4th of July

Happy 4th of July everyone! Hopefully you had a great extended weekend. I'll get to ours in a minute, but first about my last week as a single parent. It was a long week going at it alone while Greg was in Maine for work. You didn't hear from me for pretty much two reasons. One being, I was a single parent with two kids needing a lot of attention. A little more so than usual since Greg was gone and they were really missing him. Two being, I had to keep busy to help the days go by faster so the weekend would arrive sooner than later and Greg would be home. I did this by pretty much tearing this place apart and cleaning, cleaning, and more cleaning! Yep, that's right I pretty much cleaned everyday! It was much needed, not only the normal vacuuming and dusting, but time for the good cleaning again. The kids even helped me quite a bit. We cleaned out closets, drawers, toy baskets, and moved furniture to clean out the dust bunnies. I quickly accumulated more bags of stuff for my next garage sale. It really is a never ending process of getting rid of stuff.

I cleaned the whole upstairs and the main level. All the bedrooms, the loft, the kitchen, the living room, and all the bathrooms got a good cleaning. I even scrubbed bathroom floors really good. Ugh getting hairspray off the floor is not a fun time. It felt really good to get things done and have a nice clean house. I didn't get to the basement, but the kids did get the toys in the family room down there picked up. My goal was to have it all done by the time Greg got home so he could come home to a nice clean house. Seeing how I got two out of the three floors cleaned I think I did pretty good. You know how one project leads to another so some parts took me longer than others. I'm pretty pleased though with what I got done. I had to sacrifice a lot of Pinterest, Facebook, and blogging time to get it all accomplished. Sometimes you just have to make yourself do it though, and put other things aside.

In between all the cleaning Evan had his last two t-ball games last week. I was a little sad to see them end. He had such a great time with t-ball and it was a fun way to spend a couple evenings a week. Emmaline also had her second dance class. She's so adorable doing her little ballet moves with Miss Kate! While I love my kids dearly, by the end of the week of just me and them I was ready for some adult time. A big thanks to Greg's mom for taking the kids Friday afternoon and letting them spend the night so I could have a girl's night out. It was just the right "medicine" I needed to recoup from the long week! I decided awhile back that it would be fun to do a bloody mary tasting of East Lansing. I love me a good bloody mary, as do some of my friends. So Friday night we started our Bloody Mary Bonanza Tasting Tour. Throughout the rest of the summer we will be visiting local places and rating their bloody mary. Then at the end of the summer I will be blogging about our tour and post the ratings. We hit two places on Friday night, Reno's East and Lou Ha's (it was Friday night, we had to hit the free taco bar). My friends Brenda and Jess went with me. You'll have to stay tuned to hear about the bloody mary's at a later date! Afterwards we came back to the house and made some martinis and sat out on the deck and enjoyed the beautiful evening.

Saturday I ended up having most of the day to myself. The kids wanted to stay at YaYa's until dinner time. So I was able to do a little more cleaning and run some errands. It is so much easier to run errands alone than hauling two kids that's for sure. Saturday was also the day that Greg was finally starting his travels home from Maine. He left Maine about 9:30am and had planned to drive most of the day until he got tired. He figured somewhere around Pennsylvania or Cleveland he'd stop for the night. We things didn't go quite as planned. He couldn't find a hotel room for anything between Erie, PA and just past Cleveland, OH. Yes, it was the holiday weekend, but who would have thought that every single hotel would be booked in Ohio! Really do that many people go to Ohio for the 4th of July holiday? Apparently, or there was something else going on because there wasn't a room to be found. He ended up stopping at the toll road service station and took a half hour power nap in the car (which I totally didn't like, but really there was no choice), before he continued driving. It was already 1:15am and he had decided he was only about three hours from home so he would just drive the rest of the way. Of course the worry wart that I am, couldn't sleep that night with him on the road alone in the middle of the night. Finally about 5am he rolled in the driveway safe and sound. I was SOOOOOO happy to have him home.

The kids were super surprised to see daddy in bed when they woke up Sunday morning since originally Greg wouldn't have been home until Sunday afternoon. We were all a little messed up on our sleep since Greg had a long day on the road and I couldn't get any good sleep until he got home. So it was a lazy morning around here on Sunday. I seriously did not get in the shower until about noon! Sometimes though you need those kind of mornings, right Ann? We had a pretty leisurely day all around which was nice. I had bought the kids a new sprinkler, some bubble wands, and Pop-Its which they had fun doing all afternoon and evening. The sprinkler was a huge hit! It was $5 well spent! Do you remember Pop-Its from when you were a kid? I figured I'd let the kids try them for our 4th of July weekend and boy did they love them. They had so much fun! I'll post some pics of our 4th of July weekend fun soon. We ended the day with a late night pizza dinner on the deck followed by the kids first time doing sparklers. Great day with the family back together.

Today for the 4th of July we didn't have any big plans. The kids played in the sprinkler again, we grilled burgers, the kids did more Pop-Its, and then we went out to Okemos with Jess and her family and Brenda and her daughter to watch fireworks. The kids did some sparklers while waiting for the fireworks to start. The adults chatted and we did some sparklers too. It was a great evening and the firework show was spectacular! We went out there a couple years ago to watch fireworks, and this years seemed to be a lot better. I did miss being at the lake this year for firework, as did the kids. However, it just didn't work out with Greg coming back from Maine in the middle of the long weekend. Now it's back to somewhat of a normal routine around here with Greg back to work and all of us under one roof again. I definitely know that I don't like the single parent thing, and I really appreciate the family that we have! And a little bonus with finishing this blog... I'm finally caught up on my blogging! Yay me!