Week 1

The first week home has been awesome, exciting, rewarding, exhausting, overwhelming, and frustrating all at the same time. The beginning of the week, our au pair was still with us for two days. We went to Linesville, PA to see the Spillway. If you've never seen this, you should. There are so many fish. I mean SO many fish. There are so many carp that if you throw bread into the water they are literally swimming over each other to get to it. The tag line for the place is "Where ducks can walk on the fish".... and they do! Literally!

Tuesday we went to the zoo. This week we had a hot spell, so it was a roasty day with temps hitting the 90s. We rode the tram a bit to conserve energy and only stayed for a few hours. Grandma bought our au pair a ride on a camel as a special treat and then she treated all the grand kids to rides too. Grandma's are good for that kind of stuff. My older kids have been on the camel before, but it was the twins first times. Lots of photo opportunities.

Wednesday a friend called to see if I wanted to get together. After being gone for two days I was looking forward to a day at home. She said her younger children needed a nap first in the afternoon, so we wouldn't be able to go until around 4. Perfect!! Still can get stuff done around the house and hook up with friends. We went to a local sprinkle park. You mean I get to see friends outside of work too! This is great!

By Thursday, I was exhausted. First from all the running around, secondly from the heat, and thirdly from trying to accomplish a ton of housework in the midst of everything else. Even still I pushed through the day without a nap and accomplished some stuff. We moved my daughter back into her bed room which the au pair had been using so she was ecstatic.

The housework is the overwhelming part. I have cleaned our kitchen and swept the floor SO many times. Even with feeling like I'm constantly in the kitchen, the dishes have not been completely done even once. We average 5 dishwasher loads over 2 days -- almost after every meal. The kids have been helping too with putting dishes away and clearing the table etc, but still it's ALOT. And we haven't even started school work yet!! Oy!

Friday was nice. My husband is still part time. (Yes, supposed to change shortly) So he was home with us. Still feeling tired, but tried to accomplish stuff around the house. We went to a friends house to check out their garage sale and visited with our au pair. She is staying at their house for a week of vacation before going to a new family.

The older boys started swimming lessons this week too. They are daily, so I have to get everyone out of the house every morning and drag them to the pool. That's been cutting into the house work time too.

So all in all it's been a busy week, but I'm loving it! Really truly am glad to be home with them!!! Hopefully I'll make more headway on things next week!!!