from travel. This past week we have spent 14 hours on the road. It wouldn’t be so bad, except we have a baby who hates the car and doesn’t sleep for more than an hour. Needless to say, we are happy to be done traveling for a while. So happy, in fact, that we did pretty much nothing Saturday. Avie was the only one who got dressed today and that was only because she had a blow-out in her jammies.
But that is not to say that we didn’t enjoy our time with our family! To begin with, we went to Wichita to see my (Dri) family. My grandma was visiting at my parents the whole time, so we got to spend time with her. Apparently she used to always make cream puffs, but I don’t remember ever having her cream puffs. I guess she stopped making them at some point. BUT she made some for us and the were quite tasty! AND now I not only have the recipe, but I also watched her make them, so I can do it too!
My sisters and I (and mom) spent some time organizing a HUGE box of pictures that have accumulated form 1980 until we got a digital camera sometime in the late 90’s. (We didn’t make it that far, so I really have no idea when it will end. And eventually we will also need to organize the digital ones too!) We sorted by year, wrote names on the back, and filed them in some photo boxes. Like I said, we didn’t make it very far, but we got 1980-1991 in 2 photo boxes, organized by year (but not in order within the year). Now mom’s project is to finish labeling these photos and sort them within the year. Eventually, we (or maybe just I) hope to pull out the best ones and put them in albums and keep the others (and duplicates) sorted in photo boxes for easy access.
Wednesday was Avelea’s first Forth of July!! Isn’t she patriotic with her red, white and blue?
To celebrate, we went to my brother’s for a BBQ and to shoot off fireworks. I got to see their new (to them) house, which was fun! It’s a lot of space and I think they will have fun making it their own in the coming years. It’s on some acreage south of Wichita, surrounded by fields. That’s an important detail because after everyone BBQ’d and people started lighting off fireworks, this happened:
I was inside putting Avie to sleep when Ansen came in and said the field got caught on fire and I needed to get out of the house. Then he came back in and said it was heading the other direction and the house wasn’t in imminent danger. Imminent danger? But it’s still in danger? Anyways, I finally got Avelea down and went outside just as they had finished putting it out and the fire truck pulled up to hose it down just to make sure it didn’t start up again. So, I missed all the excitement, but according to everyone, it was pretty major. And we’re lucky some quick thinking people (like my mom and dad) found some things to start beating the fire out because pouring buckets of water simply wasn’t working.
After all the excitement, we went back to mom and dad’s in a residential neighborhood with asphalt roads and watered lawns to shoot off the rest and watch all the neighbors. Avelea didn’t see a single firework. Instead she slept right through them all. But we had a good show.
Thursday we got up and drove home, only to turn around and drive to Marshall, AR on Friday to see my Papa who had yet to meet Avelea. She got to play around with Grandpa as she worked on her rolling skills.
And listened to Papa sing… which she kind of enjoyed.
She’s becoming quite good at rolling. Front to back is still a little rough because she can’t manage to get that arm out of the way. And she mostly rolls right, but she suddenly improved over the weekend and can pretty much get anywhere she wants now.
After all of that traveling, we plan to spend this next week doing a whole lot of nothing and staying at home. Well… and I have to buy groceries, because I still haven’t after our $30/week challenge. Don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten. I plan to post a wrap up about that tomorrow after our first shopping trip post-challenge. But as a little sneak peak: I didn’t spend all of the last $10 and we’ve eaten dinner at home twice this month without buying anything more. Ok, no more. I won’t spoil it all for you. Oh, and I have to tell you how my dresser turned out!