Catching up

I know I disappeared unceremoniously from Blogland, but it was a crazy week. Here's a rundown:

Monday: cleaned and got ready to pick up my mom from the airport that evening.
Tuesday: Quin and I left Maren with my mom and went on our very first kid-less getaway since Maren was born! That's over three years, folks! It was long overdue. We drove up to a small town called Leadville to explore and stay in a B&B. More on the trip later.
Wednesday: continued our little trip, then went home later that afternoon. That morning my grandparents drove up from Southern Colorado to take advantage of my mom being here and stayed at my house Wednesday night.
Thursday: Grandparents left, dropped Mom off at the airport. Came home and did some shopping to get ready for party-palooza on Saturday. Found out some terrible news--a dear friend who lives up the street lost her baby, at around 38 weeks, so basically full-term. It was completely unexpected and quite devastating news, as you might imagine.
Friday: Continued to get ready for the baby shower and other party on Saturday. Worried that the topic of conversation at the baby shower would be the tragic events of the week. Worried that no one would come to either party.
Saturday: Had the baby shower. It was fun, the decorations were cute and the food was delish! Attendance was really low--we sent out over 40 invitations and we had maybe a dozen there, including the hosts and guest of honor. We only had about that many RSVP in the first place, and half of those were regrets. Get REALLY PEEVED at the pathological inability to pay attention to an RSVP that seems to be the norm these days. Worry that this does not bode well for my party that evening, a Scentsy open house for which I sent out 25 invitations and had only a small handful of people RSVP. Get ready for party #2 of the day, drive all the way downtown to pick up the consultant, and then only 3 people showed up. They were 3 good friends and I'm thrilled that they came and we had fun chatting and sniffing wax, but 3 out of 25 is a pretty poor showing and I'll admit that I was a bit embarrassed. Nothing kills your self-esteem like inviting 25 people to a party and then having only 3 attend.
Sunday: Maren wakes up at 5:30 a.m. after having stayed up past 11:00 p.m. the night before. Try hard to shake it off and plan a last-minute Sunday School lesson, attend 3 hours of church, attempt to clean up the mess from Saturday's activities, and work on the swap that is due out today.

So yeah, it was a bit crazy and blogging just didn't quite fit in the schedule. This week won't be much better, I'm afraid--we're leaving on Wednesday to go to Utah for a few days for my brother's college graduation. The house is still a disaster, the swap isn't quite ready to go, I have errands to run, laundry to do and suitcases to pack, and tomorrow is a graveside service for my friend's sweet baby. I'd like to squeeze in one more blog entry before I leave--I had a great junkin' day last week and I've been itching to share photos! That means I've got to get moving!