A Few Orders of Business

Yesterday we had a busy evening.  There was a chess tournament for Hyrum and Joshua, 2 separate scout meetings for Joshua and Benji, and on top of it Jeremy was gone all day working on his project and studying for his final. I dropped Benji off at scouts at 5:00 and went to the school to catch the last of the tournament.  Then we went home for a few minutes before I had to take Joshua to scouts.  I didn't get dinner done until after Joshua was home, but we made it!  Phew!  It doesn't sound like much, but I am no soccer mom.  Days like that make my head swim.

The good news is that Jeremy thinks he did well on his final.  He won't find out for sure until next week, but hooray for Jeremy!  And check out this other good news:

That's right!  Hyrum won a trophy from the chess tournament!  He didn't place in his grade, but he placed 2nd overall.  Don't aske me how that works, but hooray for Hyrum! :D  The trophy says, "Fiddlersburg Invitational Chess Tournament - 2012, 2nd Place Over All."

Joshua won the round that I watched, but I don't think he won any others.  He's learning, though!  The tournament included 2 other schools, but they didn't have very many players.  In all there were about 24 participants, and more than half were from our school, so, of course, our school kept the traveling trophy.

And in other news, on Saturday afternoon I had Benji make me some toast.  What we didn't realize was that somebody had made a puddle of dish soap on the counter, right where he set my toast down to butter it.  Oh, my goodness.  I about died.  I felt grossed out for a good 20 minutes until I could get the taste out of my mouth and the gagginess out of my body.  And the next day, look what Jill did (yes, I do think she was the one who made the mess on the counter too):

Yes, she did dump the dish soap all over the kitchen floor.  Argh!  I was without dish soap until yesterday when I finally got to the store, and, yes, my kitchen is a disaster.  I'll be tackling that again today with a vengeance.

And just for fun, here's a story that Michael wrote for a school assignment.  I gave him a sheet of copy paper folded in half so he could have 4 pages to write on, and this is what he came up with. (I added words with Paint just for clarity.)

Not bad, not bad. :) I love this age where they're just learning to read and write. :)

Oh, and one other bit of fun that happened the day before yesterday: Jeremy brought home a pile of Euros.  He got enough to cover his expenses.  Glad to have that taken care of!  It looks like play money, and each bill is a different size.  The less money it's worth, the smaller the bill is.  It was kind of fun to look at. :) Things are working out.  He's had some trouble getting registered, but it sounds like that's clearing up.  He's found a place to live, and I believe the payment for that is already sent.  I'm excited for him and I hope he'll have a great experience.  I'm scared to death, but I think it will be a good experience and I'm excited for all of us as well.  I do think that Jill is going to miss her Papa terribly.  Poor girly.  We're trying to prepare her for it, but how do you prepare a 2-year-old for this?  She cannot understand.  Still, we both know this is what we are supposed to do, so we are doing it.