Been a while.

Yeah, I know. It's been a while. At least I can say I've been having fun (for the most part). Plenty of more details to come (dead tired and cranky right now), but to briefly summarize, the Bonus Parents were in town last week. It was absolutely fabulous to have them here. It's so cool to get to spend time with just the two of them and have them come and see our home and show them around STL (yes, that was three "and"s in that last sentence). I really love having them here - I feel like I can really relax and be myself around them which is fantastic because that's a tough thing to do around family that you weren't raised with sometimes. They are absolutely wonderful people and I still cry like a baby when they leave. I'm getting slightly better, but not much. When we leave Tally I used to cry practically until we got out of Florida, but at least until we got to I-10, now I really only bawl until we hit Thomasville Road and then again when we exit Florida. When they leave here I bawl for a while but then Cody usually occupies me with sometime (this weekend it was we had to get ready for a party)- but then when I go to clean the house I miss them - like when I go to put up two of the placemats on the dining room table because now we're back down to two people. I miss them like crazy but am happy that the holidays are coming and we can see them again.
A brief rundown of the events since the last post. Thursday I worked on cleaning the house - since it was my one day after wasting a day working on Cody's car. Friday was my friend Melanie's Going Away Happy Hour because she got a new (and much better) job so that was a long night. Saturday we cleaned as fast as we could and then before we knew it the 'rents were here! We all went to Ozzie's to watch the Gator game - though they lost - again. Boo on the Gators- though yeah for being the highest ranked 2 loss team (plus I won $20 on the game because I bet the spread). Sunday we hung out and went for a tour/walk of the Old Chain of Rocks Bridge. Monday Cody made us a great dinner of pork chops after his dad figured out how to fix our grill. Tuesday Cody had class so his mom made Cody's favorite meal while me and his dad carved my fake pumpkin (it was really hard to carve because it wasn't as hard as a real pumpkin so his dad was a great help!) - I'll have to post photos of the pumpkin. Wednesday we took them to the Season Opener for the St. Louis Blues (hockey team) and they actually WON (this is huge here). Thursday we took them to my favorite - the ZOO! Unfortunately the baby elephant wasn't out while we were there but they all humored me while I excitedly gave them the grand tour of the greatest Zoo ever! Friday we hung out (mostly dealing with my car) and went to the Science Center. And Saturday we hung out while I tried to keep myself from crying all day.
The greatest thing (besides just spending time with them) is that they come and FIX things!!! Things they fixed: piece of siding on the roof that was letting water into the roof (to do this they had to put a ladder on our porch roof - good thing I wasn't here to see it or I would have died), Cody's motorcyle (they had to rebuild the brakes and some other random stuff - but it works now!), my car - yes, my car was finally diagnosed by Cody's dad - all he had to do was mess with it for 20 minutes and he figured it out - next time the car breaks, forget taking it to the dealer, I'm going to just pay to fly his dad up here and look at it, the leaky toilet, the salt and pepper shaker (apparently Cody and I didn't even know the salt and pepper shaker had a salt part and we had the pepper grinder part upside down - we just thought it was cheap and the whole time we had it on wrong!), and . . . . the sewer. Yes, in the worst timing ever, our sewer backed up into our basement (love/hate basements!) on Saturday as they were getting ready to leave. I went down to get a movie to loan them and yelled "CODY!" about as loud as I could - everyone came running and I put him and his dad to work. His mom was in charge of keeping me semi-calm and keeping me from freaking out. Having them there for this "crisis" really made me miss them even more - they kept me calm - gave me a sense of being able to control the situation and basically just provided much needed support. So we called the plumber, he drilled out the pipes that run to the house (while our 100 year old house has been rehabbed and has all plastic pipes inside, the pipes going to the sewer are all clay tile - clay tile likes to grow roots) and got all the roots out and now things are perfect. So they were nice enough to stay for that ordeal.
Then they left and I was a basket case until I realized we had to get ready NOW to make it to a party on time.
We had a great time with them and can't wait to have them back again. Maybe if we hurry up and have kids we can talk them into visiting more often (and then we can con them into babysitting). :)