Two weeks ago on Friday was my birthday and then Mothers' Day was the week after that. Those two events are usually fairly close together, so if there's not a big celebration for one of them I don't really feel left out. This year it ended up that both days were fairly uneventful. On my birthday S-Boogie and Little Dude made me some French toast for breakfast. It was pretty tasty and they didn't make too much of a mess in the kitchen. I spent the whole day at the annual conference for the state library association--there were some interesting sessions and I got a tasty free lunch with an entertaining speaker, so I guess the day wasn't a total wash. There was terrible traffic coming back from the conference so I got into town a little later than I had planned. I had to pick up the kids from Mr. Fob and then we had a ward activity that night; I thought it would be fun to just get Wendy's for dinner, but it really wasn't that great. We had poor customer service and P. Bibby was cranky and didn't eat her food at all. We were a bit late to the ward activity, and even though I wanted to go for the kids' sake, I didn't really think it was that fun. It was a movie night, which basically meant we all watched Frozen and ate popcorn, and then went home after the movie. We came home, I got kids in bed, and my sweet visiting teacher stopped by with a milkshake just for me. I stuck a candle in it, we took some pictures, and I decided it was a good birthday after all. I think next year I want to run away to Oregon or somewhere similar.
Mother's Day also demonstrated the paradox I live with--kids are a hassle, but I love them to death and miss them when they aren't here for special days. It's relaxing to have a day off without kids, but also sad at the same time. Oh well, that's just how it is. Mr. Fob technically had the kids for the weekend, but we juggled things around due to sickness and other scheduling problems and they came back on Saturday night. Sunday they gave me some sweet cards and a pound of chocolates, and they participated in my favorite tradition of singing in sacrament meeting. This year was P. Bibby's first time and she did a great job. It was a fine, normal Sunday, which was good since the rest of the week was a bit crazy for me.
Monday morning I woke up really early and drove off to another conference for a few days. It was only located an hour away, but I got myself a hotel room for two nights so I didn't have to deal with driving back and forth so much. The money was worth it and so were the three days I spent at the conference. I was a bit nervous about going since it is usually the sort of thing that is attended by people with more professional level jobs than I have (I'm just in a staff position, not a librarian or anything). The conference was the annual meeting for an association that deals with academic libraries and literature in Spanish and Portuguese. I wanted to go because I work with all of our book vendors, I speak Spanish, and right now I can get student rates for conferences. My employer was hosting the conference this year and so I was able to get permission to attend. It was a lot of fun--the presentations were interesting, I had good conversations with a lot of people, and I met most of the vendors I work with in person so now our emails can feel a little more personal. It was also nice to have a few days off from the normal routine of work, and of course receptions and restaurant lunches are quite a lot of fun too. I was pretty exhausted by the time the three days were over.
Coming back home on Wednesday afternoon was also a rough transition back into 'normal' life. The last session ended at 3:30, so I was able to get back into town by 4:15 and decided to quickly stop at the grocery store on my way home. I got home by 5:00 and had just finished unloading the groceries when Mr. Fob dropped off the kids. Unfortunately P.Bibby had just had diarrhea in her pants; I had to interrupt my dinner preparations in order to deal with that mess. Then we quickly had dinner before S.Boogie and I ran off to a special mother/daughter Activity Days event. I came back home and got the older two in bed before checking on P.Bibby in bed, where I discovered another unfortunate bowel incident (she had a tummy bug the week before and I guess it had worked its way through). By the time I got that cleaned up, everyone settled for the night, and unpacked my stuff, it was pretty late. Wednesday was a long day and then I had to get up Thursday morning and jump right back into work and everything else.
Somewhere in the middle of all this I finished my last few assignments for this semester of school. I have a few weeks off until the new semester starts in June but I don't know how relaxing they will be. I still want to get the garden in, and I'm trying to fix up the backyard a bit since Little Dude is getting baptized in a few weeks and we're going to have a party here afterwards. In two weeks I'm flying up to Portland for a very quick trip to attend my sister's graduation. The kids only have two weeks of school left and there are a few programs and other events to attend. Life just keeps going and going around here.
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