I woke up with "a tude" (or you might call it a bad attitude), not sure why but thank goodness I got a handle on it fairly quickly.  Although, I felt like I was fighting it off and on throughout my day....don't you just hate that?

Dan and I decided to register for a French class with a language school in Dallas.  I had difficulty understanding the French while in Paris and Nice this summer.  I felt like it was a beautiful language but sounded like a song that I couldn't understand.  I have been looking forward to this class, partly because this means four hours alone (well not really) with my husband on a Saturday.  At least I get one hour round trip in the car with him.

We found the school without any problems and met our instructor.  She was a French women who was very approachable and open and I felt at ease from the minute we met.  We also met the other students and they could not have been nicer.  After some small talk and finding why all of us were in this class, we got right into the lesson.

I felt a bit lost from the "get go".  Our workbooks hadn't arrived from France yet (a glimpse of our future), but she had printed copies of the first chapter for us.  The lesson did not seem to have much structure.  I felt like we were bouncing all over the place.  We started with the alphabet and she repeated it one time and that was it.  Same thing with numbers.  She taught us how to ask "what is your name" and how to answer along with a couple other basic questions.  She is very big on forcing the students to communicate with her and each other.  I have to say that I felt like the only one that was truly lost at times.  I would draw a blank at times when she would ask me a question.  All in all, I felt like I did learn a tiny bit but by the end of the three hours more than anything........I was happy to leave.

On the drive home that negative voice inside my head was convincing me that I was not going to be able to learn this very difficult language.  I was sharing this with Dan who was all but encouraging to me and reminding me that this was our first class.  I took a breath and told myself that I need to loosen up and try to enjoy this experience.   I can be so seious at times, I have been like this throughout my life.  I want everything right now and I make things bigger than what they truly are in actuality.

The kids were thrilled to see us and had a ball with our sweet babysitter.  I made dinner all the while feeling in such a "funk".  I couldn't shake this negative voice inside my head.  I couldn't eat dinner and asked Dan if we could walk over to Town Square.  I told him that I needed to get out of my head for a bit.  The kids grabbed their scooters, I grabbed Otis and we were off.  Mind you , it was about 90 degrees outside with 60% humidity.  About a block into the walk, I was thinking to myself "is this really going to help things"?  Too late now.  We made it over and grabbed an ice cream cone.  The kids were more of a handful than normal.  I was out of sorts, Otis was barking at shadows in the storefronts and parked cars.  We decided to head back home, only now it was even hotter.  We made it home and jumped into the pool and the kids started arguing about something.  Sophie ended up getting out of the pool to change into her dry clothes.  Max was yelling "Sophie, we need to talk about this".  Sophie yelled back "I am done talking to you".  She changed and came downstairs hysterical.  After trying to calm her down and talk to no avail, we sent her back up to her room.  When we finally came inside the girl was wailing.  I mean, it was shades of her at two years old.  (The girl had some major temper tantrums and we nipped those in the bud......or so we thought).  After she calmed down and explained her side, all was good.

Dan and I just putthem down to sleep and I sheepishly looked at Dan and said "whose brightidea was it to go to Town Square tonight"?