself to kicks in the stomach (he's a really wild sleeper) and sharing my pillow with 3 & 1/2 year old morning breath. ick. then we did it again sunday night. monday night when i thought VBS (i did music for 4 and 5 year olds) was over at 8pm (which is right at mojo's betime, but i figured 20 minutes or so later isnt gonna kill her). wrong. VBS is over at 8:20, then i stay in my room till 8:30 when the kids in my last rotation are either picked up or taken off to "your parents are late" land. so molly and colby didn't get picked up till 8:40 in bed shortly after 9. molly was pretty much a wet noodle at that point. lucky for me colby got sick on tuesday (fever runny nose). i hope you sense the sarcasm in that last sentence. this means i find someone to keep my kids while i go to VBS, which i would have most likely arranged by mid-week anyway for mollys sake. thanks to my mom and grandparents for stepping in and getting the kids to bed tuesday, wednesday, and thursday nights. now, i love my kids, but 24/7 and one of them is sick, which makes him super clingy and whiny, i was about to go out of my mind. and i'm hormonal so that sure wasn't helping matters. plus i am still dealing with the kicking and morning-breath trying to share my pillow at 2am. i finally took the advice of a friend and made him a pallet on the floor mid-week and he did great with that. it's still there.... :) also on tuesday i started smelling a not so pleasant odor of sorts somewhere in the playroom-something like rotten meat. i thought maybe a had left something in the kitchen trashcan for too long, but it was only in the playroom. checked the fish tank. checked the trashcan. checked all the nooks and crannies for some long-forgotten piece of dried of cheese or hot dog weenie. nothing. i even got down on all fours and smelled every square inch of the carpet. still nothing. then my mom says "maybe there's something dead in your attic right above that vent." it did seem to be coming from the vent. fantastic. at that point i quarantined the playroom. just shut the doors and put a pretty potent air freshener in there to mask the smell. i love the smell of water lilies and dead (insert random rodent here). anyway, by friday i didn't really smell it anymore and no one else really could either, so i figured even if it was a dead animal it's either pretty much decayed thanks to the texas heat, or that just a really good air freshener. i doubt we'll ever know.

allen came home to much rejoicing on saturday afternoon. the kids ran out to greet him and as soon as allen picked molly up she pointed to her diaper and said "poop". so that's the first thing daddy got to do after being gone for 8 days. but the icing on the cake that had been my week was my getting sick about 4 hours after allen got home. i started feeling really really nauseated right as i'm getting dinner ready. i had gotten my shots for africa (im going in september) friday morning and thought maybe i was reacting to those. my arms were already killing me. seriously some of the worst pain i've ever felt. good thing the tetanus is only every 10 years. so i don't eat anything and wind up going to bed at 8:30 after i get the kids down for the night. "welcome home honey. i'm going to bed." i felt so bad for my sweet husband, but he was very diplomatic about it. colby (who was perfectly fine when he went to bed) comes in at midnight covered in vomit. it's in his ear. we get him cleaned up and back to sleep (on the pallet!!). then i throw up. then colby throws up again at 2am. allen is up with us, washing sheets, getting water, changing clothes as needed. he was a trooper. then he has to be at the ballpark at 6:45 that morning to get faith night set up. crazy. colby was perfectly fine the next morning and by about 5pm i was pretty much back to normal myself. i am soooo glad we (specifically allen) are done and home for the summer!!

i was informed last night that allen and colby "took a ride" while i was crashed out saturday afternoon--i laid down to rest while molly was sleeping. i have to share this conversation with you. i didn't hear it first hand but allen told me about it yesterday. hopefully i will do it justice....

allen: "colby, hold out your hands. i have a surprise for you." (gives colby a red a white striped sweatband-the terrycloth kind you wear on your wrist)

colby: "what is it?"

allen: "it's a sweatband. you wear it on your wrist like this." (puts it on colby)

colby: "daddy, this isn't very interesting."

allen: "it's not?"

colby: "no. it's not very exciting either. i wanted a sea animal."

allen: "a sea animal?"

colby: "yes. i wanted you to bring me a sea animal that i don't already have."

allen: "colby, i wasn't near the sea. i brought you this cool wristband that says Jesus Christ on it."

colby: "but i want it to say colby tyke frans"

allen: "ok. we can fix that." (allen gets a sharpe and writes colbys name on the sweatband.)

colby: "it's still not very interesting."

allen: "well, what would be interesting?"

colby: "vanilla donuts."

allen: "vanilla donuts? you don't want chocolate donuts?"

colby: "no. i want the white donuts like we had at the beach." (translation: the powdered donuts he ate for breakfast on senior trip)

allen: "oh, you mean powdered donuts. you know what goes great with powdered donuts?"

colby: "what??"

allen: "chocolate milk!!"

colby: "YES!!"

and off they went to wag-a-bag for a father/son donut run.