Steve took Friday off, and we took a family trip this weekend. The goal was Iowa, to pick up a car Steve bought on ebay for parts to repair his commuter car, whose transmission went out. But we drove to Omaha Friday morning early, and spent about 6 hours exploring the Omaha Zoo's indoor exhibits. It was a very nice zoo and we enjoyed our time there.
Then we headed to Des Moines, and we enjoyed our $36 hotel room that should have cost us $100. (We love Priceline!) The hotel had a video library, so we watched National Treasure as a family for the first time. Steve and I have seen it twice, but I think we thought it would be too intense for the kids. After hearing others talk about their family enjoying it together, we decided to give it a try for the kids. It was a definite hit with everyone!
Saturday, we got up, showered half the family, and then went to pick up our car dolly from Uhaul. That was a bad experience and it took an hour to get out of there. It was snowing, and we were worried we would be driving in bad weather all day. We drove the hour to the town the car was in, picked it up without problems, and then started the journey home.
Thankfully, the snow stopped before we left Iowa, but it was still a long day. We tried to stay off the interstate at first, and we drove slower. We arrived home at 10:30, and put the kids straight to bed.
Sunday morning we woke early so the remaining three kids could shower, as well as Steve and I. Then we hurried off to Sunday School and church, still pulling our car behind us. LOL!! We came home from church, ate some lunch, and then I napped while Steve and the kids made brownies. We had hoped to get into the nursing home to see Grandma, but we all dawdled too much. We had to go straight to our first Financial Peace University class (Dave Ramsey) with our brownies.
It was a good class, and we're looking forward to this process. We know most of what he teaches, because we've read his books and other financial planning books before. The problem has been applying it, and changing our behavior. This week, our homework is to make that preliminary budget plan. I'm both dreading that, and looking forward to it.
We left the FPU class to go to our church's evening service. It was a good service, but our children had just had too much for one weekend. We likely will not attend evening services again until the FPU class is over. After the evening service, we stayed for a meeting about the Easter Cantata. We'd both like to participate, but I told Steve on the way home, that maybe with the FPU we shouldn't attend evening services or the Cantata (which will practice afterwards). Steve suggested that we go home after FPU each night and then I head back in for the Cantata practice. We'll have to discuss that more ... that's 20 miles extra of gas each week.
We then dragged our exhausted kids into Walmart to do some grocery shopping for this week, and finally home for a very late supper. 3 yo M and 1 yo L were letting us know they had just had enough. They both ate, but it was obvious they needed sleep more than food. From supper, straight to bed, and all four of the younger kids were asleep almost immediately.
Our busy weekend actually started the night before our trip, when we attended our first homeschool group meeting Thursday night. They're just getting started, so it was an organizational meeting, making plans, discussing options. It was good to meet other homeschool families.
Today, Steve left early, towing the new car with him to work. He'll leave it at the base auto shop. He'll tow our dead car in tomorrow, so he can work at the auto shop over the next week or two to swap the engines. We won't be seeing much of him in the evenings or on the weekend, I think. But it's worth it in the long run, to have two cars again.
And now, I have a mountain of laundry to tackle, and a weekend's worth of neglect to attend to in the house. I need to get the children's school assignments for this week on paper, also. We're finishing up our study of Shakespeare and next week we'll move into Colonial America. I'm very excited about the next unit, and am hoping our library has more books available on this subject.
Blessings,
April
