Spokane

I'm just going to have to face the fact that my posts for a while are going to be all discombobulated, jumping around from Thanksgiving to today. Oh well. That's what I get for being a working mother of three, I guess. NO TIME! Anyway, I wanted to make a quick (I hope, as I'm really wishing I were in bed right now!) post about our trip to Spokane. As I have been working seven days a week since shortly after Maren was born with hardly a day off, we decided to take a little trip up to Washington to visit my old roommate, Anne, and her husband, Matt after Christmas. Originally we were going to leave the morning after Christmas. Then we realized that we could really maximize our vacation time by leaving Christmas evening, after a get-together at my mom's, around 7 p.m. The clincher here was that the kids would be asleep, of course! The whole drive with no kids to worry about. It was a brilliant plan. Well, it started off all well and good. Evan slept the first two hours. Then, around 9 p.m. he woke up and was awake the entire rest of the drive, until 1:30 a.m.!!! WHAT?!?! Who authorized that? By the time we got settled at Anne & Matt's house and got into bed, it was 3 a.m. That's when Evan got to sleep. Um, not good. And he slept all the way until 9 a.m. the next morning. Six hours of sleep...bad for me, really bad for Evan. But, we were still able to fit some fun in between cranky episodes. Both kids loved all of their pets (a dog, two cats, a rat, about 24 birds, fish, and about 100 stuffed animals that "talk").

We also enjoyed being in the snow. Evan took a ride on the shovel and tried to help clear the sidewalk. Maren just looked cute in her hat! Evan thinks that Christmas = snow. So it was great to be there with all the snow for him. He really loves it. Here are a lot of pictures, but I just couldn't choose which ones to leave out. Oh, thanks to Anne for getting all of these. I was lame and my camera stayed in the warm house.

We also enjoyed gourmet Anne & Matt cooking...especially chocolate lava cakes...some trips to downtown Spokane, and seeing how much more house we could have if we lived next door to them (just kidding...that was the painful part. If it weren't for my family being here, and some really amazing friends, I'd be packing up right now and moving into that big four-bedroom house!). It was really nice to have a whole two days off of work and not have to worry about anything at home. Life is really stressful here right now and I needed the mental break. Unfortunately, we came home to a hurricane-devastated house (you know, the Christmas disaster) so that wasn't too fun. Hopefully it won't be another year before we have another family break from the rigors of everyday life. Thanks, Anne & Matt, for your hospitality!

And, just in case I hadn't put enough pictures on here, here's one last cutie...