While Tom is away

Tom has been gone for the past 3 days. He is actually in Japan doing work for the air force. Those of you that know how much I love to travel will understand how it nearly killed me to have him go to a foreign country without me but we just couldn't swing it between school for the kids and a babysitter. Lucky for me, however, this project requires a return visit to Japan and I WILL be going on that trip. Nick just got his passport in the mail so he can go with us too. We'll have to see about the other kids, depends on their grades...

Anyway, it seems that all problems crop up while Tom is away. Church was a blast with Nick in my primary class. He was quite ornery too. Luckily, there were only 2 kids and they were happy coloring and cutting for 30 minutes. The other thing that happened at church was that we found out that the seminary car pool that takes Miriya from seminary at 6AM to school is officially kaput now that a majority of the kids have their drivers licenses. Unfortunately, Miriya is not one of them. Tom usually takes care of all the carpooling/young womens/scouts ride arrangements because I hate to call people on the phone. No you don't understand, I REALLY HATE to call people on the phone. After trying to get Miriya to call one of the boys with his new license and a car and getting a flat refusal I mustered up enough guts to call him myself. Miriya doesn't mind riding with the kid, I think she hates calling people too. Tom had already hired this kid to pick Miriya up in the morning so I just had to arrange for the ride from seminary to school. Tom is already paying him to pick Miriya up from our house in the morning so I offered to renegotiate the pay rate but he declined. I think he feels guilty for being paid at all to do this. Tom says he would pay more to not have to take Miriya at 5:30 in the morning every day. So I think it is a good deal for everyone involved. And I actually made the phone call myself.

For Sunday dinner I did not have anything planned. It was all I could do to get 4 kids ready and out the door in time for 9AM church after working the night before. When Miriya found out that I didn't have anything planned she took it upon herself to make pork chops and milk gravy for dinner. Miriya cooked the entire meal all by herself. It turned out great. She didn't need any help from me. In fact, I was trying to be helpful and I sent the potato peels down the garbage disposal and clogged it. It was Thanksgiving all over again except Tom wasn't here to fix the problem. And this was a big problem since we do 1-2 loads of dishes in the dishwasher a day. So, do you think that I meekly washed dishes by hand? NO! Did I break down and call the plumber? NO! Did I hire Taylor to fix it? Yes! After negotiating a fee of $10 towards the Dominican Republic he then said, "How do I fix it?" Well, duh! So much for that option. So I had him gather the tools for me and I fixed it. The hardest part was asking for a wrench and having him bring me 2 vice grips and then a pair of pliers before he figured out what a wrench is. Not too hard to fix, no leaks so far.

That is all the excitement to date, but there may be more as Tom still has 4 more days until he comes home. When I asked Miriya why she decided to cook the meal she just said, "Mom, you usually have everything planned, so I just decided to do it since you didn't have a plan this time." Really? So I asked the obvious question, "If I planned less would you cook more?" Probably, she answered. Welllll, that went right into my long term memory. I suspect that I will be "forgetting" a few more meals in the future.