A Week in the Life

Friday
We hosted a Life Learner play date here. Nothing special was planned, just good old fashioned play. Oh, we did have a bit of a freecycle swap going on, with a few of us passing along items we no longer needed to others who wanted them. I really like the idea of the stuff I gave away going to my friends. Makes for a nice sense of community. C was coming home from a business trip and arrived at 2pm. He happily joined in the party and socialized with everyone, including the two Dads who had come. Afterward, we had some nice family time together to make up for lost time with Daddy.

Saturday
C needed to buy some clothes and he knew he did not want to do it alone and also that the girls would not be thrilled to tag along with us, so he set up a babysitter. We had a very nice time shopping together and eating lunch out. It was very much needed grown up time and our marriage benefited greatly from it. The girls had fun with our babysitter and we had another nice family afternoon/evening with Daddy. He had to fly out for another business trip that night, so we took him to the airport about 9pm.

Sunday
The girls and I had a day off running around town. We went to the library first to drop off books that were due. I had a book to pick up and the girls declined picking out any other books that day for themselves. Then we headed to the fabric store to get the supplies to make E an ice skating dress. No, she does not ice skate, she just wants a fancy outfit like the skaters wear! It was a pretty good trip, even if it did take her forever to pick out fabric and trim. A was very frustrated by her sister! We were hungry and cranky so we had lunch. Afterward I had promised that we would go to the toy store, but only if A would lend her sister some cash. E was down to five bucks and wanted stuff that cost more, and I was not up for a fight about buying toys, so A agreed to give her some money. Well, no amount of money was going to be able to buy what E wanted! She wanted something that did not exist. She sat on the floor in the Bratz aisle and cried for an hour. Yes, really, an hour! I was not in top form and did not know what to do with her. I always try to reason with her, even though I KNOW it does no good. Finally I hit on us going to Target to see if they had the doll she wanted, but with the agreement that we would leave if she started crying again. She agreed and we headed there. Luckily there was a doll that fit her requirements well enough. I said nothing about the price, figuring I would dock her pay until she broke even. I had no more patience for another breakdown over not having enough money. All's well that ends well, I guess.

Monday
I had a dentist appointment today and took the girls along to see what it was all about. A got a kick out of the pictures they took of my teeth, more than the x-rays. E wasn't all that interested. After, we hit the grocery store for some food. Then when we got home, we called our friends who were coming over that evening. We had homemade pizza for dinner with them and made this cool stuff called floam together. It is basically slime with tiny styrofoam beads in it. The girls had a blast playing with it.

Tuesday
Today was quiet, but full of little cool moments. We woke up to A wanting to watch the Phantom of the Opera, which we had not seen for a long time. So we popped that in and watched and sang along together. E wanted to watch our netflix dvd, The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, the original Dr Suess one, so we watched that, too. They had seen the newer one, with Jim Carrey, first, and I wanted them to see the original. They had another Dr Suess story on the DVD and we watched that as well. A recognized it from our Dr Suess books, so when it was over, I got out the books. I read two of the stories to them, the last being The Lorax. I got a teary at the end and remembered something from my childhood. When I was A's age, I had seen a performance of The Lorax in school. At the end the narrator threw a Truffula tree seed (made of paper) out into the audience and I caught it! I told the story to the girls. A thought it was very sweet, both the book and my remembrance. Another blast from the past occurred. I got a delivery of some books I had ordered and one of them was this cool book of aliens from science fiction that I had remembered from when I was about 10 and looked for for years. Well, I found it thanks to amazon and the "look inside" feature they have! We had a nice time looking through the book on the couch together. The girls thought it was cool, too. The other book was a Fake book of music for the piano. I flipped through it and plunked out the melody from one of the songs from The Phantom! Fun! We played some games together today as well.

Wednesday
We had a park day with the Life Learners today. It was fun but very tiring for me for some reason. When we got home, I was just exhausted! The girls had brought their parachute to play with with their friends. They had fun lifting it up and running under it together.

Thursday
I got a drive to do a project today, so we headed out into the garage to work. The girls rode their bikes and scooters while I hung some shelves in the garage and got started on making some shelves for the girls room. It was nice to get out the table saw and putter away with my power tools. A helped me a little, too. She also spent time inside playing a game on her computer.

Friday
Today was very much like yesterday. I worked on painting the shelves and the girls played. We rode bikes up and down the street for a while, as well. A got into playing Zoo Tycoon this evening, with E sitting with her to watch and help. E played with the piano some, playing the songs it has in it and pretending to play along. Either that or jumping up to dance and sing with the music!

That's all folks!