Thanks. I’ll Be Here All Week.

We are in Massachusetts for the entire week. Nicole is working from home (perk of the new job) and, sadly, she really is working. Part of me was hoping “working” meant playing, gardening, going for walks, shopping and exploring. Ha. Instead, there are conference calls and laptops and phones and ssssshhhhhh, I’m on the phone. You know, actual work.

So the girls and I are having a fabulous week of adventures. Nicole keeps stressing about us having to keep our distance so she can work, but it isn’t bothering me at all. We are taking long drives, purposefully getting lost and letting the GPS take us home. We are getting a baseline for the soon-to-change foliage. We are going shopping. We are discovering new bakeries. We are making cookies. Playing in the yard. Even mundane activities are exciting. I took them food shopping today and they asked to go into the free daycare center there. How great is that!? Free daycare in the grocery store for up to two hours, and my children WANT to go. And there are TVs all over the store so you can spy on them. I went there for seltzer and coconut but spent a good half hour just walking the aisles and chatting on the phone while my girls made castles with a CPR-trained child specialist. They were having such a good time.

We managed to work in some fun before Nicole’s work week began. We took the girls to another fair (party carnival, as they call it) and let them eat crappy fair food (lemonade and ice cream and caramel apples) and ride on the rides. We went to the nursery and bought black-eyed susan’s and a forsytia plant, which we planted. We took them outlet shopping. OK, maybe that wasn’t fun for them, but we let them ride those coin-operated things while I waited on line for twenty minutes to buy underwear.

Everything seems better surrounded by nature. I am sitting here blogging, listening to the wind through the trees, while my children are playing outside. Leaves are literally falling on the deck. Fall is really here, and we are witness to it.

And now, we have to go to the dump….