How you can tell she is back...

Admitedly I did my best while my wife was in Romania, but keeping up the house, was just plain beyond me. I tried, but even the ways that I mopped the floor (yeah I did that) left streaks of dirt, and as it turned out I used a very old dirty mop. The Trip leader had told my wife and the team, many of whom were leaving children, That if you return and everyone is alive and reasonably healthy, then your husband has done a good job…SUCCESS, no one died, and we all seem to be ok.
That said however there are several ways that you can tell that she is finally home, and I wanted to share them with you.
1) Dinner is no longer from a box and served around 8:00 but rather is delicious and nutritious home made food, hot and ready to eat at 6:30. Her sister made us a few meals, and knowing how we like to eat, also threw in a bunch of fresh veggies from her garden for us to enjoy. But even so, I could not have prepared it like this.



2) There are fresh flowers on the counter, and the kitchen smells like bread, and candles… ( you don’t want to know what it smelled like before.

3) A family excursion was planned to go blueberry picking (our activities while she was gone were seldom practical)

4) The fridge is full of healthy food.

5) I am HAPPY!!! I wasn’t unhappy while she was away, but I wasn’t my normal chipper optimistic self either.

Case in point, I love and appreciate my wife. I used to say that I understood that she did the cooking and cleaning, but generalizing it like that doesn’t really do it justice, I am a lousy housekeeper, but we did have a lot of fun.

10 Days of Romania Day 9: ICE CREAM

I scream, you scream... you know the rest.

Today's paperchain item was going out to ice cream. since we are staying at camp this week, I had to do some research as I did not know of any places locally.

It turns out that Midges right up the street is fantastic. They have a little shack style shop set up, with all kinds of colorful ice cream shaped lights, and plenty of flavors on the hand written board, that looked more like a scrapbook page in progress than an actual menu.

The boys picked their flavors and loved every minute of it. Dont let anyone tell you that you cant go out for ice cream in a thunderstorm, it just tastes that much better, plus there are no lines!

Mommy flies into Boston tomorrow...

10 DOR Day 9: Shave and a Haircut

My wife comes home tomorrow, and my softball team was eliminated from the playoffs lastnight... what do they have in common?? Time to shave the beard.

I dont usually have one, just hadnt touched it in 2 weeks. I decided to have some fun with it.

So the paper chain item today was to go to jungle lodge. It is a fun filled day that my parents do for the grandkids each summer. They live in Ecuador, so the are constantly around the Jungle. They take the kids on hikes through the woods, do crafts, boats, swimming, and just have a good old time. I dont have pictures as I was not there, but maybe I will be able to post some of it later.

10 Days of Romania Day 8: Smores

The morning started off simple with bagels and fruit salad. Afterward we put all out stuff into the tent and organized it.. you will never guess what they wanted to do next… yep swim. We spent several hours in the water, then several more.

The jumping off the float is something new this year. Last year they were still a little timid in the water, that has all changed.

We burned the old docks all day which made a great bed of coals for the smores at night which was the paperchain item for the day. Then it was leftover sparklers from the 4th of July.

I have changed the format a bit, so here is a photo collage of our day.

Mommy comes home in 2 days!!!!

10 Days of Romania Day 7: Campout

Today we got up Early at camp to the news that my sister had arrived. She lives near Philladelphia, and drove all night. She made cheesy eggs and blueberry pancakes for breakfast.

Breakfast conversation was dominated by the Requests, can we swim now? we said at 10 am, and the requests kept coming right to the minute. We did come down to the water and played for about 2 hours til noon. The boys took turns getting thrown up in the air as the request "higher, higher" rang out over the lake.

peanut butter and jelly for lunch I went to an afternoon softball game and got back in time for am impromptu football game before dinner. Burgers and corn on the grill for dinner... YUM.

The paper chain item was a camp out... so after dinner we started setting up the tent.
Once we were ready, we went inside for battleship and puzzles. early bed time for all especially me as I havent slept enough lately. Liam crashed almost immediatey, and Ashton and I had some good tent conversation. Ahhh the sweet outdoors!