Friday Beth and I took off for Fort Wayne to sell some old kid clothes at Once Upon a Child but they had stopped taking donations by the time we got there so the trip was for nothing. We went to the mall and got some new clothes at Penney's but Alex's jeans were going to be too small if we washed them...so, Saturday morning I took the kids back while Beth sewed. We got about $21 from OUAC, and I got the jeans exchanged, and we killed time at the mall, mostly walking around. Judy and Jim arrived here on Saturday while on their way to Michigan and stayed the night. We went out to Bob Evans for breakfast after church (Beth's and my last time in 2's and 3's!!) and I found out that Alex doesn't like strawberries so much, they make him throw up. I told him he could get a truck at the counter if he cleaned his plate, including the last strawberry (Beth and I had eaten most of them because he was just picking). He ate it with a horrible look of revulsion on his face. Then I asked him if he needed some water to wash it down, which he said he did. As I was handing the glass to him he threw up right into it. Then all over his own leg. Ick. It's been rainy so nobody can go outside and play, and the kids are climbing the walls.

After the Monday night football game this past week I accomplished something I hardly did at all last year. I won a fantasy football game! And it was over Kyle. Go me. This week I think we can finally say that Alex is potty trained; as he has only had one or two accidents in the last week. And one of them was mostly Beth's fault because she put a pull-up on him when she ran out of clean underwear for him, so he reverted. I and my coworkers did the presentation that gave us so much grief last week on Wednesday. It went fine, and our VP wants us to get things done faster. No surprise. After so much work on it, the three of us took off for lunch and to Ritter's when we were done. We were gone until after 2. Friday was not so good for Alex, because preschool (which he still absolutely loves and looks forward to for days) was cancelled due to fog. Yes, fog. Which was gone well before 9 am anyway. But Beth hadn't heard, so they got up and got ready and went inside the building, then had to come back out and go home. Alex was broken hearted. He was supposed to be line leader today! What is sadder than a bitterly disappointed 3 year old? Yesterday was the first night of league bowling. We only did ok considering that we're setting handicaps. Then we all went out to Mad Anthony's. Today, it looks like I'm going to win another fantasy football game.

The short week at work was compensated for on Friday. Monday, of course, was Labor Day so I was off, and we all went to Michigan to visit Pam and Marve. We were going to visit Becky's grave but never made it there. We did get to take them swimming at the community's pool, which they love. Stephanie was also there with Julia and Collin. Tuesday after I got out of work, Beth picked me up and we went back to the state campground to visit Jim and Rachel. They're staying up there all week. Everyone else was gone, and the park was a ghost town. We had dinner and tossed around the football and stuff until nearly bedtime. Wednesday was the return of Kids Klub at church, which I am sitting out this year, so I can work on the house undisturbed for a couple hours each Wednesday. I got a lot of work done in the garage; I'm planning on finishing the walls there and getting the pegboard up first so I can organize the tools and facilitate further work inside the house after it gets cold. The work week was uneventful until Friday, when the slide show for the presentation I and two others have been working on got back from review pretty much shredded. Not that it was bad, but our focus wasn't right for the audience. Too much detail for directors. So, we stayed late to work on it. Very late. By the time we had the thing ready for a last cut the next Monday morning it was 8pm. I missed the kids entirely, they were in bed when I got home. It was a pizza night for dinner. Saturday, we all went out to Mentone to look for Teel's Orchard because we thought it would be fun to take the kids apple picking. Unfortunately we couldn't because they don't let people pick in the orchard because of liability (darn lawyers), so we just got a bag or them from their shop. Bowling started up again this weekend too. We aren't bowling with Steve and Laura this year because one of their sons and his fiancée wanted to bowl but didn't have partners, so we're bowling with the Churchills. It was actually just a practice and not league, which is good because we all were awful.

Last Monday Alex got his glasses. We are supposed to get him up to wearing them for a few hours a day, and in December we'll se how it's going and see what else can be done. So far, he is wearing them, but not a lot and not for longer than half an hour or so. I finished putting up the new garage door opener this week, so far it works about a billion times better than the old one and it hasn't stalled or bounced once. Friday we went to see "Little Miss Sunshine" which we both thought was very funny, and we enjoyed it a lot more than we thought we would. Especially since it was a movie we saw because we wanted to go see a movie and there was nothing else we wanted to see. Yesterday we drove up to Potato Creek State Park where the camping group from church was, and somehow I was left there basically alone with the kids for some 3 hours. Most of the people there were off doing something, and of the ones that were left, all the women "just ran to town for a few things" (and were gone for hours) and Clint was e-working in their camper, so I (alone) watched and entertained our kids and Carson. I was pretty put out buy the time everyone got back, but I got over it and we stayed for dinner and let the kids get really dirty. Today started Beth's and my month to cover the 2's & 3's lessons at church. It went well, if noisy.