My Understanding Husband

(This is the first part of a series of blogs.)

Linda and Jeff and family (Tyler, Dallas, Ciera, and Kayla) came down the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and stayed for the holiday. Linda and Jeff did a list of things for my dad, the most time consuming one being remodeling my dad's front bathroom.

The Friday night before Thanksgiving, the kids and I went down to my dad's to spend the night, but it didn't start that way. My original plan was to go down once the kids got out of school (they had min. days the entire week before Thanksgiving because of parent/teacher conferences) and then head back to my house that night and then Saturday morning get ready for the beach and then meet everyone there. But Robert knows me better than I know myself. As soon as he learned that Linda was coming down for a week and a half, his first comment was, "Well, I guess I won't be seeing my wife for the next week." He even had plans to get one of the cars up and working so that he can go places while I was away, seeing as how we have three cars but only one that works =). So, Friday I told him that my plan was to go down to my dad's for a couple of hours and then come back home--his reply, "Well, we'll see." Sure enough, he was right. Linda, Nancy and I ended up driving back to my house (a 2 hour round-trip drive) to get stuff for the beach and a sleep over. Had I listened to my husband, we could have saved two hours of our time. But the time was well spent--Linda talked about things going on in her life and got us caught up on that.

By the time we got back, everyone was starving (it was 9ish at night), so we made pizzas. We had to make four to make sure that everyone got enough because Gordon, Mary and Kyle decided to stop by too. The pizzas were a big hit. Everyone loved them.

The cousins were having so much fun that I had a hard time telling them to stop so that they could go to bed. Consequently, Amanda, Kayla, and Rainer didn't go to bed until sometime after midnight--Mason had crashed on the family room couch sometime before the first pizza was done. My dad doesn't have a lot of rooms in his house, but he has a lot of floor space. Dallas was in the back bedroom because it only had one mattress in it. Linda and Jeff took the middle bedroom. Ciera had the front room couch and Kayla chose a piece of floor somewhere. Nancy and her son, Aaron, had also come over, so we transformed my dad's front room into the camp grounds.

(Kayla, Amanda, Mason and Rainer are asleep on the floor. Aaron is back by the piano and that is where Nancy slept too. Ciera is on the couch and I slept next to Rainer.)

Because my kids had the entire week off for Thanksgiving, they stayed at Grandpa's with their cousins basically all week long. I also spent most of the week there at my dad's, although I did come home Wednesday night to bake my rolls for Thursday. So, my husband went basically a week without seeing his children or his wife because he knows how much I need to see my sister and that I don't get to very often. So, he worked while we played--what a great husband! =)