Dreary Weather

It has been raining now for like four days and I'm trying to be thankful for it, but I'm really ready for it to go away. Now, if I had no children or a husband or a house to take care of, I might could enjoy curling up in front of movies for a few days, but that is not the situation here.

Ada and Laura Beth have been visiting this week and I love not being alone all day with kids, but Ada and Ellie aren't exactly to the place where they play well together. Ellie likes to pretend a lot with things being a certain way. Ada wants to join in, of course, and do what Ellie is doing, but doesn't quite know how to play like Ellie would have her play. If Ellie is in the right mood, she is patient, but if not, forget it. Meanwhile, Luke would be content just watching movies and it is hard not to let him when things are dreary out. But I think it is hard for Ada to understand how anyone could possibly sit still for more than a second and she gets frustrated with him when he doesn't interact with her more. LB and I have been constantly working at "resolving" all these situations. It is so exhausting.

LB, Scott, and Ada left today for a long Christmas weekend with Scott's family. So, tonight our family headed to Huntsville. We have been wanting to take the kids to Santa's Village-a setup up downtown with many Christmas activities for the kids to see and do. We splurged and first went to Outback. This is by far and away Steven's favorite restaurant. It's pretty high up there on my list as well. We used to go there all the time, back before there were kids and I was working and our budget looked a little different. We haven't been there in so long, and tonight was one of those meals that just hit the spot. I made myself miserable. Here I sit, almost 5 hours later, still feeling the effect of eating way too much at dinner.

Anyway, back to the rain...it hadn't rained all day, so I was very excited that it looked like Santa's Village would work out tonight. But, wouldn't you know it-just as we are getting ready to leave it starts raining again. Just enough to get us to Huntsville, and it seemed to be over after dinner. So we got to Santa's Village and I guess everyone else had been cooped up in the house for too long as well, because it was jam packed, and muddy! There were people dressed up as different things (gingerbread men, snowmen, etc.) Luke was terrified. And then when we got to the "elves workshop" there was a tower with working trains going round and round. He wanted to stay there forever and when we finally pulled him away, he had a meltdown (they are starting to become somewhat common these days). There was a little ice maze and every 20 min. there was a machine that shot out fake snow. This seemed to be the highlight. But other than that, it was not so much fun. Overall, however, it was a really fun night.

And now I am going to curl up and go to bed and hopefully wake up to a much less full stomach (less full of food, I know it will still be full of a baby) and some drier weather!