#81 - A week gone by

Sunday, April 1

I obviously have not blogged since last Saturday.  Instead of trying to make up each day, this entry serves for a week, and it means my 365 will last a little longer than a year.

Major events this week were centered around...everything, I guess.  The movers showed up on Monday morning in Beaverton.  So did the asbestos tester, the electrician, and our helpful handyman, Troy.  We put our final offer on the NY house out on Tuesday morning.  On Wednesday, the movers were at the Beaverton house until 6:30.  Nobody expected it would take that long.  I guess we have a lot of little things.  Unpacking is going to generate an enormous amount of garbage.

Also on Wednesday, I made the first modificaiton to our potential home.  It's easy to undo, and didn't hurt anything.  I hung a blank canvas in the master bedroom.  Thursday the bank accepted our offer for the house.  And the family came to NY. 

I have missed these people.  I'm so glad that we're together again.  Work this week has been unbearably stressful, mostly because I'm in my first cycle of performance appraisals, and the new system is frustrating.  It does not achieve what it is ostensibly set up to achieve and that irks me.  On Thursday, the family arrived at 9:30, we had an hour drive to the hotel, and then it took us an hour to settle in.  We didn't get to sleep until 11:30.  I was up at 4, and headed to work.

The entire week has been like that - go to sleep at 8, wake up at 2 and head into the office.  It's been draining in every way.  By Friday morning, I was a complete zombie.  I had to keep my eye on the prize - finish the workday, drop Katrina, her mom, and Nikki off at the train station, then head back to the hotel, relax with the kids, and sleep forever on Saturday.  We eneded up putting Nacho Libre on in the evening.  Jacob passed out a bout 2/3 through.  And then we were all headed to bed.  There was one question mark until late in the evening about having a work meeting on Saturday, but the guys fixed it, and I was able to sleep for a long time. 

Saturday was a relaxing day, possibly the first genuinely relaxing day for the kids and certainly for me for a long time.  We went down to the pool in the morning and swam until noon.  I sat down to watch the kids, and Christian swam away with a perfect backstroke.  I asked him later who taught him.  He said nobody did, he just figured it out.  "I like to figure things out for myself better."  The boy is a carbon copy of me. 

The kids watched TV in their room, and I took a 3-hour nap.  Crazy.  Then we went back to the pool around 4.  I got set up in my swim suit and after about 2 dozen little girls left the pool at 5, I got in for half an hour or so.  We went back upstairs about 6, and we fended for ourselves for dinner.  The boys had nachos, I don't know what the girls ate.  I left with Christian for a visit to Wal-Mart at 7.  We picked up groceries, a Wii sensor bar, and Christian spent almost all of his considerbale allowance hoard on Hexbug stuff.  He got a few cool hexbugs and a maze terrarium thing. 

We got back, and Liberty climbed between the couch and chair to retrieve The Muppets, which I had picked up Friday morning.  We watched it, and when it finished at 10:30, the day was done.  We all went to sleep with happy stomachs and sleepy heads.

This morning was very similar.  The kids slept until 9.  I woke them up so we could get breakfast.  And now, at 10:30, we're back at the pool.

Katrina has had a great time in the city so far.  She called last night from an Irish pub on Times Square.  They even got out to the Statue of Liberty, which we had skipped last summer.  They were going to meet up with Aki to see a show in the evening.  She's been here a grand total of 24 hours, and she's a tour guide.  I suppose it's important that she was here as a kid, here in 2010 on vacation, and here for my interview in January.  So it's not as if she's actually that new to the city. 

Later today, we're going to put General Conference on, then head to the church to play with the other kids for a while, then we're going to hit the Walkway over the Hudson.  It'll be good to get away from the hotel for a while.  And some time this evening, I'll go pick up the ladies from the train station.

That's all for now.  Have a happy April Fool's day!