In the last four days I have:

gone hiking--this, of course, involved packing up for and unpacking the hike stuff. Luckily, my mom did all the driving.

gone ice skating--this, of course, involved packing up and unpacking the ice skating stuff. The disadvantage of this adventure was navigating the road repair. The advantage was my sister took the kids and I got to shopping alone. Oh, and we all had fun ice skating.

went shopping, probably will need to do that again today

gone swimming twice--ditto the pack and unpack business. Friday was a great swim day. David wanted me to give him a lesson, so he can make up the stickers on his chart. He swam the width of the pool five times. The kid is not a great swimmer, but he is, now, a swimmer. We also had Lisa and her son Ben join us. That took some negotiating between the boys, but they eventually got into shooting water guns at plastic dinosaurs and all was well.

went to dinner at a new friend's house--We went straight from swimming to Beth's house, and I was sure the kids were going to crash. But, in fact, they were fabulous. I think that is the most charming and polite I've seen them in ages. David actually raised his hand when he has something to say. Beth was a professional musician for thirty years and let us play with her marimbas and dozens of other cool noise makers. You know that sound that magic makes in cartoon? I can make that sound.

went to jazzercise--Yeah!

gardened with Tina--I wish we had had more time to garden with Tina but I was squeezing it in before the Daniel Bagley new kindergartener playdate. We did manage to cut some dead things down and had a great time socializing with her. She's in charge of our garden, if you hadn't figured that out, but we are all supposed to help. None of us tend to do it if she's not around.

went to the Daniel Bagley new kindergarten play date--This was the hardest gig I did. David was shy and needed to hide in the trees. I spent my time alternating between greeting new families and cajoling him forward. I finally convinced him the new principal was feeling shy and needed to make friends. She came over, and they had a good chat. Then he went around recruiting other kids for her to meet.

two haircuts at two different locations--Yes, I am an idiot. My only excuse is I thought John was taking one kid to one while I did the other. I didn't process the fact that John had a talk to prepare and present. It was a good way to compare/contrast the two hair cutting joints. Kids' cuts at Wallingford tried to make me feel like a bad mom for not buying 30.00 hair products for Rose. Beachcomber's on Greenwood greeted David by name and did no object to us staying half an hour late and playing air hockey. Guess where we will be going back to?

hosted a sleepover--Rose had two friends spend the night, and we put them all in the tent in the backyard. All went well except for David feeling excluded. They even went to sleep at 10:00 and got up at 6:30, not bad sleep, but obviously not enough for non-functional Rose today.

got 4 unanticipated hours off--John took the kids to Ikea, and I couldn't even think about writing poetry. I paid bills and caught up on random emails.

I have got to slow the pace.