Time With Daddy: Part 1

Mike went back to CA on Tuesday morning after a wonderful 10 days here with us. We were so glad to have him home! It's been so long since we have all lived in the same state that having him here seems like vacation time, rather than real life. School stops, fun commences :)

He did some handy-man stuff that had flummoxed and exasperated me for weeks on end. Like the circuit breaker that blew every time I tried to use a stove top burner and the turn the oven on at the same time. I had been cooking everything in shifts. I love how he's so handy. I think I'll keep him :)

The fridge died while he was here too. Actually it began it's death throes before he arrived, but I was still livin in the land of denial and wishing/hoping/praying that the milk had always been a little warm... A new compressor and a couple hundred bucks and we were good to go. We also had to replace the coil in the HVAC unit cuz the buyers home inspector found a leak. He actually found lots of things. Wish we had hired him instead of the "see no evil" that guy we got. Ah well, live and learn. The coil was lots of hundreds, even with the generous help of our good friend and trusty HVAC guy.

All that didn't leave much money in the kitty for fun while Mike was here. But, he has been working like a dog racking up the overtime hours, and I paid for a few fun things before I knew that repair men were going to claim the lions share of all those O.T. hours. It was also his birthday while he was here, so that demands a bit of a celebration. If anyone deserves it, he does. And if anyone wants to celebrate him, it's us!

We celebrated his birthday a day late because it fell on a Sunday. Or maybe I should say we celebrated small on Sunday and bigger on Monday. We went for our traditional birthday breakfast out. Mimi's seems to be the birthday breakfast hot spot of late. Then we took a picnic lunch and went to the Guadalupe River State Park. It is about 8 miles from our house and we had NEVER been there. Amazing.

We did an almost 2 mile loop trail that was just about right for the kids. They were just starting to make noise about food and rest as we were reaching the end of the loop. Mike carried Ty in the backpack and he loved it. Ty, not Mike. Although Mike might have loved it too.

Hailey said it was so fun, it seemed like her birthday. Funny, that's the same thing she said when we went to the Bass Pro shop the week before :) Ezra kept asking where we were going...They all ran down the trail, picking up rocks, singing songs, making bow's and arrows and just generally enjoying themselves.

We even got to see a few wild pigs running past us in the brush. It gave us a bit of a pause, but they didn't have any interest in us.