12 hours

I received a call from not one, but TWO preschools Tuesday saying that they had openings for Sam. I went on toured both, and finally decided on Trinity Baptist. They have a very comfortable feel, and remind me a lot of Lord of Life back in Memphis. Sam is so excited that when it was time to leave I had to bodily carry him out kicking and crying. Poor boy, I had no idea staying at home with no one but me was so boring. They only had a MWF opening, so I am going to take it and hope that a T/Th opens up later.

So the question is... what in the world am I going to do with almost 12 hours a week of alone time? That's right, no Hannah, Sam, or Richard. You'd think I'd have all sorts of grand plans, but when it finally comes down to it, I just don't know what to do with myself anymore. Give me some good ideas! The more crazy they are, the more likely I am to actually do it!

We have a slab!!

Okay, so we know that absolutely no one is going to be nearly as excited about this as we are, but the builders poured the foundation for our house this week!!! YEAH!!!! And Friday the lumber pack arrived, which means it should be finished in 70 days!!! Woohoo!!! This paragraph gets the award for blatant overuse of exclamation points!!!

We went and hung out today on our slab. Richard and I sat in the master bedroom while Hannah and Sam ran races from the front porch to the back, repeatedly. And then Sam started picking up big chunks of Alabama red clay and throwing them on the slab, and (of course) Richard admonishes "hey- no throwing dirt in the house!". He then started sweeping the clay out with his foot, which was, in one word, hilarious. and silly. Okay, that was two words.

I really wanted to play hopscotch in the den, but didn't want to go to the store for chalk, when Richard (inspired by sam, no doubt) suggested drawing a hopscotch with the red clay. So there you have it. The moores, spending the afternoon on a slab of concrete. they really need to finish our house; I think the apartment life is getting to us.

Wii boxing

Recently I threw Hannah and Sam in the Wii boxing ring together, and they really, really liked it! I'm not sure which was more funny- watching their little characters flail about, or watching the real kids spin and punch and jump and shout. And since the best way to win is to just keep moving...they were pretty well matched. Sam floored hannah a couple times.

Who needs real boxing gloves anymore?

Nantahala Falls

We went to Nantahala Falls last weekend with the whole family, and then some. Richard's parents, my parents, julia, Laura, Jason, and Avery, Michelle, and Hannah and Sam. We all had a great time- The first day most of us went kayaking while Sweetie and Zannah stayed behind with the little kids. We all came back claiming to be soooo tired but I think that the grandma's had the hard job! The Nantahala is a good river to ride even if you don't know anything about kayaking, and it has a pretty exciting class 3 rapid at the end. Everyone else made it through fine- but I went sideways halfway through and flipped! That was the best part!
The next day we went tubing on a milder river and took Hannah with us. Let me tell you, this girl is a little thrill seeker. There was enough white water to flip most of the adults that went down, and this girl was totally game to float the "waterfall" twice! She was so excited the second time that she danced up the trail. Of course, she could dance only because dad was carrying her tube for her!
The last day we hiked up Clingman's dome before saying goodbye to Laura, Jason and Avery. Supposedly there is a spectacular view from on top this highest of peaks, but only on clear days. Most days, like ours, are cloudy, and since we were high enough to be inside the cloud...visibility was not so great. But the hike was fun!

A big thanks to Chief for making this trip happen! He's the best!

Error 18

Here's a big apology to all the avid bannappudding blog readers (that goes to both of you): I'm sorry. My computer hard drive, after years of faithful service, failed. It keeps giving me Error 18 messages and telling me that there are unreadable logical blocks, and that device sda3 and sda2 have irreconcilable errors on them. And we all know what that means, don't we?
Richard keeps telling me that it's okay to use his computer, but I can't shake the nasty suspicion that alien buggers came in one night and implanted magnets into my fingertips, a sure fire way to destroy any hard drive. So I don't want to mess up his, too. Right now I'm booted from a linux flash drive, but I can't access any of my files. Which are, thankfully, backed up safely, secretly, and separately from my magnetized fingers.

So I haven't posted any of the exciting things we've been doing, like kindergarten, kayaking, rick climbing, Children's Museum visiting, Wii boxing, Kung foo panda, playgroups, stranded by a dead battery, alien encounters, and all the like.

Does anyone know what error 18 is?