Nashville....Indiana.

I obviously haven't blogged in a loooong time. It's partly because I've been recovering. From what, you ask? From Nashville, Indiana a week ago. I helped Phil out and watched all the kiddos at the Globalscope Celebration in Nashville, Indiana from Monday to Friday. With the help of a saint named Amanda, I watched 7 kiddos all day while their parents participated in the meetings and modules. The kids were really good, but the accommodations made things challenging. We were all stuck in one hotel room. There was access to a grassy area right outside our room, but several factors made it more dangerous than ideal and with crazy heat/humidity, the kids didn't last more than 5 minutes anyway. Thankfully, our group were the only ones on our hall, so we could let the kids out to run up and down the hall, play soccer, shoot hoops, and knock around the (plastic) golf balls. Luke had a blast, but was definitely the most challenging of all the kids. He was the youngest of the toddlers and was into EVERYTHING non-stop. His favorite thing to do was run down to the end of the hall where there was an elevator and about 6 steps down to a lower level. Being obsessed and practically OCD about pushing buttons, he quickly learned that he could push the elevator buttons and not only would they light up, but they'd make the big shiny door open up and then he could run into the elevator where there were even more buttons, the lowest of which was a really fun alarm button. Awesome. It was virtually impossible to keep him from pushing the buttons, but I was pretty good at keeping him from going into the open elevator. Unfortunately he would then just run to the stairs, go backwards down the stairs, then run right to the elevator at the bottom of the stairs, push the buttons and run into the elevator. It was the most random, inexplicable, and exhausting thing that there was this lower level and an elevator that literally traveled about 6 feet down from floor R1 to floor B, but it was the best part of Luke's week. So after chasing Luke up and down the hall and stairs and in and out of elevators, all while holding 3 month-old Sawyer, who was sooo tired but would wake up every time I put her down, I decided I would be SuperMom and take him swimming in a big pool for the very first time during the 45 minute break we had between babysitting and dinner. Phil was busy working, so I was on my own with Luke. I ran into our hotel room, put him down, then ran into the bathroom to go potty quickly before getting our suits on. I left the door to the bathroom open, while doing a mental rundown of what, if any, things Luke could destroy or hurt himself on in the room. Deciding that we had safely battened down the hatches, I did my business super fast, and as I was about to wash my hands, I got suspicious of the silence. I walked out of the bathroom right into a sudden shower of....

an ENTIRE box of Cheerios.

He had grabbed the cereal box out of a basket on the dresser, pulled out the bag, and then proceeded to shake it like a Polaroid picture.

After walking across the edible confetti like a proud daredevil running over hot coals, he decided to sit down and revel in his scattered treasure.

When that wasn't enough, he got down on his belly to better commune with the beloved O's.


Making himself comfortable, he grabbed a handful of O's and rolled to his back...

...and then helped himself to a little snack.

Lucky me. I got to clean it all up.
Now that all is said and done, though, I think the pictures might have been worth it.