When is the mommy vacation?

Chez Exile is in utter disarray.


Michael is building the shelving/seating/storage cubby system for the mudroom, and I really mean building. From boards and such, not from some Home Despot cabinet kit. It's taking awhile. I got a call last week to teach a 7 week intro wheel course, which is wonderful but also meant I had to wrap my head around that and our routine. Also, last week was Arabella's Fall Break, and we had Plans.

Joni, a friend from last years ballet class, is now teaching, so with her day off she suggested we go to the Children's Museum with our passel of kids. It seemed an excellent plan, so excellent that every other parent of children between the ages of 2 and 12 seemed to have the same thought and the place was insanely crowded. Sabine had fun, rode on the carousel for the first time, and Arabella, though she got a little wild, was better behaved than I expected. I renewed our membership, so we have another year of carousels and live turtles and train sets and dinosaurs.

Friday we went to visit the State Museum and saw the current exhibit about chocolate, as well as the annual GeoFest. Arabella made out with several new rocks, I learned some weird things (they have fossilized poop at the State Museum) and Sabine charmed a whole flock of people. The bad news of the day for Mommy was discovering that my newly finished Pimlico Shrug had slipped off my purse when I was taking stuff out of the van on Thursday and had fallen in the driveway where it had spent the night. In the rain. It is not damaged, but I think it has abandonment issues.

Saturday was the Halloween Festival, and I dressed up the girls in their costumes and we wheeled out, but it was bitterly cold, and we only stayed long enough to eat a kabob and for Arabella to accumulate more lollipops than Willie Wonka and do the space jump before I hustled us all home.


Arabella as a pink poodle, Sabine as a pumpkin with a ghost hat.


Sunday was church and after was the Halloween Party. So I ran about gathering up costumes and making healthy lunches, and fundraiser stuff (cookbooks anyone? poinsettias?), and arrived late with Arabella dancing about asking redundant questions (Are we late? why are we late? do we want to be late? What happens if we're late?...). After services, the kids had a costume parade, a cookie walk, musical chairs, other games that generally encouraged the ingestion of unholy amounts of sugar.


Sabine tried to play DJ with the musical chairs boombox, and Arabella did the cookie walk until she won a Frankenstein's monster cupcake.

By Sunday night, Mommy was worn to a frazzle, and when I realized we were down to only 4 diapers, well ... you know it's bad when I contemplate 4 kid-free hours waiting in line to vote and think that sounds relaxing.