A Motley Crew

To those of you who are mothers, God bless you. I just got back from a shift at the restaurant after a weekend with my cousins from Chicago and I am beat. We had a blast and they are great, but six people (three cousins ages 7,9, and 12, an aunt, and an uncle) is a huge crew to have shoved in a two-bedroom apartment for 24 hours. Three kids are quite a handful after living by yourself with a cat for years (a cat who apparently peed on my futon... a futon that is , by the way, now in the dumpster).

Though I am barely awake now, we did have tons of fun this weekend... while Ron and Ann were sweating their tails off at an outdoor wedding, we escaped the 90+ heat at the water park down the block from me. Our favorite was this windmill-like contraption that would fill up with water and then dump a huge bucket on (un)suspecting victims below.

I didn't think there would be much to do at my house, but Sean and Gwen showed off their piano skills immediately and thoroughly enjoyed experimenting with the sounds and rhythms of the keyboard. They also loved finding Lois and trying to pet her - she actually came out from under the bed for awhile this morning. We also ate a huge gutbuster breakfast at Mickie's Dairy Bar, went to the Vilas Zoo in Madison where we saw a Wild Pig Boy (aka Grant). And though the movie wasn't anything I would rave about, we did see G-Force in 3-D which scored us free "old man" glasses.

My favorite part of the weekend involved sniffing candles in the aisles at Walgreens - before we discovered the cat pee, I knew I had an odor I needed to attack any way I knew how. I wanted to buy Febreze, candles, Glade Plug-ins - whatever I could since I couldn't uncover the root of the smell. The kids helped me sniff all of the candles and we started laughing so hard we could barely hold the glass containers... let's just say Walgreens does not specialize in fragrance. One particularly awful candle smelled just like baby wipes. Baby wipes.

I also loved Gwen's random and completely sincere thoughts... a few of my favorites:

"Do I have to wear shoes?" (before we went into the movie theater... she had not worn shoes in the car. luckily, i had an old pair of flip flops in the backseat that she threw on. they were a woman's size 8.)

"Windows down, baby!" (on the way home from the movie theater when it was scorching hot)

"I love the name Frank." (when choosing a proper noun for a MadLibs game)

"So I think I'll just go to college in China, but I won't have any idea what anybody is saying." (when asking questions about how college works)

"Oh, I can use this rubber band!" (picking a rubber band off the sidewalk in front of the capitol building on the way to drop off her parents' keys at the wedding reception)