Ketch. Up.

After the long silence around here, I ought to play catch up.

And it has been an eventful two weeks around here, let me tell you! First I was sick, with my second bout of mastitis in two weeks. Then Archer was sick with a fever that kept us up a couple of nights and made my normally happy baby very fussy. Then the dog was sick--in the living room, the dining room, the kitchen.

And have I mentioned the mosquitoes? The uncommon amount of rain we've received this season means that we've had an equally uncommon amount of mosquitoes. Now, I know my Southern friends and relations will scoff at this: "Mosquitoes, you say? Let me tell you about mosquitoes..." But I assure them that these are no ordinary mosquitoes. These are black swarms of ravenous mosquitoes, which leave silver-dollar-sized welts on you kids. This is a biblical level of mosquitoes we're talking about here.

To top it all off, our basement flooded--again--for like, the third time this summer. So, after mopping up another mess, we had workmen in all last week to finally address the source of the problem, which turns out to be faulty plumbing. That's gonna be expensive, so I'm glad we just rent. However, it means we'll have workmen jackhammering the basement floor sometime in the near future ...

But not this week, thank God, because this week my parents are coming to visit and help me out, while Kevin is off galavanting around Europe. He calls it "work" but I say that escaping floods and pestilence and children for two weeks and hanging out in sunny France and Italy cannot be called "work."

It's funny to think that I started this blog back when Kevin and I were travelling around the world together and named it for the song "The Arkansas Traveler," about my mythical itinerant countryman--but it will be some time before Kevin and I are traveling like that again. Oh, well. To everything it's season...

For now, I'm not too upset to be stuck at home with two kiddos. Although I could do without the flooding and mosquitoes. Fortunately, this week's forecast predicts sunshine. And fortunately, Mae Mae and Pops are coming to town just in time to prevent me from serving up another dinner of corn chips and French fries.


P.S. This photo is of Colin's peculiar way of enjoying his ketchup, which I adore (despite the mess) because it was the same way my brother and I ate our ketchup when we were kids. Maybe it's a universal kid thing?