3 years 2 months 8 days

Day 1164. We did not go anywhere these past two days, Monday and Tuesday. On Monday I taught for two hours, and yesterday for four hours. Yesterday was a holiday in Austria.

This morning I had to set my alarm for 8 am, which is early. It was close to 1:30, when I went to bed, and it took me a while to fall asleep. The kids were up at 7 am, and then my alarm went off. It was hard to get up, and I was pretty tired all day.

After breakfast the kids still wanted me to read a Bible story to them, and even though it was close to 9 am, I went downstairs with them and read them a story. Then I went upstairs, and the doorbell rang already. It was the Mobile Support lady who came for Sammy, but really to play with all three for 90 minutes. It had been two weeks since her last visit, so it was nice to see her again. Just after she had gone downstairs to be with the kids, the doorbell rang again, and it was the cleaning lady who comes every three weeks to clean our house, which takes 4 hours. She started working upstairs, while I left the house to run an errand. Once I got back, I did some tidying up before sitting down at the computer to work. I'm still behind on office work and am trying to catch up, but time just goes by too fast.

At around 11:30 I went to the kitchen to start making lunch. A few minutes later the cleaning lady went downstairs to continue there, and Randy and the kids came upstairs. Tammy and Emmy wanted to watch Paw Patrol. It was after noon before we sat down at the table to eat. Today they all got to eat icecream. Then they continued watching videos until it was bedtime at 1:15 pm. They all went to bed and fell asleep relatively fast. I left them and wanted to take a nap myself, as I was really tired. However I started working and only got to close my eyes for a few minutes, not having enough time to sleep.

Emmy walked into the room at 2:30 pm. A few minutes later Sammy woke up. I picked him up, and we started dressing them. Then I started putting clothes on Tammy who was still in bed. It all took longer than expected, and so it was already after 3:15 before we left the house.

It was a sunny, and relatively warm day. I had kept my afternoon free from lessons so we could do this outing today. We took the subway to the end and walked to the building, where they had games set up on tables that you could choose from to play them. Every box had written on what the appropriate age for the game was. There were tables set up all over the room, and one table was just becoming available, when we got there. And so we went to look at the games and picked out a few, then took those back and picked a few more. Honestly, it didn't work out as well as expected. One game had a piece missing, another was boring. We played one round of one, and then another one, where they could build roads and then take construction materials to construction sites. By then Randy and Sammy had left us, as Sammy was not happy. They went to the table with the games and were looking at the boxes. Because of the limited appeal of the games, we left after 80 minutes, just after 5 pm.

Emmy had been asking all afternoon to go to the playground, and we had passed one on the way there. However, it was already getting dark. We still stopped there - one we had never been at before - and the kids were excited to play. There was no slide, but there were swings, and a hammock that I put Sammy into, and then they walked on ropes. As it was getting pretty dark, we told them we needed to move on, which they were not happy about.

We made our way back to the subway, but walked into the grocery store right there with our shopping list. They had no kids' carts, and so they had to take baskets with wheels and handles. We started going through the store with our list, but of course they wanted to get all kind of other stuff, which we said no to. They were especially interested in the advent calendars. We finally made it through, paid, and went to the subway to go home.

It was nearly 6 pm by the time we got home. I was extremely tired, but needed to make their dinner. And so I went to the kitchen to get started. Emmy and Tammy continued watching Paw Patrol, which they had started on the subway, and Sammy soon joined me in the kitchen in his chair, so he got an early start eating. It was after 6:30 before we all sat down at the table to eat. Then they continued eating in the bathtub, and it was just after 8 pm before they were all in bed - after our bedtime story. I sat down by them. After a while it seemed that the boys were asleep, so I tried to leave. It worked at first, but then they were all calling for me. As Randy had finished eating, he was the one sitting down by them. They kept calling for me for a while, while I was making my dinner inthe kitchen, but by the time I sat down to eat just before 9 pm, they were all asleep. After I had eaten, I started working on today's pictures. Now it's midnight, and time to clean up the kitchen and go to bed. Emmy joined me in bed a few minutes ago and lay down right next to me.