Whew, survived the week

It's been a hugely busy week! We started with the 2YO just being awake even more than usual, wandering the house in the middle of the night for like, three nights straight. I was so tired my skin hurt for two days in a row. One should not think about writing and submissions and the associated frustrations when one has not slept in 72 hours. Just believe me on that one. Then we were just insanely overscheduled this week--you know the kinds of weeks like that. You find that you are urgently supposed to be in two places at the same time but different places--all while your spouse is doing the same body split, only you have one car, and a bunch of kids to watch. Somehow we made it to the things we needed to get to, but not without a lot of stress. Then today the university German club kicked off their existence with a German dinner--which the students organized all of their own initiative. We went and helped cook, but it was really the students who ran it. We had gulasch and Rotkohl (okay, so I don't lie awake at night dreaming of Rotkohl, but I have to admit it was the best Rotkohl I've ever eaten) and Schwartzwälder Sahnetorte (Black Forest cake). I think my husband inherited some of my MIL's talents (she has a degree in home economics and can do things like plan wedding receptions or nice dinners for 100+ with little sweat). He is really good at this. Both the food organization and the event/social organization, getting people involved and getting them to do something of their own initiative rather than imposing some freaky micromanagement sentence from above. He's also at the right place for this. This school is Very Big on student involvement. Not long ago, for example, some students thought it would be fun to break the record for world's biggest dodgeball game. The university said, cool, have at it. They didn't quite break the record, but they had a phenomenal number of people show up. Stuff like this happens all the time here. It was like that at BYU in Provo when I was an undergrad, too. It was one of the biggest differences when I went to grad school. Nobody did anything--just studied. (Or not.) 

Anyway, so that was interesting, and apparently DH has been showing family photos in class with funny stories, because a few of the students recognized me. I hope the stories weren't TOO strange... Then we came home and visited with my SIL from the other end of the state and her family. They've been trying to come over all winter and every time they try, it snows. But today it worked! So they are here until Sunday morning. The kids are having a great time getting reacquainted with their cousins. We were sad to leave my parents all alone in Arkansas when we moved, but at least the kids are getting to see all their cousins a lot more.

In the middle of all of that, though, it got above 60 degrees!!! Seriously. I did not wear a coat today!! We went down to the nearby river for a bit because it was finally warm enough. The water was too high with melted/melting snow to skip rocks, but the kids did wade. For a few minutes. It was really cold, though!! 

Spring, stay.