Wrapping Up Last Week

Whew! Where DID this week go?

It feels like forever ago, but . . . let's talk about LAST week.

We started our week with a fun birthday party for Little Bit's friend, E.  Bowling and pizza with friends, what more can you ask for!

Monday was a busy day of getting ready for our trip to Pittsburgh, and, if memory serves, the girls all soaked up some spring-like weather that day.

Tuesday we headed to Pittsburgh.

We spent all day Wednesday at Carnegie Science Center.

Thursday the girls and I stayed in the hotel all day. We did some school, and lots of swimming.

Awhile back, I'd found organic spaghetti-o's at Aldi, and, while being organic doesn't change junky convenience food into healthy whole foods, I figured that at least meant no GMOs and such, and our options are limited when we're in a hotel room with just a microwave and mini fridge (for longer trips I often take our crockpot to increase our options, but that means lugging more STUFF . . . so it's all trade-offs). And, I had some packets of instant potatoes that had been in our emergency bag, but were near/at expiration date so I'd rotated them out. So, that was our lunch . . . much to my amusement, my kids were NOT AT ALL impressed with either! I think the spaghetti-os amused me the most. They have never had anything remotely like them before. I haven't had them since I was a kid, and didn't remember them being so sweet, but the flavor did have a familiarity to them so I don't think these were noticably sweeter than the non-organic "name brand" variety I had as a kid. But all 3 girls could NOT figure out why ANYONE would make spaghetti SO SWEET.  Even my sweet tooth, would eat sugary stuff all day long, Little Bit, didn't like sweet spaghetti. She wouldn't eat it at all, the other girls ate it because it was what was available, but the vote was unanimous to NOT do that again. The instant potatoes were supposed to be a "cheese" flavor but were really just EXTREMELY salty, again, even my salt-loving Ashlyn declared them way too salty. Little Bit wouldn't eat them at all (we had other "snacks" in the room like applesauce packets and such so she didn't starve) and the big girls only ate it because of the limited options. So, while our overall diet is far from perfect, I was gratified to find that I was doing SOMETHING right if my kids so strongly disliked some of the "staples" of the standard american diet :)

Friday we dropped Rodney off at his class, went to Starbucks to waste time until the Children's Museum opened, and then spent a fun day there.  Our original plan was to check out of the hotel Fri morning and then, as soon as Rodney was out of class, head for home. BUT the weather report was rather strongly predicting snow, not out in Pittsburgh, but at home, and we decided on "better safe than sorry" especially with planning to travel late into the evening, and not risk bad roads. So we waited and drove home on Saturday.

It made for a more relaxed day on Friday, with more time at the pool for the kiddos.

Sabbath was also a relaxed day. The roads were fine but we definitely saw ever-increasing snow on the grass and trees as we traveled home. Sabbath's warmer temperatures meant that even our driveway had melted by the time we got home, just leaving the pretty of snow on the grass.

So that was our busy week! I was happy to find that Little Bit has still not outgrown her love of "sparkly tunnels" (the way the lights in the tunnels reflect off the white tile walls) :) As we were driving out there, I had, as always, packed a bag of small toys and snacks to give to her as "surprises" every half hour or so to keep the trip from dragging. When we drove through the first tunnel she got excited, as always and exclaimed "Mommy, is this one of my surprises?!?!?!" And in that instant, it became one of her surprises LOL.