Barhorst Brewed: January 28-February 4

Time to visit the cousins! Now that the Bossards have moved back to Pennsylvania, Justine and I decided that we needed to get everyone together more often. This month it was my turn to travel, so I packed up the kids on Sunday afternoon and headed east. Bryan was originally supposed to come with us, but he had a job interview that got scheduled for Tuesday, so he missed out on all the fun.

When I didn't hit my original goal of leaving by 2, I pretty much gave up on any goal at all, so I think we finally rolled out of the driveway at 4. This meant, of course, that we had to stop for dinner on the way. All five of us hopped out of the car for bathroom breaks and happy meals at a McDonald's near the border. The girls were so excited. In Gretchen's words, "This is the best day ever!" We did add an hour to our eta, though, and didn't arrive at the Bossard abode until 9.

The week was noisy. Justine said that she felt like we were running an orphanage, especially at breakfast time when we served the kids oatmeal. Olivia and William played Battleship, I played Dragonwood with the older two and Uno with the oldest four, Justine invented card games that were really math facts and played with William and sometimes Olivia. We accompanied the cousins to a Music Together class on Tuesday, which was fun for the kids. The girls were unsure in the car whether they even wanted to go, and told me that they would watch but they would NOT sing. They did sing, though, and danced as well.

Sometime during the drive on Sunday, Olivia developed an intense fear of bears. No amount of telling her that bears didn't live in the city, and even if they did, they wouldn't be able to climb three stories up the side of the house, and even if they did that, they definitely wouldn't be able to squeeze through the tiny attic window, would convince her that she wasn't going to get eaten by a bear while she was falling asleep. I made a deal with her and told her that she could stay up until I went to bed, but that she had to do school during that time. It was magical. She asked to do school, she was excited to do school, she willingly moved from one subject to another until she was so tired that her poor little brain spaced out completely. Justine said it's because she thinks she's getting away with something. It might be worth keeping up at home.

My one mission for this trip was to help Justine find the Joseph tape so that I could transfer it to DVDs to give to everyone. When we were considering where we should look first, Joseph (Justine's husband) mentioned that he'd seen it -- he remembered because it had his name on it. He headed to the basement to find it and, much to Justine's relief, discovered it in the top layer of the first box he opened. Our task the next evening was to transfer it to a DVD. I had planned to buy a VHS to DVD converter, but it turns out that they had one of those already. Justine even knew where to find a blank DVD. So we set to work copying the tape. We should have started earlier in the evening, but Justine and I (and an exhausted Olivia) sacrificed and stayed up to watch the whole thing to make sure it worked. It did. :) I now have a DVD of Joseph. Let the copying project commence.

On Thursday morning, the kids finally seemed to have settled in. I'd been asked at least once each day when we would be going home, but when I announced that we'd be leaving after lunch, I was met with resistance. Suddenly no one wanted to leave. Protests aside, we gathered up our things and headed out after an early lunch. We arrived home just after five and... the power was out. Bryan took Gretchen to go buy some dinner while I set up candles and cleaned up a bit. At some point I realized that Bryan probably didn't call the power company and, even though outages have always been reported by the time I call, I should probably do that. So I called, and was shocked to get an actual person instead of a recording telling me that they already knew about my problem. As it turned out, we were the only people without power. I confirmed it by looking out the window and seeing the neighbors' lights on. The power finally came back on just before 10 after an electric company truck stopped near the pole outside of our house for all of two minutes while one technician made a small adjustment to the wire. We're not entirely sure what happened to knock our power out in the first place.

On Friday, Olivia had her homeschool enrichment course through the parks department. She was running around having a good time, but when she found out that she had to go to science class, she developed an instant stomach ache. I didn't think she was sick, but she thought maybe she wouldn't be able to go to dance, either, so I left her alone. I did get her up to ride along to take Gretchen to dance class, and by the time we were finished dropping Gretch off, Olivia was feeling much better. She made a full recovery in the next twenty minutes, so when it was time to pick Gretchen up I just drove straight from there to the parks department. Olivia didn't know there was an afternoon session as well. :) She managed just fine, and even seemed to enjoy the planetarium that they got to explore.

Pictures:

Olivia plays library. She had dolls propped up in front of all those boxes so that they could listen to the story: