A couple weeks ago we heard that the Shrine Circus was going to be in Fort Wayne this weekend, and not only had we never taken the kids to a circus, but Beth had never been to one and I hadn't since I was maybe 5, so Friday when Beth had a doctor's appointment in Fort Wayne she stopped over at the Coliseum to get some tickets. Kinda salty, but turned out to be much cheaper than ones we could have gotten online. Later on Friday, it was Lincoln Night at the high school basketball game, where at halftime during the j.v. game the elementary school basketball team would play, and Lincoln students would get in free. We thought the kids would like to see the game, and we'd never gone to a Warsaw game, so we went. Well, yes, Alex got in free, and the price of the ticket inclulded both j.v. and varsity games, but it was still $5 apiece for Beth and me, which I thought also kinda salty. And the kids weren't very interested anyway, and it was at dinnertime, so by the time we left just after the Lincoln team played the kids were hungry and grumpy, and the line at Applebee's was very very long. Saturday was circus day. We went to the library earlier and headed to FW with the Johnsons later. The kids were so so so excited they didn't even want to go walk around the Coliseum before it started because they were afraid they'd miss something. The circus was nice, but went on a bit too long (~3 hrs) and some of the acts went on too long. Like the camels and ponies. Missy loved that part, but they mostly just trotted around in circles for what seemed like a long time. And the clown/ringmaster act wasn't very funny for as long as it went on. And the refreshments....$5 lemonade, $5 cotton candy...kinda salty. But the human cannonball as the finale had Alex's complete and total attention. I thought he was going to overshoot but he didn't. After dinner with the Johnsons we were headed home, but stopped after noticing Circuit City's big GOOB sale. We found the complete series of "Firefly" on sale and bought it. Oh yeah, Beth's birthday was this past week. I got her another one of those glass cannisters from Warsaw Cut Glass, just like the one I got her for Christmas.

Today the kids wanted to have a holiday so they invented one. "Caching day," they called it. On Caching Day, you hide things in the house and leave clues as to where they are, and you play jokes on people. The festivities lasted most of the afternoon. Yesterday was a Katie day (another holiday to us) but no movies we wanted to see were playing so we just went shopping at Wal-Mart (woo hoo). Also this week, we finally joined Netflix. Our first movie was "American Gangster" which was ok.

Today was a birthday party for Carson at Tokens-n-Tickets. It was a drop-off, which is always fun. Yesterday Beth and I got some free babysitting from the Boschains and we used it to go to Goshen to play trivia at Buffalo Wild Wings, which I dominated...again. Beth had an appointment last Tuesday in FW that she was nervous about, so I went with her with the kids and waited at Chick-Fil-A while the kids played and she did her thing, which turned into no big deal.

Everything is starting to get back to normal again. But it's not there yet. Most of this past week has been spent trying to find ways to keep the kids entertained. Last Monday it was a fairly nice day so we went out to the vicinity of Columbia City for geocaching, and got 3, inclulding a very clever one on the grounds of the courthouse, hidden in a pinecone. But it got cold, fast, while we were out, so 3 was it and we came back home. For New Year's, we literally did nothing. We had the Boschains over on the 1st (they were busy New Year's Eve) for dinner and to let the kids play. We took them to Somethin' Funn again to drive the go-karts and play the games and cash in the tickets. We took them to the playplace at McDonald's. Friday I was back to work, but the day didn't seem very productive. And yesterday Beth and I had a Katie day, and went to see "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button." I could have done without it but Beth loved it.