2:18 – Leave for base hospital. Drive should take 25 minutes in normal traffic.

3:08 – After finding a parking space, putting up sunshade in futile attempt to keep interior temperature of the minivan from reaching 100F, jogging across parking lot and into hospital, and taking elevator up three floors, arrive eight minutes late for 3:00 appointment.

3:20 – Go with nurse to get weight, blood pressure, etc. Back to waiting room to read books to Annalie.

3:42 – Finally called back to see doctor. Same friendly nurse shows us to exam room and promises doctor will be there shortly. Ask if I have time to pee first, am assured that I do.

3:45 – After returning to exam room, nurse peeks her head in door, apologetically explains that the doctor wants to do a urine dip*, and asks if I have any pee left in me at all. Magical pregnancy superpower #8: always being able to pee, even if you just went three minutes ago.

*Up to this point, the doctor had never wanted to do that particular test. I’d asked at every previous visit before using the restroom. Of course this is the one visit I didn’t ask first.

3:50 – Doctor comes in, introduces himself* to me and Annalie. Measures my belly, listens to baby’s heartbeat, asks a few questions. Assures me everything looks good, says they’ll see me in four weeks.

*I had to reschedule an appointment, and my regular OB was unavailable.

4:00 – Check waiting area in pharmacy. Doesn’t look too bad. Decide to take number in order to ask question about refilling prescription. Only seven more people before number is called. Man, it’s hot in here. Air-conditioning seems to be on the fritz. Yes, Annalie, I’m hot too. Yes, I know you’re hungry. Here, have a granola bar, and hang in there. It will be our turn soon.

4:05 – Half the pharmacy windows close. Line moves much more slowly. Annalie amuses self and people sitting nearby with old cell phone that can still take photos. She takes photos of Red Cross sign, her feet, pattern on my shirt, slip of paper with number on it.

4:55 – Number finally comes up. Prescription filled quickly and with minimum fuss. Yay! Head out to minivan.

5:00 – Leave parking lot. Wonder how long it will take to drive mile to base gate at this time of day. Share second granola bar with Annalie. Drive s-l-o-w-l-y towards gate with rest of people leaving base.

5:15 – Drive out gate and onto highway.

5:30 – Find non-fast-food restaurant to eat dinner and wait out worst of rush-hour traffic. Annalie is tired and hungry and falling totally apart because she wanted fast food with a playland. And her shoes hurt. And she wants to go home so she can swim. I explain getting home right now would take at least an hour at this time of day. Might as well eat dinner first. She allows herself to be dragged into restaurant, where she loads her plate at salad bar with broccoli, peas, garbanzo beans, black olives, chopped ham, and grapes. She cheerfully devours it all, plus seconds of ham and grapes.

6:05 – Driving out of restaurant parking lot, I spot Payless Shoesource in adjacent strip mall and suggest we kill more time there. Annalie immediately agrees; she loves trying on shoes.

6:20 – Nothing we wanted to buy at shoe store, so we stroll down mall to TJ Maxx, where we find no children’s shoes but lots of cute outfits for Baby, Annalie, and Aurora. Annalie looks at toys while I narrow down pile to one clearance item each for Baby and Aurora; one clearance skirt and one clearance swimsuit* for Annalie. Before we pay, Annalie shows me a toy and asks if she can get it. I say no, not unless you get rid of five toys you already have at home. She sighs and returns toy to shelf without further argument. I make mental note to remember that comeback.

*Annalie has suddenly outgrown all her tank swimsuits from last year, even though they fit her at the beginning of summer. I think she’s grown another inch in the past month.

6:40 – One last stop at Walgreens to look for cheap flip-flops for Annalie. Instead find cheap fake Crocs. Also find candy bars on sale and pick up half-dozen, planning to eat one on drive home, save rest for later. Go stand in line at register.

6:55 – Still standing in line, which now has seven people in it. Long line for a drugstore. Someone announces cosmetics counter open, whole line shuffles over there to pay. Leave store, walking past same woman at original register, still arguing with manager.

7:00 – At last, driving home. Traffic is still heavy but moving briskly. Take slightly different route home to avoid construction delays. Spot no fewer than five vehicles driving along with left turn signals blinking steadily away despite no apparent desire to turn or merge. Wonder if it was Leave Your Left Turn Signal On Day or something.

7:25 – Arrive home. Whew.

This is the look Troy usually gives me when I tell him how late I stayed up the night before, crocheting and watching movies or TV. I’ve been doing that a lot recently. I can’t give you details or show you pictures of the finished projects because they are gifts for people who might be reading this. Right now I’m working my way through Bones from the beginning (the first four seasons are conveniently available on Netflix Instant) and have been pleasantly surprised by how much I’ve enjoyed it. Also, I’ve decided once and for all that the best way to watch a TV series is in large chunks—say, one whole season in a week. Since I have a show to watch, I’ve been crocheting more than usual.

All this crocheting and TV-watching has been happening at the expense of the time I might normally spend editing photos and writing blog posts. But there hasn’t been much to write about lately anyway.

What exactly have we been up to? Well, I think I mentioned that I’ve been crocheting a lot. I’ve also been working on our container garden, and three months after moving I’ve finally gotten back into the swing of cooking most meals at home instead of eating out every other night. Troy’s been working hard; it’s a busy time of year for his job, and when he’s at home he’s been catching up on yard work and projects around the house. Annalie has been getting a huge kick out of observing the recently-emerged-from-their-chrysalides butterflies in the butterfly garden that Unky Ben and Angie got her for her birthday. And almost every day this week there has been an restaurant set up in the living room including a little table & chairs, dishes, silverware, and “walls” built from footstools and pillows, where Annalie grandly serves us apples and water and goldfish crackers.

Okay, I guess I could have been writing about all those things I mentioned. But I haven’t been. I’ve just been living them. I go through stages sometimes where I get annoyed at how I always have a camera in front of my face, attempting to capture all the moments instead of just enjoying the moments. I suppose I’ve been in one of those stages lately. It’ll pass eventually and I’ll be back to capturing every little thing for posterity.

Meanwhile, life’s just chugging along. Summer is coming. We’re all good.

I baked Annalie’s birthday cake (for our family party on her actual birthday) and dyed the frosting to Annalie’s specifications: a strawberry-lemon cake with lemon cream-cheese frosting. I would link to the recipe I used for the cake except I sort of made it up as I went along, combining parts of a few different recipes for the cake. Basically I used this recipe for strawberry cupcakes and added a tablespoon of lemon zest to the batter. Having made those strawberry cupcakes before, though, I knew that I liked the texture of these lemon cupcakes better, so I added a couple of extra eggs to the batter because that was the main difference between the two recipes. The cream cheese frosting I always make is this one, and again I added a couple of teaspoons of lemon zest to it to make it lemony.

When it came time to decorate the cake, I frosted it with the green frosting (”Green, like grass where the daisies grow, Mom!”) and then let Annalie decorate it all by herself. I remember decorating my own cakes when I was a kid and how much fun I had with them. Watching Annalie make her cake beautiful in her own way was just as much fun. And I think she did a pretty good job!

Because Troy had to go to work on Annalie’s birthday, which was also Mother’s Day, we had a late-morning present-opening and cake-cutting before Troy left. But first, the obligatory family birthday portrait:

Wish-making, blowing out the candles, and finally—FINALLY, as far as Annalie was concerned—the present-opening.

One of the gifts Annalie got from me and Troy was two books about ancient Egypt, a subject that has fascinated her for a while now.Once she’d opened them she spent several minutes looking at them, forgetting she had a stack of presents yet to open.

Once the birthday celebration was done, it was time for Troy to go to work. He put on this Homer Simpson shirt with the quote, “I’m here for the beer,” as a sort of joke protest that he had to work on Mother’s Day AND his daughter’s birthday. When he got to work, he sat around for an hour waiting for his boss to get out of a meeting, only to be told, “I was gonna call you last night and tell you that you didn’t have to come in to work today, but I didn’t have your home number. Sorry.” You better believe Troy gave him every phone number and email address he could think of on the spot.

The prettiest stage of homemade pizza, before the colorful veggies and herbs are covered with delicious cheese. (This is basically the same pizza I blogged here, if you’d like the recipe.)

A silly photo taken of some silly kids after Christa’s birthday party, the weekend after Annalie’s. We had fun at the movie party, but unfortunately it’s really hard to take good photos inside a dark movie theater which is where the majority of the party took place. So this is the best photo I got. Also I had just come down with a cold and wasn’t my usual photo-taking self that day.

Our favorite Chinese restaurant in Southern Maryland has fancy new receipts with the dishes’ names on them in Chinese! I thought that was pretty cool.

When Joe came to visit us a while back, he left this shopping bag from Tiffany & Co. for Annalie. His step-grandma had packed him some snacks for the road in it. Joe said, “Who packs chocolate chip cookies and grapes in a Tiffany bag!? I’m leaving this here for Annalie to play with so Kassie doesn’t see it and get hugely disappointed when there’s nothing sparkly for her in it.” Annalie has appreciated it, Joe!

We had brunch one day at a nearby diner. The food was good, the coffee was hot and bottomless, and the atmosphere was awesome.

One of the few days it wasn’t raining when my mom was here, we went downtown to see some sights. My mom took this photo of us in front of a fountain near the Natural History Museum, which I completely love because of the look on Annalie’s face.

These are probably my two favorite photos that I took while we were sightseeing that day. I took the one on the left with a really fast shutter speed (1/2500 second, to be exact) and the one on the right with a relatively slow shutter speed (1/13 second). I don’t really know how to use all the bells and whistles on my fancy D40, but I like playing with the settings I do know how to work. I’m learning, slowly but surely.

One of the sights we hit that day was the Butterfly Pavilion at the Museum of Natural History. Annalie had been wanting to go there for ages and was really excited about it. Which is why it was so heartbreaking that once we got inside, she was freaked out by all the butterflies darting everywhere in the small space. She wanted to like it, and she tried to hold it together, but after about a minute she’d had enough and asked to leave with tears in her eyes. We talked about it afterwards and Annalie said she was nervous about a butterfly landing on her head. We also decided that maybe because there were a lot of other people in the pavilion at the same time, talking and taking pictures, it was a bit overwhelming. We plan to try again on a weekday when it won’t be so busy, and Annalie plans to wear a hat.

We also went to the National Gallery of Art to see their da Vinci painting of Ginevra de’ Benci. Annalie has a kids’ book about Leonardo da Vinci, and in the end it lists all the paintings shown in the book and the galleries that own them. She was completely excited to learn that the National Gallery had one of the paintings, which meant we could go see it in person. Sadly, the day we were there they were doing some work on the gallery where the da Vinci painting is displayed, so it was closed and we didn’t get to see the painting we wanted to see.

Man, now that I think about it, that was two big disappointments in one day for Annalie. Poor kid. You never would have known it to see her, though. She was bummed about the butterflies at first, but then she was happy looking through the observation window and told us excitedly how one butterfly landed really close to where she was looking, so she got to see it up close. And when she found out the gallery with the da Vinci was closed, she just sort of sighed and went back to looking at the map of the gallery. Have I ever mentioned how this kid loves maps?

There’s a bit of a funny story about the National Gallery map, actually. When we first got there we grabbed maps and started trying to figure out where the da Vinci painting would be. I couldn’t remember the name of it, but I knew it was a 14th-century(ish) Italian painting, so I opened the map and was puzzling over the various galleries when Annalie said, “Oh, here’s the da Vinci painting right here! It’s on the cover of the map.” And so it was, along with its name and location.

You may have noticed several photos of my mom and Annalie with recognizable buildings and monuments in the background. That’s because we were taking photos with my mom’s postcard in mind. She always sends postcards to various friends and great-nieces and -nephews and godchildren when she’s out of town. Sometimes she buys them 4/$1 at Walgreens, and sometimes I make her a personalized photo card.

It’s kind of funny to me how fast I can make these now. I remember the first couple of years I made Christmas photo cards, it took me a month of tweaking and editing to get it just right. Now I can whip one out in an hour or two.

I tried my hand at smitten kitchen’s braided lemon bread a few weeks back. It wasn’t hard to make, just a bit fiddly with multiple steps. I probably won’t make it again, though. It was tasty, but I didn’t love it.

I did get to make a little mini-loaf from the scraps I cut off before fake-braiding the loaf, though. That was kinda fun.

I’m really starting to think that Annalie is a natural artist. She draws constantly, usually in small notebooks or on index cards when she can get them. And the drawings come so effortlessly to her, like she’s just dashing them off. I wish she would draw more on large pieces of plain white paper because I love so many of her drawings and would like to frame them, and lined paper just doesn’t work that well for framing. But at least I can take photos of the best ones, like this giraffe who is eating something (you can tell ‘cuz his tongue is out) and the pelican and the ocean wave. I keep thinking I need to find some fun art lessons for her. I bet she’d love that.

p.s. New banner’s up! Thanks again, Brenda.

We’ve been writing a lot of thank-you notes lately around here. I’ve always been a big believer in thank-you notes, especially for gifts that were mailed to me. If nothing else they let the giver know that the gift was received. I like handwritten notes best, but I think emailed thank-yous are just as thoughtful and polite.

In previous years, I would just have Annalie dictate her thank-you notes to me, and she would sign her name and maybe draw a little picture. This year, it was a whole different ballgame. Annalie is reading and writing more and more on her own. That means that now, thank-you notes are a chance for her to practice handwriting, spelling, sentence structure, and letter-writing.

I’ve often remarked on how much Annalie is like my younger brother. I can honestly say I’ve never seen a stronger resemblance between Annalie and her Unky Ben than in their similar approach to thank-you notes, which can be summed up succinctly in three words: DO NOT WANT.

When I was a kid, I loved writing thank-you notes. I still do, though I might occasionally lack the time-management to get them done in a timely manner. My brother, on the other hand, fought writing thank-you notes tooth and nail. He just didn’t like to write, or sit still. I loved doing both.

It’s all in the approach, though. If you’d taken my brother to the house of each person who’d given him a present, I’m sure he would have gladly run to the door, rung the doorbell, and effusively thanked each friend or relative in person, complete with hugs and kisses and detailed descriptions of how he planned to play with each new toy. If you’d tried to make me go door-to-door and thank everyone in person, I probably would have slouched down under my seatbelt, crossed my arms, scowled, and refused to get out of the car. Have I mentioned that my brother and I are very different in some ways?

Here’s the thing about Annalie: when it’s her idea, she loves to write and draw and make lists. She does it almost compulsively on her own, while she’s watching TV, while someone is reading to her, while we’re driving, while she’s waiting for her food in a restaurant. If I try to make her write when she doesn’t want to, it often turns into a long, drawn-out battle of wills (see the updates at the end of that post) that just exhausts us both and makes me question my fitness for motherhood.

Mostly, writing thank-you notes this time around has been a pleasant surprise. I’ve been trying to catch her in the mood to write, which has helped a lot. And I guess she is six years old, after all! It’s amazing what a difference a year can make.

When we started I wrote out a sample note for her that said, “Dear ________, Thank you for the ________. Love, Annalie.” That way she could see she didn’t have to write very much, and that at least half of the words she had to write were words she already knew.

At first she groaned and complained a bit. We talked several times about how kind it was of her friends and relatives to take the time to think about her, pick a present she would like, wrap it prettily and send it to her; and about how taking five minutes to write a thank-you note was a small gesture of gratitude in return for that thoughtfulness. I made the mistake of joking to her once that I could tell everyone she didn’t want gifts next year because thank-you notes were too much trouble to write, and she got genuinely upset. Oops. Reminder to self: six-year-olds might be more mature than five-year-olds, but they don’t always get sarcastic humor.

After she got a few notes done, the complaints were fewer and farther between. Yesterday, writing what was probably her 12th or 13th thank-you note in recent weeks, she pretty much wrote the whole thing on her own. She only needed help with one or two words that she didn’t know!

I told her I was proud of her, and pointed out that she seemed to have learned how to spell “dear” and “thank.” She replied in a rather annoyed tone, “No, I was just guessing! I don’t know how to spell them!” She reacts the same way when we point out a word she read on her own, telling us she didn’t really know what it said, that she just saw the letters and guessed. It’s no use telling her that that is reading. She’s so funny.

But hey, she’s writing thank-you notes, and learning while she’s doing it. Even if she isn’t ready to admit it.

(Thanks, Mom, for taking both the photos in this post!)

Isn’t this skirt great? I bought from Rebecca Brayton’s Etsy shop as a birthday present for Annalie, hoping it would take the place of the tulle underskirt that goes with the Cinderella dress CC made for her three years ago, the one she wears all the time, despite the fact that it’s got a waist-high slit and is not a skirt but a petticoat. Anyway, this seems to have done the trick. I have not seen her wearing the increasingly ratty petticoat since it arrived. And it’s fun to twirl in!

I just looked at the date on my previous post. How have I not written anything new for four days!? The time, she gets away from me. It’s partly because we had a birthday party to attend this weekend out of town, which meant an overnight stay in a really nice hotel with a great swimming pool, which I would have enjoyed a lot more if Annalie had not woken up at 5:50am (after not falling asleep till 10pm the night before) asking if it was time to go swimming yet. Oy. But then my mom and I got to go paint pottery tonight with my friend Rebekah, which was awesome. I forget how painting makes me feel all calm and energized at the same time till I’m doing it again. And tonight I even painted something non-dotty, which I don’t do very often so whenever I do I’m all pleased with myself for breaking out of my rut.

Also, that cold that Troy had for four days a couple of weeks back, the one that required him to blow his nose a dozen times or so? I caught that cold, which means I went through more Puffs Plus on my first day of being sick than he did in the whole duration of his cold. If I’m lucky I’ll be all better by June. So instead of staying up late to blog about Annalie’s birthday party which was last weekend, I’m going to bed. If I don’t post anything new for a few days, just assume I’m busy blowing my nose and drinking mug after mug of hot peppermint tea with honey. And let’s all hope that before I know it, I’m back to feeling like Annalie looks in this photo.

Our flight from Omaha to DC on Saturday was at 6am. When I woke Annalie up at 4:15 Saturday morning, she sat up and immediately started crying and saying it was too early. My mom and I knew exactly how she felt. We’re both night-before-travel insomniacs, and we had to wake up at 3:30am to leave for the airport by 4:30. My mom and I were pretty much zombies all day Saturday, and Annalie was ten times crazier than usual, which is how she gets when she’s really tired. We all went to bed by 8pm Saturday and slept peacefully for 12 lovely hours.

Except that meant I went to bed at 11pm tonight and couldn’t get to sleep. After a while I got tired of tossing and turning so I got up and watched bits of the last six or seven episodes of Chuck on iTunes.

I’ll be honest; it’s been hard to love Chuck this season. The characters have to change for the show to not be completely boring, conflict is necessary for good story-telling, darkest before the dawn, blah blah blah. Even knowing those things, though, I still just didn’t feel as interested in it. I’ve decided there were three main reasons:

1. I’ve been keeping up on the Chuck news and reading the episode reviews. I think it’s been a bit of overkill for me.
2. Because of the addition of a new character (Daniel Shaw) to Team Bartowski, the team was often split up or working at cross-purposes. One of the things I love best about Chuck is the chemistry between the three leads. Take that away and the show just isn’t as much fun to watch.
3. I managed to watch the first two seasons of Chuck, all 35 episodes, in the span of one week. Maybe if I’d had to watch them one episode at a time, waiting a week or more between times, I wouldn’t have enjoyed them nearly as much.

I’ve been theorizing for a while that once Season 3 is over, if I were to have a marathon and watch the whole season in a day, I’d probably enjoy it much more. And after fast-forwarding through the last half of the season, I was happy and relieved that I was right, and I enjoyed the bits I watched much more than I expected to, both because I knew what was going to happen (I hate suspense, remember?) and because it was like watching a long movie instead of a serialized TV show. Also, I had forgotten how many great moments this season has had…

*SPOILER ALERT*

Morgan’s stunned and joyful reaction to finding out Chuck is a spy…Morgan and Awesome learning that they both know Chuck’s secret…Casey realizing he has a daughter, and later telling Chuck he has to decide between love and love of country, and that Walker is a good woman—who’d have ever thought in Season 1 we would get Casey encouraging Chuck to go after the woman he loves, in Casey’s own inimitable style!?…Chuck’s straightforward declaration of his love for Sarah…Chuck at a low point, drunk in his boxers and holding a plastic guitar, while Sarah sweetly admitted she fell for him before he even defused that bomb with a computer virus…Sarah and Chuck, in handcuffs, kung-fu-ing the bad guys in the bakery together so awesomely that it was like dancing (and Casey and Morgan pitching in with a re-enactment of a previous fight scene with Casey & Chuck).

*End spoilers*

Yeah, I find that I’m still liking Chuck quite a bit, rough patches and all. I will say, I loved episode 3.14 and have high hopes for the remaining five episodes. Now let’s hope they get renewed for Season 4 so we can have a whole season of Morgan annoying Casey and Chuck and Sarah fighting awesomely. And maybe a few more performances from JEFFSTER!

(All that said, Castle is still my new favorite show. And it already got renewed for next season, so I can watch its last few episodes without worrying about its chances for renewal!)

Okay, now that I’ve let my geek flag fly again (all over my blog, at 3am), I think I can go to sleep now and dream about the list of things I need to get done week before Annalie’s birthday party this weekend.

p.s. New banner’s up! Thanks again, B.

The good news is, you’ll get to see photos in a couple of weeks instead of in six to eight months. Usually when we move our goal is to be completely unpacked by the following Christmas, but next week Brenda (and Bug) are coming to visit and help us unpack! I’m very excited about it, which is a first for me. I hate unpacking. I get overwhelmed trying to think of where I want everything to go, so I do nothing. Well, not nothing. I unpack and organize the kitchen right away, and then I stall on the rest of the house.

Given all that, you can see why it was SO COMPLETELY AWESOME when Brenda house-sat for us a couple of years ago and asked if we minded if she unpacked a few boxes while she was there, and then went and unpacked and organized the entire house for us. I told her that I would fly her to all our future homes if she wanted to help us unpack them all, and she enthusiastically accepted. That is why she gets free birthday cakes for life, people. Well, that and being one of my best friends. You know what I mean.

I’m sorry you won’t be seeing pictures of the house just yet. I’m sure I’ll get some of the “before” photos up on Flickr eventually, so keep an eye on my Flickr stream. Meanwhile, here’s a conversation that took place this morning as we were driving around trying to find a McD’s with a PlayLand:

“I guess there’s an election tomorrow.”

“On a Wednesday? Where did you hear that?”

I pointed at the election signs clustered on the median. “It says ‘Vote March 2nd’ on those signs right there.”

“That’s today. Which makes sense, because it’s Tuesday.”

“Oh. Oh! In that case, happy anniversary!”

Troy laughed. “Uh, happy anniversary to you too!”

Annalie piped up from the backseat. “What anniversary? What are you talking about?” I explained that it was the fourteenth anniversary of the day we got married. “Oh. Uh, Mom?”

“What, sweetie?”

“I’m sorry, but I didn’t get to buy you and Daddy an anniversary present.”

“Aw, thanks, but that’s okay. It’s been kinda crazy with all the moving and stuff, hasn’t it?” Annalie agreed. I winked at Troy and said, “Besides, I’m sure Daddy has a fabulous anniversary surprise for me. I can’t wait to see what it is.”

Without missing a beat, Troy said, “What do you mean? Isn’t the 14th anniversary the McDonald’s anniversary?”

Happy anniversary, Troy! Fourteen years, eight moves, six states, one Canadian province, two years of grad school, three cats, six years of parenthood, and countless remote controls…and you’re still the one who makes me laugh. Thank God for that!

p.s. New banner! What do you think?

We’re about 95% sure that we’ll get it. We filled out the rental application forms and dropped them and the requisite checks off at the rental agency, and have been assured that everything looks good. We should find out for sure tomorrow, and hope to sign a lease then. I’ve done this too many times to get cocky about it though. No pictures or detailed descriptions of anything till our names are on that lease. I am just as eager to show you photos as you are to see them, believe me, but I don’t want to get all attached to a house only to have it not work out.

I’ve been updating my Twitter and Facebook accounts frequently about our travels and the moving process, in case you aren’t already following me. If I don’t know your real name and you want to friend me on Facebook, please just send me a message letting me know you read my blog and what name you comment under so I don’t think you’re a random stranger who wants to stalk me.

Thanks again for all wishes-upon-a-star, prayers, and crossed fingers on our behalf!

I’ll be checking in again soon, but for now I think I’m gonna go to bed early and enjoy my vacation. Peace! (And Happy Hanukkah!)

This was the plan for Halloween weekend: on Friday, Brenda and Bug would arrive just before lunchtime. Jen would arrive sometime around lunch for her one-day-late birthday celebration with us. We’d do some fun crafty things with the kids, carve pumpkins, and then my mom would watch Annalie and Bug while Jen and Brenda and I went to paint some pottery. We’d have a delicious dinner, with some kind of yummy dessert in Jen’s honor. After we waved Jen on her way home, we’d put the kids to bed and then Brenda and my mom and I would hang out with our laptops and watch Mad Men and Castle.

On Saturday, Brenda’s mom Sue, sister-in-law Heather, and nieces Rapunzel and SuperChic were going to arrive around noon. We’d make a fun Halloween lunch of mummy hot dogs and roasted garlic-rosemary potatoes and cucumbers. We’d eat late, so the kids wouldn’t be too hungry when we went trick-or-treating at the mall right at dinnertime. Then we’d come back home and let the kids eat candy while we hung out in the front yard with the gate open and handed out candy to any trick-or-treaters who passed by. Maybe we’d watch a Halloween movie before bedtime, and have popcorn for dinner.

On Sunday morning, I’d make aebleskivers for breakfast before we attempted to get to church. If no one was in a hurry to leave, maybe we’d go paint pottery again, and take the kids this time. It would be a busy but fun-filled weekend.

Those were our plans. Now would you like to hear what actually happened?

Friday morning, I got an email from Jen telling me that she wasn’t going to be able to come. Her oldest daughter had been having a rough week at school, so Jen wanted to go to her daughter’s class Halloween party as a surprise. Also. Jen’s mom had been admitted to the hospital with what was probably H1N1, and Jen wanted to be there in case her mom and dad needed her. (Update: Jen’s mom is out of the hospital now, and on the mend. Yay!) Of course I understood why she wasn’t coming, and I told her they would all be in our thoughts and prayers, but I was bummed. It’s been a while since I’ve seen Jen and I was really looking forward to it. At least everyone else was still coming.

Brenda and Bug arrived as scheduled, bearing pumpkins, decorations, craft supplies, and bad news: no one else was coming. Brenda had talked to her mom on the drive down, and what with Brenda’s brother being off work recently because of health problems, and all the doctor’s visits and tests and things, everyone was feeling that end-of-the-month budget crunch. They just didn’t feel right spending the money to come down for a visit. Gas alone for a round-trip visit from the Sticks to my house is probably $60 or more, not to mention all the pottery-painting, trips to Starbucks, etc. So they did the responsible thing and stayed home. They did get to go to a super-fun Halloween dinner and trick-or-treating event at Brenda’s grandpa’s retirement home, so it’s not like they were sitting around, crying into their coffee. But we missed them.

After lunch, we ran some errands and then went back home where the kids made some Halloween decorations with construction paper and scissors. Then they dragged many of Annalie’s stuffed animals outside, arranged them all over the front yard, and played Zoo for the better part of the afternoon. We dug out our Halloween lights that are colored like candy corn and put those up over the gate. Brenda got some work done and designed a Christmas card (coming soon to her Etsy shop!) while I started making gingerbread cookies.

I hadn’t planned on making gingerbread cookies, but I wanted to send a little something to Jen in a birthday care package, and Brenda said, “You know what sounds good? Gingerbread cookies. We could use a pumpkin cookie cutter and draw faces on them with icing,” which was all the encouragement I needed.

Only it turned out I don’t actually own a pumpkin cookie cutter. (Gift idea, in case any family members reading this need one: cookie cutters for holidays other than Christmas & Valentine’s Day!) I stuck the dough in the fridge to chill, which it needed to do anyway, and figured we’d stop at Target that evening when we went out to paint pottery and pick one up, but we never did find one.

While we were painting pottery that night after the kids had gone to bed, Brenda started to get a stomachache. That was a bit worrying, since the week before when she’d been visiting her family in the Sticks, everyone was sick. Brenda had been sick a few days before that with what she thought at the time was food poisoning, but when everyone else got sick she thought maybe she’d had a stomach virus and had passed it along to her family. But when she started to feel queasy Friday night she realized that what she’d had before probably was food poisoning, and now she was getting the stomach virus. That night Brenda was up half the night, er, emptying her stomach contents.

In the morning (Halloween morning!) she apologized for coming to our house when she was sick. I reminded her that the very first time we met and I stayed at her house, I had such a bad cold that I drank half her tea, used an entire box of tissues, and had such a bad sore throat I could barely talk. Also, I was glad she was at our house where Bug had Annalie to play with and other grown-ups to feed her and watch her, so Brenda could rest if she needed to. And she did spend much of the morning resting in bed. A night of running back and forth to the bathroom to throw up will do that to a body.

The rest of us were fine, so we went about our day. I got coffee going and made pumpkin muffins for breakfast, substituting pumpkin pie spice for the cinnamon, so the whole house smelled like pumpkin pie all day, which was lovely.

I prepped the teeny tiny potatoes with a delicious mustard-garlic-rosemary mixture, and cut the hot dogs in half and wrapped them with strips of refrigerated croissant dough (not even I make that from scratch). Brenda started feeling a bit better, so she got the pumpkin-carving started. Annalie and Bug chose their designs (Hello Kitty and a ninja) and helped scoop the guts and seeds out of the pumpkins, cheerfully hollering about how gross it all was. I collected all the seeds so I could roast them because YUM.

I roasted two batches, one savory and one sweet. The sweet batch I left in the oven for about 30 seconds too long and half the pan got burned to a crisp. I was quite annoyed about that, but as it turned out I preferred the savory seeds to the sweet ones anyway. And the smoke alarm didn’t even wake Bug up from her nap.

Eventually we did have to wake Bug up so we could eat. Poor Brenda could still barely look at food, even though she was done with the worst of her illness. We ate the croissant-wrapped hot dogs (tasty) and the roasted garlic-rosemary teeny-tiny potatoes (delicious) and cucumbers sliced into spears (handy). Once the kitchen was cleaned up, it was time to get into costumes, which was pretty much all Annalie and Bug had been wanting to do all day long.

None of us had ever been trick-or-treating at a mall before, so we didn’t really know what to expect. We parked in our usual place, walked through a department store, and entered the mall to see hundreds of kids and adults, most of them in costume, strolling up and down and going in and out of shops. It was crazy, and much busier than I’ve ever seen our little mall. But it wasn’t too crazy. We didn’t have trouble keeping track of each other or have to fight our way through the crowds or anything like that. The only times there were big crowds were when we had to go inside a store to get candy. Most of the shops had someone stationed right at the entrance or even just outside the door with their candy, but I guess some of them were shorthanded.

The best part about mall trick-or-treating, by far, was that we got to see so many cool costumes! There are some creative people out there, and many of them were in that mall on Halloween afternoon. It was nice to trick-or-treat while it was still light out, too, and walking around the mall was easier than walking up and down dozens of driveways. We did miss getting to hear all the, “Oh, aren’t you guys cute! Look at the rockstar and the witch!” commentary that we would have heard if we’d been trick-or-treating in a neighborhood, though. A few of the people handing out candy were definitely into the spirit of fun, with costumes on and smiling and saying a word to each child, but most of them were clearly just doing their jobs, earning their paychecks, plopping candy into bags and buckets as quickly as they could.

It took us about 45 minutes to get through the whole mall, and by then Brenda was beat and needed to sit down. We went to the quiet food court and sat by the fountain for a while. Bug and Annalie each chose a blue lollipop from their pumpkins, which made it easier to get them to pose for a few photos.

Back at home, I popped popcorn and brought it outside for Annalie and Bug to snack on. Mostly they ignored the popcorn and just ran around in the grass, pausing occasionally to eat a Tootsie Roll or mini KitKat. Neither of them really ate much candy though. I don’t think either of them had more than four or five pieces. Then Annalie asked if she could have some carrots and broccoli. You know, the traditional Halloween veggies & dip.

No, I’m not kidding. My kid is weird, but in an awesome way. For the record, I have no idea why she loves fruit and vegetables so much. I mean, I love them, but it took me 20 years to come around on that issue. When I was Annalie’s age I wouldn’t have touched broccoli with a ten-foot pole.

We had the gate open and candy and pretzels to hand out, but not many trick-or-treaters came by. I really wasn’t too surprised about that, though. We live on a rather busy street, even though it’s a residential area, and our sidewalk is right there by the street, with a busy intersection right in front of our house. Once it got dark, we blew out all the candles and everyone went inside to get ready for bed.

*WARNING, there is talk of vomiting ahead, if you have a weak stomach read with caution! I’ll try not to be too graphic.*

Bug started complaining of a tummyache around the time she went to bed, and cried and cried about it for a good half-hour. Then she threw up. While I was throwing sheets and towels into the washer Brenda called Toby and he wanted her to take Bug to the ER just to be on the safe side. So off we went to the hospital near our house. (Brenda goes into detail about the ER visit in the second half of her post about Halloween, so I won’t go into all of that here; you can just click over and read her post if you want.)

It was a bit scary how Bug wouldn’t stop crying and clutching her stomach, but in the end it turned out that she just had really bad gas. Luckily after Bug was triaged, we only had to wait in the ER waiting room for a couple of hours, and she was asleep for most of that. When she woke up she farted a couple of times and then said, “Oh! My tummy feels all better now!” It was funny of course, but mostly it was such a relief to see her calm and smiling. We went back home where Bug and Brenda went to straight to bed and fell asleep.

That’s when things got really nuts. Annalie woke up around midnight and raced to the bathroom just in time to throw up everything she’d eaten that evening. I was upstairs in the living room, so my mom—who usually sleeps with Annalie in her room when she’s here—took care of the worst of it. I didn’t even realize it was going on till I heard my mom talking. I went downstairs and helped get Annalie settled back in bed with a bowl by the side of the bed. I asked her if she wanted me to stay, but Annalie was just fine with Gramaw. I went back upstairs to my crocheting…and before long I heard Annalie throwing up again. Poor kid.

It was a long night for the three of us. We had to change the bedding once when Annalie didn’t quite make it to the bathroom, and later my mom and Annalie came upstairs to my room because Annalie threw up in bed again and my mom didn’t feel like changing sheets a second time in the middle of the night. In the morning Annalie seemed to be over the worst part, but she had a slight fever and spent the day on the couch, bowl nearby just in case, nibbling occasionally on a Saltine and taking little sips of water and fruit juice.

When Brenda got up on Sunday morning and realized that Annalie had been puking too, she felt awful and apologized again. But of course we didn’t blame her! She thought she was over all sickness when she came to visit. The good thing is that by Sunday morning Brenda felt 100% better, so we knew Annalie probably wouldn’t be sick long, and she wasn’t. By Sunday night Annalie was sitting up, telling us silly jokes. Monday she was even better.

Even though my mom and I were both sleeping with Annalie while she was sick, we were also both washing our hands till they were raw, so we wouldn’t get sick too. Just to be on the safe side, Annalie and I are on a self-imposed quarantine for a few days. No playdates or hanging out at the park for us this week, but that’s okay. We’ve been so busy this month and have been sick so many times, a few days of staying home will be good. My mom flew home Monday, a little nervous that the stomach virus would hit her while she was on a plane, but she got home without incident. And Brenda told me that if I get sick, I should call her and they’ll come down and help with Annalie since they’ve already had this particular bug, which is quite generous of her. I have great friends!

You know what’s funny, though? Even though two-thirds of our guests couldn’t make it, and Brenda got sick and couldn’t do all the fun crafts she had planned, and we made a Halloween-night visit to the ER and spent the rest of the night caring for a miserably sick kid, it was a pretty good weekend. I know, that sounds crazy! But looking back on the weekend I can’t seem to focus on all the bad stuff. It all seems hazy and unimportant.

The fun stuff is what I remember. We decorated the yard, we carved pumpkins and roasted seeds, I made a fun Halloween lunch and yummy pumpkin muffins, we made gingerbread cookies and decorated them, we trick-or-treated at the mall, we sat outside and enjoyed the almost-full moon, we painted pottery twice (we went back with Bug on Sunday afternoon to finish what we didn’t finish Friday), we put together a care package for a friend…and everyone who got sick was quickly well again. It wasn’t the weekend we thought we were going to have, but that’s okay. There were many good moments that will become good memories. And the rest of it makes a heckuva story.