This morning was Presby Sunday, where the preschool classes do a little performance during the morning church services. All the kids were together in one big group. Missy was in front, where she refused to do any of the singing or motions, and lifted her dress up and held herself because she needed to go potty. Alex had no such problem; he doesn’t seem to get stage fright.

The lady who came by a couple days ago to look at the sectional returned today to pay. $650 in cash. Tonight we went out to dinner at Mad Anthony’s with the Johnsons, and went out to see "Jumper" afterwards. A rather uninspiring movie I would say.

Missy said goodbye to all her babas today. After lunch I took them all to work to throw them away there to remove the temptation to get them out of the trash at home if things were rough.

Beth and Rachel were away today having sushi to celebrate Rachel’s birthday so since the kids and I had nothing to do, I called Stacy to see if Carson could come over to play. She brought him over for a couple hours. I made Toll House cookies while he was here and tried to referee. Alex’s old boots fit him so I let them play outside for a while since it was nice enough.
Tue 2/19/08...Beth went back to the dentist to get her crown put in today. The kids both went to the dentist in Fort Wayne too. I went with them, because Beth was in some pain and was pretty medicated and out of it, so I had to drive. The kids both were ok at the dentist, but Alex has another cavity in a new molar that came in with a very deep trough. So, he goes back in a couple weeks to get another filling. Missy was fine. It seems Alex has my teeth and Missy has Beth’s. By evening Beth was still in some major pain, what likely happened was the needle nicked a nerve when she got the novocaine shots. She’s apparently going to be in pain for about 36 hours.

JB’s Furniture in town is having a huge moving sale, so we went on my lunch hour to check things out since Missy has been really needing to get out of the toddler bed / crib. She’s waking up during the middle of the night a lot lately, just like Alex was before we moved him into his big boy bed. We found a good one for her, which goes nicely with the headboard we bought for her a long time ago. It was even delivered that afternoon. We’ve decided that Missy will give up the baba once and for all now that she is in a big girl bed, so we’ve started talking about it and will give her until next Wednesday night (after school next week).

Not a good Valentine’s Day. I got a card and flowers for Beth and I was going to take the afternoon off to spend with Beth, but when I got home nobody was here. They all arrived about 15 minutes later, Alex and Missy were both crying, and Beth was furious. Apparently there had been 2 hours of major meltdowns and embarrassments at Owen’s from Alex, and Beth had absolutely had it to the point of having to get him out of her sight before she did something to him. So, I went back to work. When I got home, there was a package from the GM of the San Francisco 49ers, with a letter stating he believes I should be a 49ers fan and also containing a 49ers hat, which he asked me to wear with pride! So the Niners are definitely the frontrunners.

It has been an eventful week. It has been a strange winter and one of the wettest I can remember. All the rivers are flooded. It rained Monday night...hard....and it seems the outside drain outside the laundry room entry door got clogged, and quite a bit of water came through over the door threshold and into the laundry room, where it soaked the bottom of the cabinets, shelves, drywall, beams...and the house reeked of cat pee. I wound up leaving work at lunch on Tuesday and spending all day ripping stuff out of our laundry room and tossing it in the dumpster. And also cutting the bottom 18 inches or so of drywall down in the laundry room and guestroom closet and tossing that out too. Things started smelling better as soon as the wet stuff was out, but cleanup was a dirty, smelly job too. We were interrupted by parent-teacher conferences at preschool for both of the kids, which were glowing reviews. Alex is amazing his teachers by how well he can read and count, and Missy knows all her stuff but sometimes it hard to work through her attitude to get her to say them. But everyone said they both are really smart and very good kids. Wednesday Beth had a hammering migraine and could barely function, so I stayed home from work again to take care of her and the kids. I had a pretty bad cold by the end of the week. Saturday was Beth’s Alo-ha-ha night with the ladies at church; I took the kids to the trail (where we looked for, found, and discarded the hornet’s nest from which the kids were attacked last summer) with the wagon and made it to the playground, where we couldn’t play because it was still mostly underwater (more precisely, under ice). Saturday, a person who had made an offer on our sectional sofa for $650 changed her mind about buying because she hadn’t realized how far it was from her to Warsaw and they didn’t want to spend the extra money for gas to come out here. So, we still have it taking up space. We had Katie babysit in the evening and went to Virgil & Sherri’s house for dinner.

Just finished watching the Patriots lose the Super Bowl. I had been hoping on some level that they would win and complete the perfect season, but on a lot of other levels that they would lose and blow the perfect season. It’s all good. It was an excellent game. Virgil and Sherri came over to have dinner and watch with us, otherwise no party this year. Beth made some pretzel-wrapped brats, those are turning into a fave. Yesterday a group of friends from church all went to Fort Wayne to the camper show at the Coliseum. I don’t think anybody was really in the market but it is fun to look. Beth and I found a few we liked, most notably a couple of pop-ups that must have been as long as the travel trailer we used to have, when fully extended. The kids had fun climbing through them too. Pipedreams. The whole gang went out to dinner at Case Mare afterwards (after finding that the Ryan Steak House that Don Bob wanted to go to is not there anymore) where Alex had a royal fit because he couldn’t keep the large magna-doodle the waitress brought for him to play with. He thought he got to take it home, and it broke his heart.