Talk Lover and stories

September and October were pretty crazy at our house. I was very short staffed at works so I picked up a lot of extra night shifts in addition to my regular work (September is crazy anyway with all the new programs staring up in conjunction with the start of school). Needless to say, it was extra busy this year with my two main coworkers out of commission. I didn't get to see Audra and the kids very much.
Since I was gone so much, the kids were very very very eager to see me the nights I did manage to get home from work before they were in bed. They would run out and meet me in the driveway and talk non-stop at the same time to me 100mph. One night we did manage to go for a walk in the evening. We loaded up the kids and headed out with our double jogger. I kept trying to talk to Audra on the walk. I did things like encourage the kids to run up ahead of us and spot things along the river. Despite all my best efforts to actually have a conversation with Audra, Elsa and Gibson kept talking (usually at the same time) to me. Now, I do love my kids and I enjoy talking to them, I just wanted to talk to Audra since I wasn't seeing her much either. Finally I gave up and said "You guys really like to talk!". To that Elsa responded "I do like to talk. I love to talk. I am a talk lover.". Audra and I got a nice laugh out of that. Elsa is definitely a talk lover.
On a separate note, Audra and I got to spend four days in Minneapolis with Lu at the end of October. I had a conference there. It was great. The weather wasn't the best, but it was so nice to have some quiet time. We saw Garrison Keillor in the airport. I actually almost ran into him with Lu while I was turning around carrying her in her car seat. Normally we plan out our time while I am at my conference. This time it snuck up on us, so we went without plans. We did take the light rail to the mall of America one day. Mostly we wandered around downtown and ate good food. It was a nice break.
Lastly the story. Our kids play a lot of hide and seek games. Sometimes we hide, sometimes we hide toys and find them. Elsa and Gibson were on a big hide and seek kick for a while. They were hiding their toys everywhere. We kept finding toys hiding in random bags, cups, under beds and couches, in drawers. One day I was home for lunch. Audra was still fighting her anemia, so she was eating meat a lot. We had a steak out. I offered to get out the George foreman for her and heat it up. About 20 minutes later Audra called me at work to tell me a little joke. Unbeknownst to me, there was a candy land plastic gingerbread man hiding in the George foreman that I had plugged in. It got a little cooked. Luckily the non stick coating repelled the melted plastic. I was actually really impressed because the George foreman was up very high in a cupboard near the top of the fridge. Someone (Elsa) must have put a lot of effort into hiding that gingerbread man in there.