Race to the finish, and a Squirrel Incident.

... aaaaaand of course it’s a race to the finish, our best intentions notwithstanding. Seth’s scrambling to finish his last big take-home exam and figure out how to crate deer heads. I’m trying to inprocess the student detachment and simultaneously outprocess the Pentagon while still working and trying to schedule movers and cleaning teams and reserve hotel rooms and register kids for CDC. We definitely have not cleaned out the garage, nor have we packed a single kid necessity for the ten days we’ll be without our stuff.

Today while attempting to outprocess the dental clinic, I found out that my dental records are being held hostage until I can schedule an appointment for an exam. As the dental clinic doesn’t seem to be open the only times I’m available (generally between 11pm and 3am, the time at which Finley has suddenly started waking up and shrieking), I’m unsure how to resolve that particular standoff.

A week from today we’ll be moved into a hotel in Old Town and I’ll be listening to the movers drop my good china, and I couldn’t be more thrilled. At this point, we’re in “let’s get it over with” mode, and one way or another this move is going to happen.

As usual, our saving grace is Grandma Jayne, who has been cheerfully keeping two tiny terrorists from burning down the house and having moving-related nervous breakdowns, while pretending not to hear Seth and I sniping at each other under our breaths about packing and the transport of guns and ammo.

Because Jayne is here, I get pictures like this

and this while I’m at work,

instead of phone calls about Finley’s miscellaneous cold symptoms, diaper cream shortages, and daycare transgressions.

Grandma’s extra set of hands has also meant that, while her parents run around like the proverbial chickens-sans-heads and her brother remains blissfully unaware, Finley gets to continue to enjoy pool time with her brother (Baby Ford turns out to be an incredible swimmer), guacamole sessions with her hands,

and pizza night.

Although even Grandma can’t prevent early morning weekend wakeups. (She did provide the Sheriff Callie PJs though.) (Doesn’t Finley look like Nat in this picture?)

I was determined to do at least one “DC thing” on our second to last weekend in town, so Jayne also helped me drag the beasts to the National Building Museum- one of the last big ones Finley hadn't been to- while Seth financed the local hardware store owner's next vacation.

Finley loved the big foam blocks (although in the picture above she was apparently not happy with me for having knocked some of hers down.)

She was even less thrilled about the uber-aggressive squirrels that attacked her for her granola bar at the park afterwards. (Seriously. One lunged at her viciously. It scared all of us, and we had to make a run for it.) This picture, which I love, was taken right before The Horrific Squirrel Incident. Ford looks like he knows what’s up.

I’m down to my last week of work, and the to-do list looms, so the blog may suffer for a bit. Wish us luck! The two photos of the week are this one (courtesy, naturally, of Grandma), because Ford’s looking like such a big, handsome guy,

and this one. Because it’s blurry, classic Finley.