Day 743. Once again I'm so tired I'm not sure I'll be able to finish my update, but at least today was not as tough as the last two days. I went to bed just after 11:30 last night, as I just could not go on. During the night Emmy and Tammy climbed into bed with us again, and rather early. Unfortunately Emmy is a light sleeper, and so I get woken up a lot. Tammy was sleeping next to Randy, and Emmy first on and then next to me, until he decided he wanted to get up. At least it was already about 6:30. He woke his sister up, and then they went over to Sammy. I got Sammy into bed with us too, as he had crawled to our bed and wanted to join the party.
Thankfully we did not have to look at the clock today. We got up, dressed them, and went downstairs for breakfast. They were eating, but not really sitting still. And then she brought in a slide for them. They have a lot of toys, and they started playing with them, so I left them to go upstairs to work. It was a warm, sunny day, and so they went outside to play. I made some good progress working and stopped, when our friend Gertrude arrived around 9:30 to spend time with us. She joined them in playing downstairs until I came. I found out that they had gone to see some rabbits at the neighbors' earlier, and all together we headed over to the neighbors again, where we first stopped to see the chickens, and then continued on to the rabbits. They were in cages, as they were raised to be eaten.
We walked back to the house, where I went back upstairs for half an hour, until 11 am. Sammy was already close to falling asleep during our walk, so we ate at their usual early time of 11 am. We all sat around the round dining room table. Our host had made spagetti, with meat sauce, and they did pretty well eating. And then they even had icecream as a dessert.
After lunch I cleaned them up, and we went upstairs to put them down for a nap. Randy lay down with Tammy, and I lay down between the boys to help them fall asleep. Sammy fell asleep first, even though he enjoyed being able to crawl out of his bed at first, and after a while I got Emmy to sleep, but Tammy would not fall asleep. Nothing we did worked. She was hyper-active, running around and doing all kinds of things except sleep. And so Sammy was already awake after only aobut 10 minutes of sleep. At least Emmy got to sleep longer. After about an hour he woke up, and then lay down on me, where he continued sleeping for a while. When he woke up for good, we got them all ready to leave and left at 2:30 to start our one-hour drive south to see our friends in Traun. As expected, Tammy and Sammy fell asleep in the car, and not long after leaving, so they got just under an hour of sleep. Emmy stayed awake, though he seemed a little tired. He was cranky and wanted to talk to Grandma, so we tried to call her, but to no avail. Then we tried Sonja, but she wasn't available either. I turned a Veggie Tales video on to distract him. And just a little time later we reached Sonja, and Emmy was really happy to see her and talk to her. He was sad, when we hung up.
At 3:40 we arrived at the parking lot by a lake, where our friends met us. It's a family of five, and I've known the Dad since I was saved in 1993, when we were both at university. Sammy was already awake, but Tammy I picked up asleep, and then she woke up. She was still sleepy for a while, but was still willing to be carried by one of our friends. Emmy also had someone carry him. We walked along the lake until we got to a playground and a pool for little kids. There were a lot of ducks around, and our kids enjoyed approaching them and trying to chase them. A few times Tammy came so close to the lake that I thought she was falling in, but our friends' kids were with them all the time, playing with them and having fun with them.
We immediately put their swim diapers on, so they could go into the pool. And then the fun started, even though the water was cold. Tammy and Emmy just had so much fun, playing with our friends' kids and with balls. Sammy also enjoyed the water for a while. At some point they all came out, and we sat down on a blanket on the ground, where our friends got cake out for everyone. It wasn't long before they were up and about again, mainly chasing ducks. Then we walked over to the really nice, long slide, and they had so much fun there. Tammy and Emmy were able to climb up by themselves, and enjoyed sliding down, and especially having fun with our friends' kids, who were just great with them.
As it was getting late, we decided to get going and started the long walk back to the parking lot. Our friends lived just around the corner from there, so they walked home while we drove there, and then met them there. It was 6 pm, so the perfect time for dinner.
They had a rabbit, and so that was the first place they went. The rabbit was shy and stayed in the back of the cage, but at some point Tammy was able to pet it. Emmy wasn't shy any more either, even with the ducks, which greatly surprised me.
We all sat down at the dinner tble to eat dinner. Tammy wanted salami, and we found out that she likes all the different kinds of other sausage as well. She didn't stay at the table for long, though, as there were so many toys with, and soon the other kids joined her as well, and so did Emmy. They had so much fun! They were playing hard, which allowed us to talk a little at the table, with Sammy being with Randy. At some point I just had to say it was time to leave, as we had a 1 hour drive ahead of us. At 8 pm we said our good-byes and they call came downstairs to the car with us. They were obviously all tired, but they'd had such a fun time that Tammy was crying, when we drove off.
As expected they didn't need long to fall asleep. Sammy woke up after a while though, and then stayed awake until the end. Tammy fell asleep last. At 9 pm we pulled up at our host's house. Emmy woke up, and I carried a sleeping Tammy on one, and Emmy on the other shoulder. We changed them in the dark and put their pj's on, and then put them to bed. Tammy never really woke up. Emmy fell asleep right away, and Sammy still enjoyed his freedom to crawl out of bed, and so I had to put him back numerous times before he fell asleep.
I then went to work right away, but I have 350 pictures and my eyes are closing, so I won't be able to do the pictures tonight.
