Pizza at the Park

It was kind of a crazy day with appointments, talks with a lawyer about our will, packing for me and the kids, trying to get the house decent. Calvin was 20 minutes late for school, Autumn 40 minutes late, and I was an hour late for an appointment. Mariah babysat the kids while I ran around for a little bit, and when I picked them up, I invited them to go get pizza with us.  

Calvin worked hard to win a free personal pizza certificate from school for reading, and he wanted to use it before I left for Barcelona in the morning. He was so excited about his little prize:

 He kept saying how adorable it was.

I didn't realize that it was a take-out only store, so we grabbed our food and Mariah took us to their favorite park. The kids ate for about thirty seconds before they were off running to play.

 Nicky was freezing:

He was happy once we were back in the warm car:

After pizza and the park, we ran home and I spent the next few hours packing the kids' stuff. The plan was to take it all over to my mom's house so that in the morning, I would only need to drop the kids off before heading to the airport.

When we finally got to her place, it was pretty late and she suggested that they just stay there. I didn't feel ready yet to say goodbye, and I wanted one last night with them. But as we made a couple of trips back and forth to get stuff, and Jesse helped me drive the car back to leave it with my mom for the kids, I realized that they'd be better off where they could get a good night sleep and not be dragged out of bed early in the morning.

They were happy to be there and excited about the coming week with their grandparents, so I decided to leave them.

We recorded them goofing off as they sang happy birthday to their dad:

 

And then I kissed them each a dozen times and left them tucked into bed at grandma's house. It was much harder than I thought it would be.

I packed until 3am and ugly cried at least twelve times about how much I already missed my babies.