Carnival mom

John is off to Sweden this week.  This leaves me and the kiddos to fend for ourselves.  When dad departs we try to keep busy by doing things, lots of things.  This turns me into somewhat of a carnival mom.  You know the type.  The mom who never says no,  suggests all of the fun things and is always willing to give stuff a try.  After dropping dad off at the airport we hightailed over to the movie theater.  We got the extra large popcorn, no butter, and 4 small drinks.  (which in hindsight was poor judgement.  All part of the Carnival Mom persona.)  We saw Night at the Museum which was rather fun.  The best part was watching my kids snicker and laugh at the silliness.  Which was about all I saw since the theater was packed and the largest man in Columbia sat in front of me.  We continued on our adventure and went to (cringe) McDonald's.  With everyone full we drove home and stayed up until 10 pm playing and reading.  It was a good day.   

Yesterday we drove down to the Columbia Children's Museum where we played and played.

  It was a bittersweet moment as I realized my kids were so much older than the last time we went.  

2 of the areas were for kids 2-5 and my kids were to old. sigh.  I did a lot of sitting which surprised me.  

They had fun without me.  They didn't have questions for me, Mark took care of answering most of Jack and Emma's questions. 

 Soon we will have to drag Mark out into public with us, as I am sure being seen with us will be so uncool.  We drove off to have ice cream and then pizza for dinner.  We took Ginger for a walk and had just a nice evening. 

 Today has been play in the water day. We played in the hose, with water guns and water balloons.  Jack and Emma made water bottle boats and raced them. Mark hopes to go fishing this evening.  All this sun and water is sure to tire them out, I hope, since they do have school tomorrow.  The lack of bedtime structure has made Mark rather lethargic.  He is entering the teen coma years anyway.   It seems the baby I couldn't get to sleep now always sleeps.  Jack and Emma also made a time capsule this weekend.  They put into a box little things that mean something to them.  Then wrote a cute note telling how old they were and important facts about the objects, encase they forget.  Jack had me put the box on the top shelf of his closet.  When we were all finished they asked me how long we should put the time capsule up.  I thought 10 years was a good time limit.  They were flabbergasted at my answer.  "How about we take it down next summer?" Emma suggested.  So that's what was decreed.  Good thing they wrote that note.