Well, for the first time in a few weeks I haven’t had any books come in. And trust me …. with 500+ books on my shelves, this is a very good thing! I’m acquiring faster than I will ever read!
Last week was absolutely nuts in my little corner of the world. On Wednesday, our local water supplier suffered a huge water main break at their plant. This is the plant that provides the water to the local towns, affecting about 175,000 people. We were put on alert to conserve as much water as possible because the original “quick fix” didn’t work. Relatively early on Thursday, our little town of Carterville ran completely out of water. Completely. Schools closed, restaurants closed, bars closed, beauty shops closed. Just about everything shut down. You can imagine what our Wal-Mart/Kroger/Target/gas stations looked like in order to get bottled water…. because there was ultimately no time-line on the fix. The water plant had to have a huge part brought down from Chicago (about 6 hours away) …. and I think it had to be made before it was shipped. Thankfully, my parents were not affected by this and we went and stayed Thursday night with them. By the time we got back home later in the evening on Friday we had enough water pressure to flush the toilets. But goodness it was not a fun couple of days at all. And I’m so thankful for all the people who worked tirelessly night and day to get that plant back up and running. I feel like the employees/contractors don’t get nearly enough thanks and praise for what they sometimes have to do in these situations.
Normally I would have taken this a lot more calmly than I did. I flat-out panicked. Why? Because we had our son’s birthday party reserved for Saturday in one of the neighboring towns at Pirate Pete’s (essentially a big arcade type place) and we had no idea whether or not he would get that party or if we would be stuck either rescheduling or scrambling to just host it at our house. It was an absolute nightmare! Luckily, the fix to the water plant was able to be successful with the water coming partially back online by late Friday evening and by Saturday Pirate Pete’s was able to be open for business. I was so relieved. A 6-year-old can’t comprehend why his birthday party can’t happen because of something like this. And he was able to have an absolutely wonderful birthday party! Our boy is so blessed with many wonderful friends (and their parents are great too!).
On Sunday we had tickets to the St. Louis Cardinals baseball game. I was exhausted from the previous few days that I sent my husband and Garrett with his parents. I didn’t feel like driving the nearly 3 hours (each way) to the game plus sitting at the game with a 3-year-old who probably wouldn’t want to sit there for an entire game…. so Katelyn and I had a very nice quiet day together at home. We were able to play outside on the new playset the kids got for their birthdays from my grandmother. And we watched more than our fair share of Sofia the First 🙂
We’ve got a fun-filled week coming up. Garrett has his baseball game on Tuesday evening. On Wednesday evening he has his kindergarten class’s end of the year picnic that his teacher is hosting (I just LOVE everything about our community!) Next weekend we’ll be hosting Garrett’s family birthday at our house. And I’m sure we’ll do something fun for Memorial Day too … he’s been invited to his best buddy Ryder’s grandparents house (just up the road from us) for some swimming on Sunday. And then it’ll be the last couple of days of school and we’re out for the summer. I can’t believe that my baby’s kindergarten year is almost over 😥 It has absolutely flown by! This summer I’ve chosen not to do daycare for him (he’ll do a few weeks of different camps), but I’m going to be working from home and utilizing the grandparents. So I’m really looking forward to some one-on-one time with him. I’m hoping for a fun-filled summer!
I got to watch some of the Royal Wedding. It was beautiful. I’m still not entirely sure about the match of Meghan Markle and Harry …. but he looked amazingly in love so that’s what matters! And I do love the fairytale of it all. I thought her dress was absolutely beautiful, but a little on the plain side … it needed a just a little more embellishment to it. But I did love her reception dress – that was gorgeous! Ahh gotta love a good fairytale 😀
Oh and one other little tidbit…. Nathan has formally accepted a new job offer. A little over three years ago he took a position within my family company to get us to be able to move back to the area. It wasn’t really an ideal fit for him and he really missed engineering (his chosen field), so when an opportunity popped up he applied, interviewed, and got the job. He starts that on June 1. We’re all very happy for him. Engineering jobs are few and far between in our area (it’s why we had to move in the first place) so we are thrilled that this has happened for him! Plus it’ll be nice to be going back to a normal schedule of Monday-Friday 8-4:30 …. which will be a really nice change after working Saturdays and odd hours, including super early and super late. The concrete business is not ideal for young families, he has missed out on quite a bit these last few years because of the crazy hours the concrete company sometimes has … like on Mother’s Day weekend this year when he literally had to work from 8;30pm Saturday night to 2am Sunday morning and then had to go back from 7am – 6pm Sunday … yeah 😦
Tales of a Book Addict 