A Team Week 89: Shorty

With this week including our long Memorial Day Weekend in Michigan, it was a shorty of a week.  That, combined with the cooler and rainy weather of the week, made for little activity to blog about, but here goes nonetheless...

Thursday June 3: Avery was outside alone in the backyard while Asher was inside going potty.  Asher needed my help but I wanted to keep an eye on Avery so I stood at the backdoor waiting for Asher to finish.  After helping Asher, I went back to the back door to see that Avery was putting on a stage show for Emma complete with music and dance!  

Video: Emma's Stage Show

Friday June 3: I got up early for my morning walk around the neighborhood.  As I was about to leave the house, I looked out the window and saw a little tight-rope-walking squirrel clinging onto our electric line for dear life!  It was fairly entertaining.

Friday night, the boys and I had a few nice moments in the backyard while we waited for Eric to get home from work.  Avery brought me a flower (which Asher had knocked off my hanging flowers with a frisbee) and Asher and I got some cuddles.  Then once Daddy got home, the guys mowed the backyard while I got our dinner ready.

Saturday June 4: Today was kind of a rainy day.  The morning was cloudy but dry so the boys tried to get the lawn mowed before the rain came.  Avery and Asher grabbed their mowers and followed Daddy around the front yard as usual.  After about 20 minutes outside, Asher started crying that his foot hurt and when I looked to inspect he had gotten a huge blister from his generic (too small) crocs. It looked painful, but it was just a blister.  To a 3 (almost 4) year old though it was the END OF THE WORLD!!!  He was in pain and wouldn't walk on it or let me touch it enough to clean it out.  I got the Boo Boo-Bunnie and sat with him on the couch and we spent the next chunk of the morning watching Mulan while holding the bunny on his foot (if I let it sit there without actually touching it, he would start whining again that I needed to hold it there).

When Mulan was done (and Eric and I had convinced tricked Asher to let us wash out the blister and cut off the torn skin), Asher was willing and able to walk on his foot again as long as he had a cool band-aid, sock to cover it and shoes.  So, with two able and willing children again, we loaded into the "Fancy Car" and headed down to the lake to enjoy the Kenosha Outta Sight Kite Flight.  On the way, we picked up some Subway subs for lunch and then enjoyed a picnic lunch at the park.  Unfortunately, there was no wind that day so only a few kites made it up into the sky AND just minutes after we got there it started to rain.  We ate our lunch watching the few kites showing off and then headed over to climb the rocks on the lake for a bit before heading back home for nap time.

"Ooo...Look Mama, a Kite!"

Sunday June 5: We ended the week with a bit of an exhausting day.  The kids (and maybe the adults) were grumpy and tired.  I had to teach the preschool group at church and with Asher throwing a gigantic fit as I was trying teach the bible story and lead the worship time (one hand doing the motions and another covering his mouth to let the kids hear as much as possible), another kid continually trying to escape, another kid trying to devour a crayon and a fourth caught with a glue stick it was a bit stressful.  When we got home from church Eric made lunch for the boys while I took a few minutes to recover and gather myself on the couch.  The afternoon went better with some naps and playing, but as Eric went to go and work on our backyard fence, he realized we had a line down in the backyard.  He called WE Energies to come and look at it not knowing if it was theirs or the telephone company's and what followed was an amazing waste of several people's time and energy...

4:30pm (ish): A man from We Energies shows up at the house to look at the line.  He confirms it is one of theirs and will get a crew out to fix it this evening.  He waits in our street for about an hour (with his loud diesel truck running the entire time) for his crew to show up.

5:30pm (ish): Four more men from WE Energies show up, each in their own very large and loud diesel truck on our small street (yes that is five large trucks total taking up the entire North end of our avenue!).  They gather in our backyard and look at the down line.  We assume they are here to fix it but after standing around and talking for about a half hour (during which time I made some jokes about how many men it takes to change a down power line) and looking at their phones discussing the weather, the lead man comes back to the house and tells us he will need to get a crew out here tonight to fix the line and trim some neighborly trees!

7:00pm (ish): The sky grows dark and the wind picks up.  A large front hits our area and soon we are getting pouring rain, large wind gusts and lightning...obviously not great weather to cut trees down and work on power lines.

8:00pm (ish): The storm has blown over and the crew shows up and sets up shop.  We have our windows open and kids are in bed, but we quickly realize that it is going to be a loud night, so all of the windows are closed to block out as much of the chain-sawing as possible and the large spot lights that light up the North have our block.

10:00pm (ish): Eric and I go to bed with the crew still at work in our backyard.  I'm sure our neighbors all hate us.

12:00am (ish): Avery wakes up crying "Mama owie, Mama owie" over and over again.  I go into his room to find a sad little guy pointing at his bottom and ask him if he wants a change and butt cream (he gets/has bad diaper rash from acidic fruits and veggies).  He says yes and I rock him for a bit to get him back to sleep after changing him.  Once he is back in bed, I look out to find that our block is still lit up and very noisy.  Yes our neighbors definitely hate us.  I go back to bed.

5:30am (ish): I wake up (too early) Monday morning not so ready to start the day.  The crew is gone, the line is not fixed and our neighbor's yard is entirely covered to about 2' high with leaves and branches from the neighborly trees.  It takes her several calls into the week to get them to come back to get the mess they made and to date we are still pretty sure the line has yet to be fixed!