The Joy of Unexpected Extended Weekends

Tomorrow I head back to work after an unexpected four-day weekend, and I must say, my heart is breaking a little bit. Due to our babysitter's illness, I've spent the last two days hanging out with my little man and it's been nice. Monday, after we got home from dropping off Emily and not going to daycare, we laid around, watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer (the movie -- my first time seeing it, which is weird considering I was obsessed with the show), napped, watched some daytime TV, then headed out for a little shopping before picking up Emily for dance. After a trip to Bed, Bath & Beyond, then Target, we had a little time to kill, so we took a drive up to the Shoal Creek Living History Museum. In the five years we've lived in this house, we have never visited the museum, and up until about a year ago, didn't even know it existed. We didn't have much time, but since it was so nice out (almost 50 degrees), we decided to go up and take a look.

We saw buffalo, which was more of a thrill for me than for Brendan.

Then we walked around a couple of the buildings.

We will definitely have to head up there with the whole family to take a better look this spring. It's a GREAT location for photographs, if my kids will play along!

Today was much less adventurous, but just as rewarding. After waking me up for his milk, breakfast bar and cartoons this morning, Brendan let me go back and sleep in a little longer. We spent the rest of the day hanging out, watching TV, me messing on the computer, him playing with his toys... and then my sweet boy fell asleep next to the couch.

But tomorrow reality returns and it's back to work I go. It's not that I don't like my job, because I do, it's just that every time I get to spend time like this with one or both of my kids, it makes me sad that I don't get to spend all of the time with my kids like this. I used to say that I could be a stay at home if I could only take my kids to a babysitter for a couple of hours a day. But now that they are older, I think I would be okay keeping them all day.

But that's only a dream, because unless we win the lottery (and first we'd actually have to play the lottery) we won't be able to live on one income for quite some time. So until then, I will try to enjoy every moment that I do get to spend with them, especially these unexpected long weekends.