One Last Weekend, and the Return to the Rat Race.

I usually try to update this blog on Monday, Tuesday at the latest, and consider Wednesday a "break glass if needed" option. It's been a long time since I didn't get around to it until Friday afternoon. But here we find ourselves, for the first time since before we were married, both with job jobs. We've been so lucky to have a couple years during which somebody was always on a school schedule, to get our fearsome foursome started.


And we thought that was tough. Now we've officially joined the ranks of the harried two-crazy-job parents, conducting high level negotiations over daycare dropoff and pickup, drawing straws to see who gets the "good" workout slot- and it should tell you something that this is the 5am one- and sometimes having to go back to work (or pull out the work computer) after the kids are in bed. It's definitely not glamorous, and this week especially we are really living on the edge. We gratefully accepted a dinner invitation from friends on Wednesday when we found we had nothing to feed the kids for dinner besides beer and spaghetti noodles.

Knowing our kids, they would've been delighted, but we considered this pretty rock bottom.


Naturally before we re-entered the rat race, we had one last hurrah. Seth finally got time off to go to Walter Reed to have prosthetic work done Thursday, and I jumped at the chance to take a weekend road trip to meet him in our old stomping grounds. First, Ford had surgery to put tubes in his ears, and was a real champ about it.

He was way more upset about Friday traffic on 95, and he and Finley eventually demanded a break from car exhaust and Disney fumes. I felt the same way, so we took a long one and played in a creek at a park in Delaware.

 By which I mean, everyone got muddy and wet.

We eventually made it, having been reminded by the Capital Beltway what we don't miss about DC, and spent the rest of the weekend enjoying the things we do.

We had a picnic at the newly renovated Walter Reed USO, and reflected that WRNMMC is not nearly so terrible when you're not a hostage there.

We got to see the Taylor fam, and Finley got her first haircut from Ha (a tradition).

Finley showed Ford her favorite splashpark.

We made pilgrimages to Redwood and Georgetown Cupcake, and to the Lincoln Memorial, where Seth and I had one of our first dates and later got engaged. We thought it was really special. Naturally, Finley and Ford flung themselves on the ground at Lincoln's feet and cried. (Literally, over spilled milk.)

and we stopped by the Siriwardenes' to pee in their fabulous pool on our way out of town.

 We stayed so late that the kids and I didn't get home until 3am (Seth's legs weren't done until Tuesday), so I started my first day of the new (crazy) job solo parenting on 3 hours of sleep. Nowhere to go but up, right...?

Finley often hogs the photos of the week, so this week's are two of Ford. "Smoking" a candy cigarette at the Siriwardenes', which cracked us all up,

and caught wreaking havoc on the toilet paper rolls at the new Navy Lodge.