Spring Has Sprung... or not

Hello everyone,

So we have had a little bit of a crazy week. Dave's car (which broke down about two weeks ago) is still dead. Today we finally got it towed and are getting the starter fixed. YEA!!! In the meanwhile, I had been driving Dave to and from work, which worked quite satisfactorily until he started working until 1 or 3 or 5 in the morning, and then it was less effective. There is a friend of ours in our ward who owns a machining company and on Saturday Dave was working with him to get some parts made. This friend had to drive to Dave's work and pick Dave up and take him back to his company to work on the parts, so he said, "You seem like you could use a car" and proceeded to lend Dave a car (they just bought a new car, but kept their old one around for when family comes to visit, etc.). Needless to say, this has greatly reduced the stress level in our family. Dave was getting tired of trying to hitch a ride home with someone working late on swing shift.

So the main highlight or lowlight of this past week has been the buildup to THE BIG DEMO for a customer that Dave's company had on Mon-Wed of this week. We have gotten accustomed to Dave's typical 8-8 work hours, but a week or so before the scheduled demo, the machine was still not working and things were NOT looking good. So time to flip into overdrive.... Dave stopped working like a workaholic and started working like a maniac. On Friday night he worked until 1:00 am. Saturday he went in before 11:00am and didn't get home until 7:00am on Sunday. He went in before 7:00 on Monday and came home that evening, only to go back in at 9:00 and stay until noon on Tuesday. Then he finally came home and slept until that night. On Tuesday night, he went back in that night "just for an hour" (I have long since learned to know better) and came home at 5:00 am. Wednesday he finally took the day off, but today went back into work for an 8:30 meeting. I don't have the energy to calculate exactly how many hours that is, but let's just say it is WAY too many.

So the good news is that they got the machine to work reasonably well and the customer thought the demo was okay (instead of an absolute disaster like it looked only a week or two before). The bad news is that they were starting to make enough progress right before the demo that the management started to get overly optimistic, so instead of being thrilled and relieved that it worked at all, they were disappointed that they didn't absolutely wow the customer. Oh well, you can't win. Last night we went as a family to work out at the YMCA and Dave got to play basketball during Jared's soccer practice. Then we went to Sweet Tomatoes to celebrate the end to a tumultuous week by stuffing ourselves silly.

The kids and I have been doing fine, although I have been exhausted by proxy. Things have been so crazy that it has induced a sort of mind-numbness and I can't really remember much of what has happened this past week. Sunday consisted of me running to church early with the kids (while Dave was still getting ready) so I could get there early to play prelude and sub for the organ. The kids sat by themselves for a chunk of the meeting because Dave got there late and didn't see where we were sitting. I played postlude while Dave shot off to primary to play prelude. I got there halfway through the opening song (which they were doing without me) and we were soon thrust into singing time, which went remarkably well considering the rest of our weekend. That afternoon I went to choir (while the kids spent some time with daddy) and got to sight-read choir music on the organ with no organ shoes. More and more fun!! We would have come home to a nice slow-cooker roast for dinner, except the tester button thingy on the plug popped out, so even though the slow-cooker was plugged in and turned on, there was no electricity running to it. Oh well, what would a Sunday be without cold cereal or pancakes for dinner? In this case, we had leftover whole-wheat pumpkin pancakes from Saturday (which I have to say were very tasty, but -surprise,surprise- Jared wouldn't touch).

The good news is that for the first two days of this week we had GORGEOUS sunny warm spring weather. Our neighborhood was suddenly a different place. We saw some of our neighbors for the first time in months. All of the people in our neighborhood came out of hibernation and suddenly there was a plethora of dog-walkers, moms pushing strollers, joggers and kids riding bikes going up and down the streets. Then yesterday it started raining again. Darn. But we still have had patches of sun here and there and it is definitely warmer.

Jared is really liking soccer (it is indoor soccer- this is Oregon). He had a soccer game on Saturday. Yesterday Camryn went rock-climbing during Jared's soccer practice and made it to the TOP of the easiest wall (about 35 feet up- impressive for a 3 1/2 year-old). On Tuesday afternoon, I finally painted our office/3rd bedroom. It has gone from a sickly powdery washed-out blue, to a lovely sage green. It is the first room I have painted where the color turned out pretty much how I expected. Now, if I could only decide on a color for our bedroom and cover up the 10 different paint samples slathered on our walls....

Hope you are doing well. Love you all!!

Karen

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Quotes of the week:

Jared and Camryn had a very long conversation about how, in the summer, when the snow melts off Mt. Hood, we'll have to move someplace where you can't see Mt. Hood, so we will be safe when the volcano inside it explodes.

Camryn: "Mommy, I climbed to the top of the rock wall and it was EASY."

Camryn: "I want some milk with a cup with a lid."

Jared: "If you are asleep and you are not in your bed, you're having a dream. I am an expert about dreams."

Jared: "Daddy, maybe if you got a really important job, like cleaning windows, then you could make a lot of money."
Dave: "Do you think I would make more money cleaning windows than working at my work?"
Jared: "Maybe if you cleaned windows like at a hotel you would."