The girls continue to love playing outside. And I waste entirely too much time sitting on the front porch enjoying the peacefulness of watching the birds and the geese on the pond and listening to the kids play . . . but, this weekend it's gotten hot at my parents' house, so I'm guessing it's hot up at home too, which might force us indoors abit more, sigh . . .
We found heirloom tomato plants at Aldi's (discount grocery store) this week so we got 2 plants, one for cherry tomatoes & one for beefsteak tomatoes and planted them. The girls thought it horribly unfair that the day after we planted them it rained, and rained, and rained so there was no need for them to water them. I did let them water them before we left to come down to my parents' house on Thurs night, and I'm sure they'll be ready for another drink when we get home tomorrow LOL.
Most of the heavy rains came at night (2 nights in a row, w/ a drizzly, cloudy day in between) but we did get one period of heavy rain that afternoon as well and the girls had great fun playing in the rain, including the "waterfall" where there's a leak in the gutter on the front porch, and came in the house DRENCHED LOL.
Daddy took a day off work and we went to Ikea to get a dining room rug & other things. I'd asked him to come with me to help load the bulky stuff on the list and then we ended up either getting something different/less bulky (the rug I wanted wasn't in stock, so I ended up getting 3 smaller rugs that I'm hoping will look ok laid side by side as if they're one big rug, but first we have to get the empty boxes out of the dining room in order to have room to move the table to one end while we put the rugs down. We have someone who wants the boxes, just need to have them come get them) or not getting it at all so he wouldn't have had to come from that standpoint, but it made for a much more enjoyable shopping trip for me since he watched the kids, and let them go through the store at their speed (which means even w/ skipping a big section, I was halfway through the lower level (after taking a quick pass through the entire upper level) before they made it through the whole upper level, and called me to tell me they were ready to eat lunch) he said they had a blast, whereas there would, no doubt, have been much whining if they'd been stuck w/ me the whole time. Of course they COULD have gone to Smaalland for at least part of the time, but A didn't want to stay w/o Mommy, and L went in, but in about 30 seconds they paged me to come get her because she didn't like being there w/o A. But if Daddy hadn't been there they might have opted for that vs. following me around while I shopped. But it worked out well, I got the rug(s), and storage bins to put under our bed, a tray to set on the ottoman in the living room to use it as a coffee table, and then some other little odds and ends. The girls had fun, and Daddy got quality time w/ his girls LOL.
Yesterday was a horribly boring day for the girls, but they did great. It was supposed to be their Kindermusik party but their teacher was sick, so it was canceled. Instead I dragged them to a couple stores, and then they watched TV at the old house while I worked there some more. They also helped me pick up the rest of the foam letters off the basement floor (they'd packed most of them for me before we moved, but there was a whole section that was under a mountain of empty boxes so those got left. Dad cleared out most of the cardboard for me (& will take the rest tomorrow) so the girls were able to pick up the rest of the letters & we put them in boxes. And I put a huge pile of stuff on the front porch to be picked up by freecyclers, fingers crossed that they came & got it today & it's not all still sitting there when I get to the house tomorrow LOL.
We did eat lunch at CiCi's with Mama & Papa yesterday. And one of the stores I stopped at had card holders which I'd been wanting to find for the kids since forever. These were 50% off, so I went ahead & got them. Which meant last night we had to find a card game to play to try them out. I should've just hunted down GO FISH (which I thought I had in the bag of stuff I threw in to occupy them at the house, but was too lazy to go look) but we attempted "Birds" instead. It's the same basic concept as Go Fish but more complex, and was still abit much for them. I finally enlisted mom & dad to come be "teams" w/ each of the girls to speed things up. Which was abit unfair since mom HATES the game LOL. But we finished the game, and actually L & Mama ended up technically winning, partially because I'd been "feeding" books their way to even things out against the A & Papa team LOL. But since A was on Papa's lap in the chair & I was on the floor next to their pile of "books", I was able to slip my books into their pile which conveniently left the impression that L&A had tied. Made for a much happier ending, though A was still abit upset that L had "stolen" their K book that they had 3 of & then L got in her last turn LOL. This morning we tried out the card holders again, but just playing Go Fish and it went much better LOL.
We DID, however, play Egypt to Canaan again today & the girls did quite well. The fact that L had played the whole game last time whereas A had bounced in & out of it, and L tends to remember such things abit better anyway, made for a few problems (mainly when L got impatient and "helped" A w/ the answers) but overall they did well, especially considering the age range on the game starts at age 8 (granted, I weeded out the easier questions for them to use, but still . . .)
Our PLANS for today were to go to the Live Butterfly exhibit at Brookside Gardens, but when Dad checked times online he found out that they had closed it for the day because it was sooo HOT (at one point this afternoon the outside temp thing on Dad's car said 102). The girls did quite well w/ the forced change of plans. Dad remembered that there's a Ferry that goes across the Potomac River, so he looked online & got info on that & called to make sure THEY were running today (because the river's really high after last week's storms) and they were, so we ended up going and riding across on the ferry (girls loved it, got out & looked at "how it all works" w/ Papa, and such) and then went to the Nature Center at Brookside where they happily played together w/ little, if any, input from us, for over an hour. And then were happy for abit longer looking at the animals in the other room w/ Mama & Mommy. So it was a restful afternoon for the grown-ups and a fun afternoon for the kiddos, great combo LOL.
On the way home the girls declared today the "best day ever" so I guess it was a success. L also marveled that "I didn't even think about missing the butterflies, I was having too much fun" :)
And tomorrow is (hopefully) my last day at the old house. There's more stuff that still needs to come to the new house than will fit in the minivan tomorrow (especially w/ me digging out all my herbs & such tomorrow so those will take more room than boxes would) but my plan is to get it to the point that dh can load the rest in future trips w/o me having to drag the girls down there anymore.
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