Vacation is OVER!

Willie Nelson has been acting weird lately.

I know this is not unusual for the musician, but for our dog it's a little worrisome. Only a little though, not enough to think to actually do something.

He's been moping a lot the last few days and all I can think is that he is as sick of the kids being home for three meals a day as I am.

I slept until 9 this morning and when I got into the kitchen he was waiting eagerly for me even though he had already been let out. E greeted me with "good afternoon!" and then we all dove right into the day.

T is feeling marginally better, but if you ask E she is in full recovery and it's all because she ate soup (which she despises) and fresh orange juice. She still sounds awful and when he insisted that she was feeling better and then tried to get me to take his side in the argument I got scared.

"You never tell a pregnant lady how she feels. She will KILL you."

T nodded in confirmation.

Fourth pregnancy and he hasn't learned that yet? How is he still alive?

The kids worked on breakfast and I fed the baby in the playroom. The garbage company thought it would be funny to show up even though it's a holiday so there was a scramble to get that out, which I took no part in.

E took one for the team and packed up all three kids and went to his mother's for three hours. T worked from her home computer and I folded laundry and watched TV.

Not a lot of stressers in this house today.

We even made a plan for dinner BEFORE 3 o'clock, which almost never happens. I am going to start planning weekly meals. I've held off this long in order to get into the swing of how things work around here but we've hit 6 months and I think I get it. It's like this: T doesn't think about dinner until dinner time. And I am more strict about schedules for the kids so she is totally cool with feeding them at 6 while I like to feed them at 5 so that they are absolutely in bed by 8.

Nanny don't mess around.

So, I've decided that a the ruler of the kitchen I am going to start planning our dinners ahead of time and adding those needs to the grocery list, which I am also in charge of. And with this decision came the one to start couponing.

I've avoided it for this long, not because I don't like saving money. Indeed, I love money. My heart races a little at the very sight of it. But when the couponing trend started up I got scared. Real scared. It quickly escalated into something of a cult, taking along four or five of the most sane people I know.

And then I was terrified.

And then I joined Groupon. You know, just to see what it was all about.

And I guess now I'm one of them.

So I might as well own it and get a notebook and a highlighter and an accordion folder and start using my morning downtime to read feverishly through all the coupon books the blasted mailman keeps shoving through the hole in our front door.

I folded laundry while E and T force fed lunch. After lunch T decided to go pick up the few things we need for dinner tonight since I have not implemented my wonderful plan yet. She told J when he asked that he could go with her and then told him to get his jacket.

He was soooooooo sloooooooow about doing it that she ran up behind him going, "Get your stupid jacket!" muttering the word 'stupid' under her breath of course. Her impatience made us all laugh because it is VERY out of character for her and because she seemed more annoyed with the jacket than with J.

"Vacation is over!" I announced, immediately lapsing into a daydream of the kids leaving for school tomorrow morning.

And so it is.