All alone

Kersten went to Women's Conference late this week. I expect that most husbands would dread this but I always get excited. I had a fabulous time. I am not sure how the kids liked it, but getting to spend one-on-one time with Sarah and Michael (since they stay home) and a lot of time with the others really brings me joy. We had a great time. Maybe not as much fun as last year when we headed down to Nigel's house and hung out together, but that would be hard to beat. I just loved hanging out with Michael and interacting. He is so fun to talk to and listen to his wants and desires. I had to take them up to work for some of the time so I could work on releasing a sensor that needs a lot of attention. During those times, they developed some new friendships with Lauren and Laura who were long-lost buddies to them. They set them up with juice (Michael, who just got potty trained, went to the bathroom 16 times on Thursday), crayons, giant paper to draw on, movies, and treats. They were in hog heaven. Lauren also took them out to see her dog, Otis, which they both loved. They must think this work thing is the best thing ever.

Friday we augmented work with a trip to Costco with Cecily (fabulous, we should do that more often, it so fun to talk), a birthday dinner of spaghetti and meatballs (the kids were so awesome and helpful getting it on) for Michael Scott...errr...Stuart (Happy Birthday Scott!-sorry I didn't call, things were just too crazy, I love you though), a trip to the track (where the kids are feverishly trying to improve their long jump, triple jump, and 100 m dash, don't know why they love it so much but it is their favorite thing), a movie in the EmRRSaM Theater, and a candled birthday ice cream to top it all off. I went to bed thinking it was the happiest day I have had in a long time. Kersten got home at midnight with great stories of what she had learned and we were glad to have her back.

Well, that is enough for now. I am glad that Kersten goes away now and then so I remember how much I love to spend time with the children but I am glad she is back. One final note: I had to cook up a venison roast for our student party this week that we hold every year at the end of the semester. Without anyone to give me advice, I jumped onto youtube.com to give some advice and ended up cooking up a pretty mean dish (if I do say so myself...okay, it is not hard at all, the youtube video was only 2 minutes long). This cooking thing is pretty liberating. Who knows where I will go next...