Odds and Ends and In Betweens

How shall I condense weeks of postless days into one post?

Things that have gone right:
*We have survived the summer
*Mylie is starting to walk
*Mylie is starting to talk
*School will be back in session for Maddie starting September 4
*We are going on a family trip to Disney World for a week
*Ben was recruited by a new company and began working for them last week
*Zack is figuring out how to use the toilet
*We bought the kids an 8 foot trampoline, which is the only size that would fit in our backyard
*We found a new in box entertainment center (in a discontinued color) at the pottery barn outlet for $60 that is sold in the catalog for over $700
*We had our car detailed, which makes a world of difference to a car that is put through the torture of four small and often sticky children

Things that have gone wrong:
*A toilet in the upstairs flooded in the middle of the night and poured through the ceiling in our main room
*Our fridge/freezer that we bought new less than two years ago stopped working
*Ants have made themselves at home in our kitchen
*Potty training laundry is backing up my laundry schedule

OK, so that's not too many things going wrong, but enough to inconvenience me.

I am looking forward to the routine of the school year. Andrew is sad that all of his friends are going to start kindergarten this year. Andrew will turn 5 in December and the cut off for kindergarten in our county is September 30. So, all his church friends and neighborhood friends really are starting kindergarten this year and Andrew will just be going to his preschool again three days a week. Fortunately, he loves his preschool.

Zack, provided he is able to be fully potty trained (or at least capable of avoiding an accident in underpants for 2 and a half hours) will be going to preschool one day a week. His preschool will overlap with Andrew's, so one blissful day a week I will have a little over two hours with just Mylie. When I think of what life will be like for those few hours, I envision myself running through a field of wildflowers in slow motion while butterflies fly all around me. Of course, in reality I will be able to run a few errands with just one child trying to leap out of the cart and pull things off shelves. Yes, it will be nice to travel light!

Of course, we have two fun interruptions to our school year. We will be in Disney World for the second week of school and celebrating Maddie's 7th birthday while we are on our trip. Then a few weeks after that we will head to Salt Lake for Jessie's wedding.

Travel with small children is not for the faint of heart. A few weekends ago we went to my cousin's mission homecoming. Zack, as a normal two year old out of his element, had a difficult time settling down and going to sleep in the hotel room. The guy in the room next to us began pounding on the wall at about 10. Despite the fact that Zack was asleep by 12:30, the guy came down the next morning to the room where they served continental breakfast and started yelling at us about how rude and unruly our children were. Fortunately, Ben kept his cool and just apologized and said it was much louder on our side of the wall. I was relieved that the other guests in the restaurant just gave the guy a look like he was a big jerk and looked at us like we were the victims. It was an unpleasant experience, but it wasn't like we were a group of partying teenagers. Zack just was crying and trying to settle down, with us trying to calm him down and keep his volume as low as possible. At least we won't be at a hotel in Utah, that will make us all a little less on edge. At Disney World my kids do too much during the day to leave them with enough energy to fight sleep.

I will try to add some pictures to this post later, once I charge the camera again...