Plugging along

This has been a rough week in some ways for our family. Dan's department is searching for several new positions and he had late meeting several nights this week (I think Thursday was the first night that we all sat down at the same time for dinner--and I didn't really eat because I was meeting friends later!).

Andrew also had a hard week--he started off the week grounded (after getting caught in a pretty egregious lie). Wednesday, when we were supposed to review his behavior to see if he could go to Tae Kwon Do or not, he disappeared while I was cooking dinner--I finally found him with Evelyn (whom I thought was playing with the neighbors) at the elementary school playground. Needless to say, we've had lots of discussions this week about the importance of telling us where they are going! (Discussions we've had before, but apparently they didn't make much of an impact). The upside is: I got my bathrooms cleaned as part of the consequence!

It wasn't all rough though--on Tuesday, Andrew got to be part of the district math competition. It was pretty incredible. In order to get to district, he had to be one of the top 3 scorers on a math test. They use their calculators--the calculator gives them a problem (add, subtract, multiply, divide), they enter in the answer, and the calculator gives them a new one. For their school test, they had to get the most answers right in 30 seconds!

The district test was similar: they started with how many could complete 30 problems in two minutes, then in one minute, then 45 seconds, then 30 seconds (by 30 seconds, it was more a case of how many they can get right, since I don't think any of them got all of the questions). Andrew made it to 30 seconds, and got out because he entered an 8 instead of a 9. But I was proud of him--I don't think I could do that many in 30 seconds.

Thursday, as I mentioned above, I ended up going to dinner with some writer friends who were passing through town. I got to see the advance review copy of my friend's book (it's so pretty!) and it was nice to talk shop with people who get the weird ups and downs of publishing.

On Friday, Andrew went to a birthday party while Evelyn played with a friend, so Oliver and I (mostly I) worked on a prank for the kids.

See, Andrew has been obsessed with April Fool's pranks for the past couple of weeks. He talked about it all the time. I was a little concerned, because he didn't always see the line between fun pranks (that both the pranker and the prankee can enjoy) and pranks that border on cruel/embarrassing (Friday morning he sprayed both Evelyn and Oliver in the face with a water bottle as a "joke"--until I told him he couldn't do that).

But it seemed only fair to turn the tables on him a little, with something I thought the kids would enjoy. So I made "soup" (butterscotch pudding--a wonderful recipe from the Pioneer Woman) with maple-bacon crumbles. For dessert, we had "pie" (really a spaghetti pie in a spring-form pan). The pie didn't look as convincing, but Andrew's first, very hesitant taste of the soup was perfect. I think he thought the soup was squash or something--then he made a face and said, "this is really sweet. It tastes like custard or something!'

Because, of course, it was.

Yesterday was pretty laid back: I listened to conference, the kids played, Dan helped out with a Science Olympiad on campus during the first session. In the afternoon, Andrew and Oliver went to play with some friends, Evelyn went back to her friend Adelle's, and Dan and I had some very unexpected time just to ourselves. So what did we do? I went for a walk and Dan started on dinner. (I know, we're so creative).