A review

Indeed it has been a week since my last blog entry. The busy-ness of my life this week has led to the predicted decrease in blogging. For those adoring fans who have emailed me requesting a blog (okay, one, and she was kidding, but a girl's gotta take it where she can get it), here is a brief recap of my past few days. Perhaps you will realize why there has been simply no time.

Friday- The annual conference of my favorite professional organization was held in Rochester. I spent the whole day learning about speech teaching, speech coaching, and what's going on in the worlds of my friends and colleagues from other schools. This conference is always super educational and equally fun. Speech people are great people. I should be working on writing my review of the conference for my department, but I will do that tomorrow :-)

Saturday- The conference was scheduled to conclude at 1:30, but it was a simply gorgeous day, so I skipped the last two sessions and left at 10:30. I met my husband and his family at the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum in Chanhassen. It was as beautiful as ever. I try and visit this lovely location at least once a season, as they always have a special exhibit that's different each year. Last year's was "Secret Garden" and they had little artistic gardens set up throughout the property. This year it is "Art to A-Maze" with artistic sculpture and landscaping leading to a maze made of bushes. It was beautiful and fun. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law together know about everything there is to know about plants and gardening, so it was refreshing to have any questions I had answered. That evening, because the parents were in town, we went to my brother-in-law's house for a barbeque. The air became chilly after sundown, so we had a fire and sweatshirts. It was a perfectly spent, lovely fall day. I took many pictures at the Arboretum, by the way, and I intend to post several of them as soon as my husband takes them off the camera.

Sunday- Our lives forever changed. Not too much to say about the day except: we drove. A lot. To Kansas City and back in one day is not a trip I would agree to under any normal circumstances. But, dear regular reader, you may remember this was the day we ventured south to meet Phoebe. After a lunch with my sister and her husband, we quickly brought our new baby home. We were worried about her because she didn't go to the bathroom once all day. We were also quite worried about her meeting our first dog, Jersey. But there was nothing to worry about, it turned out. They were fast friends, playing in the yard until we made them come in for bed. One last trip outside before lights out to see if Phoebe would go, and she did. Ah, home. Home is where you feel comfortable going to the bathroom. We love our new darling, despite her keen ability to keep us up at night.

Monday- Back to school with VERY little sleep. Night class. Certainly no time to blog.

Tuesday- Again, very little sleep. Much rain, many things on my to-do list: lecturing all day at school, meetings after school, to the gym for a workout, baking pies for my colleagues all night.

Today, my life begins to slow down for a few days and I am looking forward to it immensely. Stay tuned for pictures and more details.