It's relatively early on Sunday morning, and only Dalton and I are up. I'm waiting for the coffee to brew, and the kittens are acting out their morning craziness. When not acting crazy, they sleep...regrettably, their schedule appears to be almost exactly, but not entirely, the opposite of a person's schedule, so that they try to sleep most of the day, and spend the night leaping on beds and attacking feet, falling in toilets (yes, you read that correctly), that sort of thing.

This upcoming week is the last full week of summer for the kids - they go back to school on August 12th. I'm not sure when the summers got to be so short - for whatever reason, I can only recall one or maybe two times when I was in school on my birthday (August 27th). As far as I can tell, somewhere along the way, they lost two weeks of summer.

Dalton is intensely into questioning mode lately. This morning he's asked what would happen if a bug went into an electrical socket, how we know that Lily fell into the toilet, and when I will take him fishing again. Usually his questions are the sort that I just don't know the answer to, random odd sort of questions that would expose any claim to knowledge as a giant bluff in a matter of minutes. ("What's a bluff?", asks Dalton.)

Anyway, for me the past week was a bit busy - I flew to Dallas on Monday morning, and ended up sitting within sight distance of my gate upon arrival for another two hours. I flew back on Tuesday, and then worked the rest of the week in Birmingham. The week was filled with thunderstorms, and the kids came in to visit at least a couple of times at night because of the loud thunder. After working in the yard most of the day yesterday, another thunderstorm rolled through last night, which probably negated part of the day's work.

Mich scrapbooked some during the week - she's trying to make albums for our trips and has been working on one for Paris. We also have to get the pictures off of the laptop, as we're a little concerned that it may not last too much longer. When we do, I'll post some of my favorites.

The kids wrapped up their summer reading programs this past week as well, and Dalton read 3,100 pages, and Maggie read 2,600. Maggie had actually read more than Dalton at first, and then Dalton got competitive and sat in his room and read about 200 pages in one day so he could have more pages than Maggie. We celebrated with Baker's Pizza, which is our favorite pizza place here in Bluff Park.

And that's all the news for now. If anyone would like to offer themselves up as a resource for answering Dalton's questions, please give us a call.

The Sleepover (and other tales of horror)

I suppose that it's a mile marker of sorts that our son has reached the age where he can have his friends come and spend the night. As it was his birthday, we agreed that he could have a couple of friends over. All in all, it wasn't too bad - we took them to see Night at the Museum II, then back home for pizza. They actually got in bed around 8:30 or so, but didn't go to sleep for a couple of hours. Still, like I said, not too bad. They did all pop up about six o'clock the following morning, though... or at least, that's when they got loud enough to wake us up. And that was it for that experience, fairly tame in most respects, although I did get a reminder of just how silly nine-year old boys are.

In the meantime, we've been keeping ourselves busy, mostly with yard-type stuff. We've cleared out a large amount of the undergrowth, mowed the yard, cut a few trees, etc., etc. Although it's hard work, I actually enjoy it quite a bit - the chance to be outside in the sun, and frequently, immediate satisfaction when something looks better than it did. We'll have to make a final push to get everything unpacked, but all in all, we're not far off now, which is both exciting and intimidating, since we've saved some of the more difficult things for last.

We also went to the pool for the first time yesterday - we bought a pool and tennis club membership earlier this year, and we thought it would be fun to go and hang out there for a bit. We did decide to get Dalton and Maggie some additional swimming lessons, which I think will be good for both of them - plus it will also help that they will probably get to go to the pool frequently this summer, getting them used to being in the water.

And I suppose that's it, which just goes to show that our lives are quickly adjusting back to the mundane.