The Nelson Narrative

School is almost out and while I'm excited to no longer have to rush around every morning like a chicken with my head cut off in an attempt to get not only myself ready for work but both girls fed, ready for school and to the bus stop on time with all the proper homework/permission slips/lunches/projects and whatnot, I am also sad that they will have to spend all day every day with a babysitter (with a few exceptions, of course), awesome as she is.  It makes me sad that I won't be able to take them on outings to a lake or beach or berry picking or anything.  And the babysitter doesn't have her own car so she can't do those things with them either.  They will spend their summer playing in the backyard, at neighbors' and the park down the street. There's still weekends, of course, so we can do some of those things then but we'll have to put up with the crowds.  And they will have camps, one week of a Girl Scout camp and one week of a YMCA camp (just day camp...

Most of our Mother's Days are spent with Paul's parents or my mom, but this year his parents were (still are) on a cruise and we are seeing my mom this weekend, so it was just the 4 of us.   It started out great.  Olivia came in a woke me up (Paul was already long since up) to give me her present.  It was a little book they made in school called, "If You Give a Mom a Muffin" and of course it came with a muffin and coffee (a packet of instant coffee that Paul helped them make).  Kayley gave me the same thing, of course, except she ate the muffin herself on Friday, as per the story (the story had the mom discover at the end that her child had eaten her muffin).  They also had made me cards and it was all really great and special.   We had brunch reservations at 11:30 which would have meant that we could have gone to church at 9:30, but I didn't get up until 8:00 and by the time we did the gifts it was too late, so we skipped and took our time getting...