Our Weekend

Friday I got to go see Josh, Eliza and their new darling baby girl! She is so cute, tons of dark hair and the cutest little face. I can't believe they have two kids! Anyway, after a fun visit with them I headed out for my maiden voyage of Ikea. Wow, it's HUGE and kind of overwhelming, but once I got my bearings I loved it.

That night we drove out to a nearby town to check out a house we'd heard about that was completely decked out with lights. When we first drove up, it was a lot of lights but not anything super unique until we tuned our radio to the station on the sign out front and watched this complete choreography of lights to the music. It was actually really cool. The kids LOVED it. We stopped and ate dinner together and then headed to a neighborhood party. It was one of those parties that instead of doing neighbor gifts we all come and enjoy each other's company and donate the money we would have spent to a charity. I was there at the end (surprise, surprise) when they counted the money and it came to $2,000! Pretty great, huh? Anyway, I had talked to my friend, the hostess, earlier about whether or not it was a family affair or just more couples. She told me either way. We had already promised the kids the lights and just didn't pull it together to get a sitter so we took the whole family after the lights and dinner.

It was pretty clear we made the wrong decision from the minute we got out of the car. Brennan and I struggled up their huge driveway trying to carry Nate (can't walk on his stitched up foot), Ben, a tray of cookies, and another big tray I was returning to my friend. Upon finally arriving at the front door we walked into very large, very jam packed house. There were all the nice beautiful adults of our neighborhood talking and laughing in little groups and there we were, the whole fam feeling very much like the Clampets in Beverly Hills. For a minute we saw no other children and really felt tacky, but discovered some downstairs where we quickly ushered ours. The kids were great downstairs until someone discovered that on the main floor there was a ladder up to a kids playroom on the second floor and a fire house type pole to come back down. I caught Anna running upstairs a few times and sternly ordered her back downstairs.

When I thought they were once again settled inconspicuously downstairs I went in to mingle. Suddenly I heard very loud crying and realized it was Nate. He was mid ladder and full volume. Evidently he suddenly got nervous because he didn't know where Brennan or I was so he just started crying a really scared really loud cry. I shoved through the crowd and grabbed him wondering how on earth he had climbed with one foot. As I was in the process of calming him down I heard a big thud. I knew immediately that someone, some child had attempted sliding down the pole and basically fallen straight down. As I turned around I just knew I was going to see Abby lying there, it wasn't. Whew. Still, when kids start dropping down from the ceiling you know it's time to go.

After making a few more scenes we finally managed to leave, drive home, tuck the kids in bed. Brennan kindly encouraged me to go back so I did. I went back to the party and had a lovely time.

Today was really nice and really mellow. The kids played outside in the snow. The girls each built a snowman. I spent 20 minutes bundling Ben who stayed out for about 10 minutes. I think it was a little too deep for him. I bundled Nate up and he crawled around for awhile, poor kid. They all came in with rosy cheeks and sat on the heating vent to warm up. Brennan built a roaring fire that had us toasty warm all day. We cleaned the house and then finally got a lot of our Christmas decor up. We had a few Ben related ornament casualties, but all in all a nice night.