Tuesday, August 26, 2008

Those Last Days of Summer

Well, today is Jaden's first full day of school. It's hard to believe that he'll be gone the whole day!! I'm going to miss him! We've been packing a lot of things into the end of summer. First of all, we went to a COTP reunion in Minnesota. We had a really great time and were able to meet lots of other COTP families!! After the reunion, we stayed in Minnesota for a few days and went to the Mall of America (the picture is from the Lego store in the mall), went camping (in a cabin) and went to the Cave of Mysteries. It was a great break from "regular" life.

When we got back from camping, we had most of the interior of the house painted, which was long overdue. (We had done the powder room and the bedrooms ourselves, but we hadn't gotten to the rest of the house - and who knows when we ever would). It was a bit of a pain since the painters were here for two weeks (we had lots of wallpaper that had to be removed), but, wow, what a difference!! I'm so glad that I don't have to be embarrassed about our house anymore. It was getting pretty ridiculous - peeling wallpaper, marks on the walls from the previous owners' pictures, patches from repairs that had been repaired, and even holes in the walls in some places. Now it looks just beautiful - I'm so happy with the finished product! Now if we can just manage to keep things organized, it will be perfect (I'm not counting on it though). :-)

Finally, this past Friday, we got to spend the day downtown. One of Scott's vendors (at work) offered to pay for a family day for us, since Scott had been spending so much time away from the family, working on problems caused by one of their products. They gave us tickets for the circus, the ferris wheel and a boat tour. Plus, they gave us tons of spending money! It's amazing how much fun you can have when you don't have to worry at all about how much it's all costing. "You want a program for the circus? Why not? You want to drive the motorized boats? Sure thing. You want to go to the funhouse? Love to." We could pretty much do anything we wanted and didn't have to worry about the cost. How often can we do that? (Um, never). So, we've officially decided that we're going to seek corporate sponsorship for all of our family events. Hey, we'll wear logo T-shirts and hats and stuff - do a little advertising along the way. Think we'll get any takers? Okay, not gonna happen, but we can dream, right? :-)