CRAZY few weeks!

Hello! Well I have been MIA for about 2 1/2 weeks. It has been busy, busy, busy in the Hughes household! We started off August with a visit from Cici, the twins and Taylor. Katherine LOVED playing with Taylor's sunglasses and was quite smitten with her overall! She was definitely sad and worn out when they left. They left the same day that Chris headed South to Fort Lauderdale for the week. That Monday was an EARLY morning as Chris was out the door by 3:45am and the Virginia van pulled out around 4:45am. Luckily Katherine slept through all of that commotion, so she was in great spirits throughout the day! :)

Katherine and I were "bachelorettes" for a few days before Uncle Cory arrived. We spent our alone days working at the shop since Chris was gone, we were left to answer questions/cover things for him. Katherine definitely missed her Daddy as she would look at me like "what are you doing here" during bath time. By the end of the week she was especially cranky, but all of that was gone when Daddy walked through the door on Friday evening! :) I think Uncle Cory is now scared to have a kid due to all of the screaming that occurred between his arrival and Dad's homecoming...sorry about that Uncle Cory!

The weekend was a blur as we shopped on Saturday and then Sunday we spent the day at my parents' house swimming and having a birthday bash! We celebrated a ton of family birthdays (Happy Bday Dad, Sandi, Cory and Marty!) and had a ton of fun! Cory headed to the airport that night to pick up his roommate Alex...we then had an even number of Hokies and Wahoos under the same roof...that's dangerous territory! (Katherine counts as a Wahoo...Chris is neither as he couldn't care less about either school's sports)

Monday began the week of TS Fay...ugh! We spent Monday at the shop working with really not much rain or activity going on. Cory and Alex were able to get a whole day in at the beach, so their vacation was not totally spoiled by the wonderful storm. Tuesday morning was rainy, so Katherine and I headed to work as we have a few meetings scheduled for the day. WE got through the day and by the time we headed home around 4:30 the weather was getting pretty treacherous. The wind was pretty strong and the rain was coming down in buckets...well the rain hasn't stopped yet and here it is 9am on THURSDAY! Talk about a serious case of the rainy day blues! Poor Colby hates to get wet, so he has only been outside about 6 times since Tuesday morning. I think he is avoiding drinking water and eating so that he won't have to go out and get wet! Such a silly boy! Katherine on the other hand is fascinated watching the rain blowing horizontally past the windows. So far we are fine and dandy with no damage, other than one lost board on our privacy fence. There is major flooding in low lying areas, but apparently we are not a low lying area as we have minimal standing water around her neighborhood. Chris had to go pick up some of his employees this morning and they actually had to swim out to his giant truck to get in...I don't even want to imagine what is in that water! Also another fun note, the sewage systems south of us are all overloaded and backing up into the roads and homes...glad our sewer system seems to be holding it's own!

Well that's the latest on the happenings in Swampy Melbourne! :) If Fay ever moves, we should be back to sunshine and bright blue skies in no time! :) And hopefully lots of generator sales since 5-10% of the county has been without power!

So cool in Taylor's shades!

Hanging out with Dad in the pool.

"Ok Mom, I'm ready for TS Fay!"

Week of July 28th

Hello all! Well this week was just as crazy as I anticipated, but overall a fairly good week! As you see in the previous post, Katherine did FINALLY run out of energy and "crash" in her high chair on Tuesday night. Wednesday was the most insane day of the week as Chris and I were both up bright and early and headed in completely opposite directions. He left around 6:30am for the Fort Lauderdale area to work on a job down there, and I left around 7:15am for Orlando and DeLand. I had a doctor's appointment in Orlando and then had to drop some things off for Christopher in DeLand. My mom luckily was able to come and watch Katherine for us and she amazingly was able to get Katherine to take not only one nap, but TWO all in one day! She took an hour nap in the morning and then a 2 1/2 hour nap that afternoon...this was a MAJOR breakthrough since she had refused naps completely for the past week! I was totally excited when I finally got home around 5pm.


Thursday Katherine was NOT in a good mood. We went into the shop after a 2 hour morning nap in order to pay some bills and get somethings wrapped up there, but we weren't there for long. Katherine was quite the little grouch! Needless to say she was in bed early that night! ;o)


Friday we headed to the shop early in the morning and got the whole place spic and span clean. This is quite a chore as Katherine pretty much made a mess of everything I had just cleaned, but we did manage to finally get everything organized and put away. We came home around lunchtime and took a nap so that she would be ready to leave for dinner around 5pm. We met my parents for dinner to go over some logistics for Saturday morning (we had some interviews for prospective employees set up) and Katherine was not at all amused to be at the restaurant. Mom and I ended up scarfing down our dinner and taking Katherine outside to play before the other patrons of the restaurant got annoyed with us.


Saturday morning we were up bright and early headed for my Grandfather's house to drop Miss Katherine off with GiGi, Joe Joe, Aunt Marty and Uncle Blake. We didn't think she would politely sit through interviews, so we figured this would be better! As we got within 1/4 mile of my grandfather's house Katherine decides that she is going to be sick...and sick she was! ALL over EVERYTHING, including the front seat! So my dad meets us outside with towels and we immediately strip Katherine down...but wait! Bad Mommy forgot to pack a change of clothes! UGH! So we throw all of her nasty clothes into the wash and let her run around with a diaper on. We striped the car seat cover off and threw that in as well. GROSS! Chris and I loaded up and headed to the shop as we were just 15 minutes away from our meeting time with the interviewee and we were about 15 minutes away from the shop! YIKES! We get there, interview the person and then Mom and I head back down to Granddaddy's to get Katherine. Luckily her wonderful Aunt Marty and Uncle Blake had washed her up in the bathtub and washed her hair, so she smelled great! :) She was running around like a crazy person, so I figured that she was over whatever it was that she had earlier. I put the car seat back together and loaded her up...yeah...I totally forgot to throw the seat belts into the wash, so the car seat STILL stinks! YUCK! We go grab some lunch and Katherine wants nothing to do with food or drink, so we hurriedly bundle her back into the car and head for home. She took a 2 hour nap and then got up and had a few saltines and apple juice. She also managed to get down some chicken noodle soup for dinner, which was very exciting since she hadn't eaten anything all day long.


Sunday we woke up at 2am with Katherine crying. She had a fever around 102 degrees and was sweating. So I got some more Tylenol in her system and she managed to drink a lot of watered down apple juice before conking back out for the night. She slept until 8am after that! When she woke up she didn't have a fever at all, so we are hoping that the worst is over. She also ate breakfast...milk and saltines. She marched herself right over the pantry, pulled the saltines down and handed them to me, then she turned around and walked over to her high chair and looked at me like "OK, I'm ready to eat Mom!" It was really cute.


Here are some pictures from the past few days:


Daddy and I playing with Colby


Daddy I don't feel good. :(