October 13, 2013

So, what we do on our weekends off:  go for walks.  And it's starting to get a little cooler here, so the leaves are *just* starting to change.  (It's still mostly green...really green.)  But, what has changed looks really pretty, and makes us even more excited for it to change. One of the things we said when we first moved here, was "man, I bet it's really pretty when the leaves all change and everything in the fall," so it's exciting to see how that goes. :)

And then we came back on duty, and had one of the busiest weeks of house-parenting I've experienced yet.  The day after we came back duty, we had a boy who had a left for a short stint, come back.  Of course, his behavior showed that the reason he had left in the first place was still an issue, so, he left two days later, which was the double-edged sword:  it was stressful to have him back here, but it was stressful to have him gone too.  (But on a more serious note, pray for him).  But then on top of that, the next two days after he got back, all us houseparents went to a marriage seminar, from 8am to 3 pm (and with travel time, that goes from about 7:20 am to about 3:40 pm).  Which more importantly, means no time to go talk to office people about issues, no time to plan meals or get the food for them, any of the paper work we need to do during the day, or (probably most importantly) no time to process what we talked about at the seminar.  So in short, that was a very long two days in itself.  But, they treated us to a very nice dinner after the second day, so that was nice (and I still have leftovers. :D ).

But, we've had a good weekend.  We took advantage of the nice weather, and went down to the creek last Friday night.  We roasted hot dogs, and made s'mores, and it was even nice enough that the boys could go swimming a little bit.  It seems like the boys had a good time (and I know they had a better time than the other cottage that went camping, and then got rained out and had to come back in the middle of the night).  We also got to take all our boys to Wal-mart so they could spend their allowances, so they're all jazzed about their new Nerf guns and everything.  So, as usual, ups and downs, but overall good. :)