I am flunking convalescence. It has been raining for the past few days, and I thought I’d go nuts sitting in the house waiting for the baby in the name of *cutting back.* In

English, I didn’t want to cancel park day in vain hopes of having a baby today.

So, I sent out a blog-like email to my peeps, and we scheduled a nice day at Miriam’s.

Bless her heart.  They had just returned from a family trip to Vancouver on Monday, and were ready for visiting. Miriam has a beautiful house that her husband  THE BUILDER made on I don’t know how many acres.  The best part is that she used to live way across town, a good 15-20 minutes away, and now it’s just 5 minutes to get to her house.  I could ride my bike if I weren’t 39 weeks pregnant.

So, anyway, Juile and I were the two that could make it, and we sat in the kitchen reading homeschool and Christian magazines, eating chocolate zucchini cake and turtle cookies, and drinking chai tea.

The children are drifting in and out, eating, sharing toys, petting the dog, losing shoes, etc.

It’s pretty idyllic.

Then, it’s time to leave.  I glanced at the clock around 2:36, thinking, I could still make a late nap time if I leave now.  But it was so comfortable. . .
Around 3:15, Julie and I told the kids “10 minutes.”

Around 4, Sage and Simeon brought baby mice in the house.  “Look what we found!” They excitedly exclaimed.  This prompted us all to troop onto the back porch and see where they came from.  The mommy mouse was nowhere to be found, but there was a large dead mouse close to house.  Miriam’s cat had brought that by as a welcome home present. There was conjecture that the dead mouse was mommy to the babies.  Nobody wanted to put the babies back where they’d found them.  “Did Mani touch a baby mouse?” I interrupted the hubub to ask.  Miriam winked at me.  “Why do you care?” Her 6 year old was holding three in his bare hands.  At least Sage had the presence of mind to hold his mouse in his baseball mitt.

Simeon and Issac begged Miriam to let them keep the babies.  She gently resisted.  They urgently persisted.

Julie was down on the ground with all the children at this point, her hands cupping mice babies, and in quiet conference with Sage.  “We’ll take the mice,” she said.  Miriam jumped at the possibility.  “Oh, you see?  Mrs. Benner’s going to take the mice home,” she told her boys.

I laughed at her relief.  “Darn it!  We can’t keep the mice!”

Julie called herself a sucker for animals, taking home the mice babies to add to her menagerie of 7 pets.  She assured Miriam that she had every conceivable cage, terrarium, aquariam, whatever she would need to house an animal.  She didn’t think these babies had much chance for survival, though.  “We’ll see how far we get with this mouse experiment,” she said.

I found myself admiring the whole homeschoolness of it all, but grateful I wasn’t pressed into bringing home vermin.  I asked Julie to keep me abreast of the whole development.

Speaking of, these ladies and Maureen and family are going up to family camp next week.  It coincides with my due date, so we won’t be joining them.  Annette doesn’t do camping, so they won’t be going either.
I wonder when our next park day will be?