It's been a really nice couple of days. Nothing much happened yesterday. That was the beginning of the "nice"--and probably the last of the "nothing happening" thing for a while! The only thing of consequence is that we had a guy up to the house to tune our piano. It hadn't been tuned in many, many years and after so many moves it was definitely time. The man was probably in his 60's, really, really cute (you know how I am about old guys!), and had so many interesting things to say. He knew quite a bit about our piano. He knew immediately (by the curved lines instead of boxy edges) that it was from the turn of the century. He also said he wouldn't be able to tune it "correctly" because at the time our piano was built they were all tuned to a lower pitch. They started tuning them to what is now considered the standard back in the 20's. Who knew?! So he tuned it to what it was originally intended to be tuned to. :-) He is from Switzerland and moved here about 40 years ago. He had a really neat accent and I kept asking more questions just because I enjoyed hearing him talk. :-) He teaches piano lessons and said that he has lots of people who play classical music come to him and ask him to teach them how to play jazz or to improvise. By that I knew that he was my kind of piano player! While I was writing out his check I asked him if he'd play a song for us and he was gracious enough to oblige. I didn't recognize the tune, but it was something very turn-of-the-century-ish ("to match the piano," he said) and it was great! I never knew having a piano tuner out could be so enjoyable! :-)

Today has been really nice, too. James took both boys with him to do some running around, so I figured it would be a good time for a girl party! We don't get to have those very often. We didn't have any Totino's, so Katie and I hopped in the van and ran down to Charlie's. He doesn't carry Totino's (can you imagine?!), so we picked up a Tombstone and a couple of strawberry shortcake ice cream bars for dessert. We came home, threw our pizza in the oven and a girl movie in the laptop and we were off! It was GREAT. And then came the talk afterwards...

It was a princess kind of movie and there was a romance-type theme entwined loosely with the rest of the plot. Katie and I got to talking about it and I mentioned that it's really crazy and silly how some teenagers act and said something about the "bad" girls and the way they act with boys--all flirty and such. I threw the statement in there, "By the way, you're not allowed to kiss--just in case you ever wonder." I was SOOOOOO unprepared for what happened next. Katie burst into tears and dropped into a little pile on the floor, sobbing. ?!?!? I asked her what on earth was wrong, but she was far too upset to be able to speak. I finally asked her if it had something to do with not being allowed to kiss. She said yes, but kept sobbing. I tried to pry some more and finally got a response out of her: "But I love it!!!" Now I was more confused than ever. I asked if she'd ever kissed a boy and she said, "Of course!" I asked who and then came the answer to all of my confusion: "Dad and Granddad and Brother Chris and Brother Sam..." Ha! She thought I meant she could never kiss anybody ever again--she made no connection with the idea of kissing "a boy"! ~whew~ I was so relieved!!! Ha! I assured her that it was perfectly fine for her to kiss her Dad and Granddad and Grandpa--and always would be. I took the opportunity to tell her that she's probably getting a little too old to keep on kissing all of the other guys (she was sad, but seemed to get over it), but that I meant that she wasn't allowed to kiss BOYS--like, boys her age. I told her that she's allowed to slap them good and hard if any of them ever tried to kiss her. :-) She's a bit young to be worried about that sort of thing, but in the world today you just never know! She seemed happy with that information and I was happy that she had no desire to kiss "boys" and was only all freaked out because she thought she'd never be able to kiss her Dad again!

I started packing today. I've got the kids' stuff pretty well lined out. I have the Traveling-to-Tennessee Suitcase, the During-the-Assembly Suitcase, and the Not-Until-We-Get-to-Pennsylvania suitcase all started. It requires a lot more thinking to pack this way, but it sure does simplify things in the long-run. Unless, of course, something ends up in the wrong suitcase. Then you're in big, big trouble!

Tonight we let the kids sit down and watch Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (that was TWO movies for Katie today--crazy!!!)--the old one with Gene Wilder, of course. They all seemed to like it, but I was thrilled to hear them say that they liked the book better. :-) Makes me so very, very happy!

And that's about it from here. Aside from a little packing, a little vacuuming and a little picking up around the house, it was pretty much a day off!

--Okay, so Willy Wonka was a bad idea. ~sigh~ I can't believe this. I just had a child come SCREAMING and running into my room sobbing, grab onto me and cling tightly while trying (through his sobs) to explain his bad dream. Remember the tunnel scene? "There's no earthly way of knowing... which direction we are going..." But get this--we didn't let the kids watch the tunnel scene. I don't remember much about it, just that it sounds kind of freaky. I was actually on the phone with Brother Dustin (THANK YOU, DUSTIN, FOR BEING THE CAUSE OF SEVERE TRAUMA TO YET ANOTHER OF MY CHILDREN!) and James was watching the show with the kids. He said he skipped that part of the movie, but let them listen to the first part of it. If I had been there I wouldn't have allowed that--I know how haunting sounds can be! Couple that with a kid's imagination and the knowledge that they skipped that part of the movie because "it's scary" and, well, you have a disaster waiting to happen. It only waited about an hour. Sam is now sleeping soundly on the floor by my bed. ~sigh~ It's so frustrating that my kids are such sissies! But it's largely due to the fact that they've seen so little of anything "scary" they're super sensitive to things that other kids wouldn't bat an eye at. Hopefully my other kids will make it through the night okay! Willy Wonka... who would've guessed you could have nightmares about a show like Willy Wonka?! I sincerely hope it's not a recurring one! Ha!