I'll also be wary of full moons, just in case.

Today, in brief: Up until 1:30 am last night with Adam, who now appears to be cutting a 4th tooth. Ran Ben to the potty about 15 times in 90 minutes, but he did indeed poop (entirely in the toilet, unlike several times this weekend). Leah is staying home from school tomorrow, as she has a fever and took a nap at 5pm on the couch. And then only ate ONE plain pancake for supper. This is where things stand today, and it is probably all the result of our weekend.

We took a mini-vacation this past weekend, and everyone keeps asking if we had fun. We drove 4 hours with 3 little kids, stayed in a hotel for one night, visited 3 groups of people in 12 hours, and then drove another 1 1/2 hours, plus an extra 30 min for getting lost in the dark with 3 hungry & tired little kids before finally making it to Aaron's sister's house. Does this sound like fun to you?

We need about a two year vacation from vacations.

We definitely enjoyed parts, though. We love visiting our family and friends and getting a chance to bond with the littlest ones. There was a super-fast trip to Ikea that was especially fun for me, since I was finally able to get my paws on two items that were unavailable on my last visit. SIL Lisa and her hubs Mike have a great place near Brainerd, MN and are wonderful hosts. I love solving all the problems of the world with them and letting them feed me. (Want to know what I had for breakfast both mornings? Cinnamon Roll Cheesecake. I can claim ignorance the first time, but that second meal was pretty sinful.)

But. I want to tell you this little story that tickles me every time I think about it.

That first night we stayed in a king suite at a hotel, and we put both the "big" kids on the pull out sofa. It wasn't in a separate room, just a sitting area. Adam was in the pack & play on the other side of the room by our bed. And Aaron had a Netflix movie with us.

So he piled all the extra pillows in the corner of the room against the door. He also rescued from freezing in the van the 3 bottles of sparkling pear juice purchased at Ikea, and the chocolates, too. (He thought that I should wait until Valentine's Day to crack them open, but I argued that since I bought them myself -while he was kid-wrangling- I could eat them whenever I darn well wanted.) We have headphones for the kids to use in the van, and I even had the splitter with us, so we plugged them in and then watched a movie on our laptop - and that movie? Shaun of the Dead. If you aren't familiar, it's kind of a mock-zombie movie. But the gore is real. I'm fairly sure there's been few more inappropriate movies to be watching while within 5 feet of your babies.

Within minutes of the movie finishing, Ben woke up, stuck his arms straight out and moaned, "Moooommmy...sweep wif me....." and then Leah also woke up and moaned, "Lay with meeeee this tiiiiime...." I quickly got them reassured and back to sleep, but they both seemed a little too zombie-ish for me to keep from giggling.