9:53 a.m. - March 05, 2007
Weekend! Whew!
It was quite the eventful four days at the Smed House (in the middle of the street? Nah).
Well, actually most of the action was outside of the house. So I guess the household had a eventful four days, but the house itself was the scene of rather placid scenes of quiet family life (cut to a shot of Smed napping on the love seat.)
Thursday was the annual Montessori father�s dinner, and as usual they have a cute little program and a nice meal. The theme for the first part of the program was all about Japan, since they have a teacher that is Japanese this year.
The costumes were cut. The boys all wore a headband, and the girls were in kimonos and Katie looked darling. Unfortunately, I couldn�t get a really good picture, because she stood on the opposite side of where I was sitting.
The kids learned how to count to 10 in Japanese, and sang two songs in Japanese (including Head, Shoulders, Knees And Toes). Then they played some traditional Japanese games. The boys played one where they have to put colored balls in a basket that matched their headband. The girls played a game called �Bird In A Cage� where they blindfold one girl, the other girls form a circle around her, hold hands, and sing a song and move around the blindfolded girl. They stop, and she has to figure out the one that�s closest to her without taking off her blindfold. The second time they played that, Katie was the closest one, and as soon as the girl touched her hair, she figured out it was Katie.
The second half of the program was about how they are doing in Spanish, and also a demonstration of some of their yoga poses. They also demonstrated a birthday celebration, with the timeline that each child makes for their birthday, and a ritual where they honor the Earth and the four seasons. It�s really kind of neat.
Then it was time for the dinner. Katie had a surprise, and that was that the class helped make the meatballs and the brownies. Yum! They were delicious. After dinner, some of the kids got up to play and run around, which raised the noise level from �jet airplane� to �cacophony�.
I don�t know how the teachers put up with 24 kidlets of that age. I mean, Liz and I have enough issues with Katie and Kristin.
But, Mrs. Campanelli showed her magical powers over the children time and time again, with just one or two sentences, she got the kids calmed down for the most part.
I need to bottle whatever it is she has.
Friday was a �normal� day, if one can be normal in our house. Well, except that Kristin was running a fever, and we did our best to give her TLC. But Saturday was a day on the go-go-go.
Liz was taking the girls up to Lafayette to buy Easter dresses and other things. I had to run an errand as well to buy her birthday present, but first, I had to wait on someone to fix our garage door.
Basically, during the snowstorm, our garage door opener stopped working. Liz was able to extricate her car, but we needed to get it fixed. It turns out that whoever installed this door didn�t do it properly, and put up the wrong springs.
So, the repairman came out, with his wife, who was a helper and seemed to know how to sling tools around, and their kid (a 9 or 10 year old girl � guess they didn�t get a babysitter but she was unobtrusive) and fixed the door. It wasn�t that expensive, but still it was kind of a pain, and I didn�t know when they�d be done, so I could go upstairs and get ready to go until they were done.
So, after they did get done, I showered and was on my way to Lafayette to get a birthday present for Liz, and to buy some new khakis for work.
On my way there, while driving near Central Catholic High School, I was a teenager getting out of his car, wearing a letter jacket, shorts and no socks. Yeesh. I had to make sure I had gloves, because the wind was howling making the wind chill nice and frigid.
Kids�yeesh. (Yes, I�m an old fogey. Bring me my Maypo!)
I decided to get Liz a gift certificate from the day spa she went to on Liz day, and I got her a package that included a massage (a Swedish massage at that � Bork! Bork! Bork!) a manicure and a pedicure. Go me!
Then I went to Target (pronounced Tar-zhay, of course. It�s where the elite meet to shop, right?) and then went home.
I called Liz�s cell phone as I was leaving Lafayette, thinking she�d be almost home by now. Nope, she was just leaving the mall. I guess lunch at Satan�s Fast Food Place, plus trying on Easter dresses with a 5 year old and a 20 month old, and corralling them IN the mall is rather much time consuming.
But when they got home, I got a fashion show, and I settled in for a nap. But I was rudely (well, OK, politely) awoken when it was time to get in gear to get the house ready for the babysitter.
That�s right, it was time to go out for dinner.
Mind you, this was Crawfordsville. Liz chose Applebee�s. Well, Ok, it�s not elite dining, but it sounded good to us.
It was starting to snow, and the wind was howling and blowing the snow everywhere. It took a while to find a place to park, but we finally snagged a spot and walked in. There was a bit of a wait, and during the wait I turned to Liz and said, �The beautiful people of C�ville aren�t eating here tonight.�
�But where are the beautiful people eating?�
�I don�t know � but it�s not here!�
They had a few big groups that night. The biggest one was the speech team from North Putnam that seemed to have won some big meet. Now, I was on the speech team (president, in fact) and yeah, I could really spot �em a mile away, even if they�re speech team geeks from North Putnam. Speech team geekdom outweighs total BFE dorkdom 2-1.
We got a table by a window, so we saw the snow fall all during dinner. I was both admiring is beauty and wondering if I would have to shovel, since I didn�t get the snow blower fixed yet.
It was our waitron�s first night, and her experience showed when she didn�t know if they had the exact glass of wine Liz ordered (when it was on the little placard). Liz also ordered a dessert to go along with her meal (it was recommended) and she brought the dessert out with the entr�e.
That wouldn�t be so bad, except that the dessert also had ice cream with it. But Liz was a good sport about it, even though it was her birthday dinner (observed). Her actual birthday is tomorrow (and I want to do something neat in here for her � don�t tell her, OK? It�ll be our secret�)
We lingered a bit. Then, to try to ensure that the kids were asleep, we went to the grocery store before heading home.
No such luck. The babysitter was concerned that Kristin was crying so both kids were awake when we got home. We didn�t tell her that Kristin always cries bloody murder for about 2 minutes when you turn the lights off. Then, she goes to sleep.
Sunday was busy in the morning. Liz had nursery duty at church and I was the liturgist. Kristin was feeling fine and dandy, but she gave Liz whatever she had, so after church Liz spent the afternoon napping, while I did dishes, did laundry and made sure Katie didn�t tear up the joint. Kristin took a nice long nap, too, which helped.
Liz went to bed right after dinner, so after I gave the kids baths and put them to bed, I did something oh, so exciting.
I backed up our hard drive onto our portable hard drive.
Woo-hoo, right? That�s a way to spend a Sunday night?
Actually, I got a chance to think and reflect. It�s been trying at times over the past year, because life isn�t always sunshine and roses.
But I�m damn lucky to have who I have � friends, family, loved ones, and especially Liz.
So that made it a good weekend.
