<p>I’ve LOVED having my kids home (plus one of their friends) this past week, but I really feel like I’ve done a LOT of cooking, picking up (the real cleaning will start tomorrow I guess), grocery shopping, and emptying the darn dishwasher. </p>
<p>And the “up all night” thing! Pizzas getting cooked at 2:00 am or I wake up at 3:00 and wonder if they’re home… I need some sleep. </p>
<p>I’m sort of looking forward to my empty nest tomorrow. Haha. </p>
<p>And we get to do it all over again really soon. :)</p>
<p>Yes, yes, yes! With all my company over for Thanksgiving, I ended up running the dishwasher 4 times on Friday!!! And all of my leftovers are completely gone as of lunch yesterday. Whew. I’m exhausted too. But it’s been fun.</p>
<p>Now I’m off to bake brownies for my son to take back to school with him. I think I’m going to go into cooking/cleaning withdrawal soon. (But at least he didn’t bring any laundry home with him.)</p>
<p>SO funny! I’m been thinking the exact same thing yesterday - the darn dishwasher has been running daily at least! How does one more person (and assorted tag alongs) make such a difference!!!</p>
<p>Love the break, but also good to get back to a routine for a few weeks before Christmas break hits!!!</p>
<p>Agree with all (and Garland, we have no kitchen AT ALL right now!). The five-year-old has been the spokesperson for the rest of us all morning, cheerfully waving D off on the train, getting a little teary as we climbed back into the car without her, and then reminding us calmly that she’ll be back in less than a month. </p>
<p>And then, since he’s five, pretty much repeating the cycle since then. :)</p>
<p>least favorite job- emptying the dishwasher. I feel like I have been a taxi service for the last 5 days. I am looking forward to a day of doing absolutely nothing. Isn’t going to happen but I can dream.</p>
<p>Clearly some instruction in dishwasher unloading is indicated here…it is a perfect TV commercial chore, start to finish three minutes. Sometimes there is not time to put everything away during that three minute interlude, but the next commercial gives time to finish the task. It is definitely a sprint (well, middle distance, at most a mile) task, not a marathon. The grocery shopping and the cooking is quite another thing, however. Whew…we will eat out of the freezer this week…not going back to the store again for a while. I am grateful that H is very easy to please, and that he made chili last week, several tubs of which are frozen!</p>
<p>The boys are too young for college, but we did have my sister and her family of 5 here for a week. It was absolutely wonderful, but did involve constant shopping, cooking, cleaning, dishwasher emptying. My sister and her husband did much of this. And the older kids pitched in, too. Her 3 and my 2 are great friends, and love nothing more than to be together. </p>
<p>The house is now quiet. They left yesterday and so did my husband, for a week-long business trip. I find it depressing after the hustle and bustle of last week.</p>
<p>We’ve been having Thanksgiving for 12- 18 people for 20 years. I’ve got the dishwashing thing down to good dishes for dinner only, paper plates for the pie and lunch sandwiches/snacks. Sturdy clear plastic glasses for between meals with names written on them with a sharpie marker. I’m not sure what’s worse for the enviorment - using lots of water with a dishwasher or a small pile of disposable plates. I also dislike spending all of my time alone with the dishwasher when I’d rather be talking with everyone else. My house is quiet too. Son is on the road right now heading back to VA. Daughter is sleeping on the other side of the world, Football is keeping the rest of us company on the tube… <em>sigh</em></p>
<p>Well, both boys came home, which was wonderful; initially, there were some concerns over having “only” two cars for four drivers. Then one car broke and we didn’t have it for two days.</p>
<p>Both boys brought home laundry (of course). Then the clothes dryer finally heaved its last gasp; the nice Sears man brought me a new one; the nice Sears man announced he couldn’t install the new one because the old one needs an electrician to detach it. ???</p>
<p>Got to know our neighbors very well again. They have a lovely clothes dryer.</p>
<p>And oh yes – after waiting for the Greyhound Bus to take S2 back to school for over an hour, he finally borrowed another family’s car to drive back with their kid. Will Greyhound give me my money back?? (Ha.)</p>
<p>Delightful to have them gone and not have to worry about them.</p>
<p>Our dishwasher and washing machine ran constantly too! As wonderful as is was to have S1 home for a few days, his hours are very different from ours. I feel like I still need to wait up for him when he is out with friends. Then the next morning when the preschool and grade school aged kids are up, I would rather not be. Oh, well. He called a few minutes ago to let me they had gotten back to school safely.</p>
<p>This is around the time when I typed them emails at college telling them to “go back to bed, the radio here just announced a snow day from school.” It’s surprising how many small jobs remain.</p>
<p>Life has gotten much easier since I was able to develop a “don’t wake me up when you come in” mindset, accompanied by a shut door and a fan running to keep me from listening. Usually he’s at his sister’s apartment nearby, or at a friend’s in town, so there’s little driving involved, and what there is involves slow, many-stoplighted cityish streets, so I think this allows me to worry less. That, or the sheer need to sleep.</p>
<p>Yes, I found myself weary still this morning. I cooked for 2 days and shopped all last week. I pulled out all of my china, and crystal. It was a change from paper plates. We usually have a bigger crowd and it has included small children, so I have served on paper plates for years. This year we only had eight people at our table, and no small children. I am more tired from prewashing all of this, and then washing all of my china and crystal by hand. I won’t put my china and crystal in my dishwasher, but boy was I tempted. Also, my older son arrived the day before Thanksgiving with all dirty clothes, so I washed all of that in addition to my last minute cooking and cleaning. I was very happy to have my son home for Thanksgiving, but I am also worn out.</p>
<p>I’m still trying to figure out how the addition of one kid (S,19 college soph) could make such a difference and create such tumult. D (24,Grad student ) didnt make it home but she’s passed into adulthood and doesnt create the whirlwind anymore.
Laundry,massive quantities of beverages,extradinarily different hours than we keep,car juggling (he flew in b/c it was only 5 days,he’ll drive in for the Christmas break) Lights left on,electronic devices going off constantly.I got tired just watching his lifestyle.
Garland…I wish I could get to the not needing to know he’s home stage.I don’t worry about his schedule/hrs/activities at school.I go to sleep but ask him to wake me up to tell me he’s home. When its 4:45a.m. and I havent been woken up and I wake up realizing it,call him and hes sleeping on a friends couch, thats when I melt down.If I can’t get over it,its gonna be a long winter break, and an even longer summer when he comes home to do an internship.Any sage advice?</p>
<p>cathymee-
Text messaging!
I ask them to let me know if they might not be coming home. Often this is arranged before they go out, but, if plans change and they later decide to stay over, I ask them to send me a text.
When I wake, if there is no kid and no text, I’ll text them.</p>
<p>mominva
I’m a partial Luddite.Don’t know about texting.Have a prepaid cell that I only turn on when I’m not home. I guess that might be a better way to communicate if I could learn, but more importantly, if S would learn to use the system too.He could surely call the house phone and tell me his plans I’d be glad to answer that (sarcasm here)</p>