“Weekends like these, I feel like the time has been stolen from us.”

That was my husband’s comment when we finally got home tonight. It wasn’t wasted time, by any stretch, but it was one of those insanely packed-full-busy-as-hell weekends where we had every minute planned from the time we woke up until well after dark in the evening. There sure as heck wasn’t a second of relaxing, and even though it was productive and worthwhile, there’s still that part of us that really aches for time to just… chill.

Yesterday was spent looking at houses. All. Day. Long. As soon as we were cleaned up and fed after waking we headed off to do drive-bys on the list of houses that our new real estate agent emailed to me on Friday. After an hour of this we went off to meet my sister who had VERY kindly agreed to watch Anna for the day, which was very much appreciated since looking at houses with a three-year-old in tow would have been nightmarish. Anna was duly delivered, and then we went back to doing drive-bys until the time to meet our agent.

Despite the fact that we were able to eliminate a good number of houses just from exterior inspection, it still took most of the day to see the ones we wanted to see. However! We found two houses that are very appealing (in extremely different ways, oddly enough.) We certainly had our wish list or everything we wanted in a house and neighborhood, and we had to compromise on a certain number of things, but at the end of the day we went ahead and made an offer on one of the houses. To be honest, I don’t hold out high hopes of actually getting that house for what we can afford, but if we don’t get it, we’ll be more than happy to go for the other house, which we definitely can get in our price range.

Finally, at the end of the day I made it over to my sister’s house to pick up my darling child. Little did I know that my sister had done her best to corrupt her pure innocent heart during the day. You see, my niece takes belly-dancing lessons, and had brought home a belly-dancing video. During the watching of this, my darling, pure, unsullied daughter got up and started copying the moves on the video. Extremely well, I might add. (I wish, how I WISH that I’d had a video camera, because it was utterly priceless!!!) Then, Anna asked me if I “had a babysitter.” I told her no, at which time she poked my tummy and said, “You have a babysitter in your belly!” (Hey, I was slouching, and.. and there might have been a slight roll of fat.)

Anyway, after my sister stopped laughing hysterically I managed to collect my child and return to my own abode.

Then today was no less busy, though in a different way. Jack had to go into the office for a couple of hours, and when he returned we went out to grab breakfast, then headed across the lake to go to the zoo for the birthday party of one of the grandkids. This was supposed to be from 1 to 3. I also had the party for my writers group at 2, so at about 2:30 we excused ourselves from party #1, raced down to Whole Foods to grab something suitable to bring to Party #2 (since I didn’t think anyone would want food that had been sitting in a warm car for a few hours,) and made our way to Gentilly. We lasted there less than two hours… or rather, Anna lasted less than two hours, at which time we made our excuses and headed back to the northshore.

We’re now at home, it’s fast approaching the time to put the kid to bed, Anna’s running a low-grade fever, and we’re all exhausted.

Happy Weekend!