in which life goes on....

This morning....I was awakened early by noise, but what else is new. Kids are on vacation from school, so there is noise in the morning. Well, the little girls play so nicely in their room most mornings, just occasionally yelling or slamming their door...I thought lots of kids were up, so I got up and got dressed....when I started out to the living room, I realized that Jonathan and Sonja were not up yet...they had slept in the living room because....we are prepping their room to paint it. Their bunkbeds are in the middle of the room, with all their stuff piled on them, the walls spackled and partly sanded...

Anyway, I didn't want to wake up the dogs then the kids, so I said good morning to the princesses, and got back in bed with my book: oh happy day. Not for long: Kathryn came wandering in and settled down on my comfy bed to tell me that the general consensus was...a trip to the mall. The big mall in the big city. Okay, I said, before I had time to think of the hundreds of reasons why this was a bad idea. She said they had swept the living room and kitchen and cleaned up before they asked me:)

So to the mall we went. Charlotte Claire and Camille loved the glass elevators and the escalators and going on the carousel. Jon loved going into BestBuy, nerdy child that he is. He also went into GameStop, and I bought him a new game, since Sam left him his game system.

I do not like the mall. It fills me with disappointment. The glitz and the emptiness, the smell of cinnamon buns and fried food, the indecent mannequins, and the people, walking around like zombies. The men-folk being dragged there, just being good husbands/boyfriends/dads...

Sometimes we find good deals. I have all these daughters, you see, and I like to let them have nice things.

Anyway, I have had enough of the mall for a while.

We stopped at the grocery store on the way home for apples and salad stuff and some snacks for the girls to bring over to Emily's house tonight.

Tomorrow we have to sand the walls a bit more, then we can start painting. I do not really want to do this project right now, there are other things I thought should be done first. But Sonja moved the bunkbeds, then decided it needed to be painted, I bought the paint....and I guess an eleven year old can't paint her own room, so here we are.

Sam arrived in Fort Benning and texted me at 1:40 a.m. He will be all right. I will be all right.