Real Lives in Virtual Space

(I should not be allowed to come up with titles when I'm tired. Just sayin').

This week, perhaps to make up for other, run-of-the mill weeks, was fairly eventful.

For starters, I found out on Monday that I'd won this week's Project Writeaway challenge. Who knew I could actually write decent paranormal haiku?

Dan also had a candidate on campus, so he got to go out to dinner Monday night while I took the kids to Andrew's first wrestling practice. Yes, wrestling. Dan thought it was a good idea--and Andrew does seem to be enjoying it, even if he made a kid cry that first night. (In fairness, this kid was crying before the practice even started, so I don't think it was all Andrew's fault). We have, however, told him quite strictly that he's not to wrestle his sister.

Tuesday night was Young Women's--and they hosted a full-scale mystery dinner in honor of Valentine's Day. (Needless to say, Dan and I didn't get much celebration time that night). The mystery dinner worked like this: the youth were given a list of 9 items, all identified by some sort of "sweet heart" phrase (Too cool, text me, luv, etc.). Each phrase corresponded to a dinner item (spaghetti sauce, noodles, utensils, napkins, bread, salad dressing, salad, brownie, punch). The youth had to choose 3 items for each course, and we brought the stuff out one course at a time. This meant that as leaders we were pretty busy, because we had to make sure each person got what they ordered. But it did have some funny consequences, like kids who got spaghetti sauce, salad dressing, and a napkin for their first course and had to wait to get any real food.

Wednesday morning we had a parent-teacher meeting with Evelyn's preschool teacher (who also happens to be our Stake Primary president). As expected, Evelyn's doing well in most things, but like her brother she has trouble with fine motor skills. And, as I discovered when we made Valentines on Friday, Evelyn holds her scissors strangely (almost upside down) but still manages to cut along  a line. Funny kid.

I spent much of Wednesday scouring our house for my turn to host book-club. As it turned out, I needn't have worried--it snowed that night, and not that many people braved the roads to come. We had fun in any case, and I have it on good authority that the scones Dan made (with lemon glaze) were much appreciated.

And then Thursday I had writer's group--after dinner at the Pastry Pub with several other southern Utah writers. It was fun to get out for a little and enjoy some grown up conversation, even if, at this stage, we're all writers more in practice than publications. :)

And now, of course, we're enjoying a longer-than-usual weekend and trying to recover from the week's hedonism.