Our weekday trip

Kathy admonished me for not posting more often. Funny how skewed you can get looking at your own blog. Unless it has been a REALLY long time, I usually don't notice I haven't posted, but I notice every day when someone on my favorites list hasn't updated yet (BT - this means you!).

My excuse for the past few days is that I took the kids down to Austin for a fun three-day visit with Kathy and family. I had the laptop and was hopping on various neighbors' WiFi connections, but when I finally sat up late one night to post I discovered that I could no longer connect to them.

But we had a great time. Dragged the kids to the capitol, the children's museum, and a funky little farm in east Austin. Plus lots of hanging out and playing time. My dear friend Shelly joined us for dinner one night, and she didn't freak out at the chaos created by five kids and three adults under the same roof. In fact, she gamely let Joey kiss her goodbye on the cheek, at which point we discovered he was bragging to his siblings that he got to "kiss a girl" (who was not a relative I guess). I think the fact that she is probably 5 feet tall and doesn't look at all as old as the rest of us helped keep him in the dark that his "girl" was almost as old as his mom.

Grace got to come home with a new-found love of Polly Pocket since her awesome big cousin Emma gave her one to keep. Alex came home with a few scratches from Gabby the cat thanks to him testing out if he REALLY isn't supposed to pull the cat's tail, though that didn't diminish his excitement every time the cat showed up at the house ("Hi Gabby! Hi Gabby! Hi Gabby! Hi Gabby!"). We missed Jim terribly and were glad to be back home in our own beds Thursday night, but it was a fun way to finish out the summer.