Reunion Trip
Nearly home. We stopped at a rest area and the kids are at the playground portion of it, swinging and sliding before they have to get back into the car. It's proving to be a difficult drive for them, seeing as the DVD player has ONCE AGAIN konked out. It did the same thing a year ago or so and they had the replace the whole thing. Of course they didn't start a new warranty at that point, so it's a year out of warranty at this stage of the game, and apparently fixing it will be out problem. I'm getting extremely tired of being bent over the table when it comes to purchasing just about anything. Our DVD players fall apart immediately, our iPod has already been replaced once, and I can't tell you how many clock radios I've been through in the past few years. I finally gave up and got a $10 one so that when it died, I wouldn't care. I think it's been the best performer of all.
We had a good time; we got in late (around 10 p.m.) on Friday. Saturday was the family reunion, which involved a good 15 similarly-aged cousins for the kids to run around with (ok, second and third cousins), a huge house in the boondocks, a trampoline, a private lake, a boat, three dogs and a dock. Joy. (It also involved an absolute ton of sunscreen. It's no fun to be fish-belly white.) Very brief highlights: The kids learned how to play "popcorn" on the trampoline, the three dogs like to swim, one dog kept knocking my shoes off the dock and into the lake, the kids got to take a short ride in the back of a truck (with joyous dog running alongside) and David got over his "ick factor" of the lake, and was last seen swimming south.
When we got back, Grandma offered to not only watch the kids, but to feed them as well so that we could go out to dinner and movie. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves, but managed to reach back into the recesses of our memories and find a good dinner at Los Bravos (bean dip!) and see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the IMAX. (I think I lost 20 percent of my hearing.) We didn't get back until something obscene like 1:20 a.m.
Sunday we went to church and then went out to a Hibachi restaurant for lunch, which was pretty neat. Lauren LOVED the Japanese theme...not just the food (which she scarfed), but she was dazzled by the hanging lanterns ("Doze COOL!") and the bamboo/paper surrounding one of the booths ("Dat COOL!") Hmmmm...how do you make a little girl's room look both pink AND Japanese? Cherry blossoms? Suggestions from my aficionado friends who would know that stuff? The chef did a bunch of stuff like they do, spinning a raw egg on the grill, tossing it up into the air with a spatula, catching it in his pocket, making a fiery volcano out of onion rings, oil and salt. Dat cool.
After we got home we quasi-packed. The kids went swimming with Grandma and I once again got into a spat with a negligent parent of a little brat. (Why oh why do I run into the idiots, and why do the brats always see a "kick me" sign on my kids?) So Brat has a large inflatable at the kiddie pool, which he is using to clomp over Lauren's head. While not nice, this at least doesn't put her in immediate danger, as it doesn't force her to submerge her head. But he does it repeatedly, and follows her around the pool to get at her, and ignores Grandma's reasonable to efforts to shoo him away. So I get mad (duh) and come over, fully intending to take the kid's inflatable away the next time he does it. He sees me and I essentially tell him to knock it off, and Brat sticks his tongue out at me. Sound familiar? So I pointedly (and loudly) start re-telling the story of Precious (my last bad parental encounter) to Grandma, using the word "asshole" to describe the behavior of the last little boy I dealt with, and how amazing it was to me that I was running into such obnoxious hellions wherever we went. (Translation: Would the parent of this little spawn please step forward and identify yourself?) At this point some woman from the adult pool says something about not cussing in front of her kids, which I fully ignore. What's your dog in this fight, anyway? The Brat decides to run into David headlong with the inflatable now, causing him to half-dunk his head. Now I lean forward and absolutely scream at him in my most threatening voice, "LEAVE HIM ALONE. KEEP LEAVING HIM ALONE." Non-cursing Mom now rises up indignantly out of the big swimming pool, comes over to the kiddie pool, takes Brat's inflatable away, says something to him which obviously identifies herself as Brat's mom, and looks at me to say, "I would appreciate it if you would NOT curse in front of my kids!" What I wanted to say (which the FTC would fine me heavily for, and which I can credit my ex-college-roommate for coming up with) differs vastly from what actually came out of my mouth. "I'd appreciate it if you'd make your kids behave, thank you!" She basically turned on her heel and ignored me, which was fine. I stayed around to see if Brat would continue to act up and he didn't, so I went and took a seat in the shade (did I mention the heat advisories out for the week?). That was basically that. Brat's Mom kept a close eye on me, and I kept an even closer eye on Brat. Why do so many parents have kids like that?
We had a good time; we got in late (around 10 p.m.) on Friday. Saturday was the family reunion, which involved a good 15 similarly-aged cousins for the kids to run around with (ok, second and third cousins), a huge house in the boondocks, a trampoline, a private lake, a boat, three dogs and a dock. Joy. (It also involved an absolute ton of sunscreen. It's no fun to be fish-belly white.) Very brief highlights: The kids learned how to play "popcorn" on the trampoline, the three dogs like to swim, one dog kept knocking my shoes off the dock and into the lake, the kids got to take a short ride in the back of a truck (with joyous dog running alongside) and David got over his "ick factor" of the lake, and was last seen swimming south.
When we got back, Grandma offered to not only watch the kids, but to feed them as well so that we could go out to dinner and movie. We hardly knew what to do with ourselves, but managed to reach back into the recesses of our memories and find a good dinner at Los Bravos (bean dip!) and see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix at the IMAX. (I think I lost 20 percent of my hearing.) We didn't get back until something obscene like 1:20 a.m.
Sunday we went to church and then went out to a Hibachi restaurant for lunch, which was pretty neat. Lauren LOVED the Japanese theme...not just the food (which she scarfed), but she was dazzled by the hanging lanterns ("Doze COOL!") and the bamboo/paper surrounding one of the booths ("Dat COOL!") Hmmmm...how do you make a little girl's room look both pink AND Japanese? Cherry blossoms? Suggestions from my aficionado friends who would know that stuff? The chef did a bunch of stuff like they do, spinning a raw egg on the grill, tossing it up into the air with a spatula, catching it in his pocket, making a fiery volcano out of onion rings, oil and salt. Dat cool.
After we got home we quasi-packed. The kids went swimming with Grandma and I once again got into a spat with a negligent parent of a little brat. (Why oh why do I run into the idiots, and why do the brats always see a "kick me" sign on my kids?) So Brat has a large inflatable at the kiddie pool, which he is using to clomp over Lauren's head. While not nice, this at least doesn't put her in immediate danger, as it doesn't force her to submerge her head. But he does it repeatedly, and follows her around the pool to get at her, and ignores Grandma's reasonable to efforts to shoo him away. So I get mad (duh) and come over, fully intending to take the kid's inflatable away the next time he does it. He sees me and I essentially tell him to knock it off, and Brat sticks his tongue out at me. Sound familiar? So I pointedly (and loudly) start re-telling the story of Precious (my last bad parental encounter) to Grandma, using the word "asshole" to describe the behavior of the last little boy I dealt with, and how amazing it was to me that I was running into such obnoxious hellions wherever we went. (Translation: Would the parent of this little spawn please step forward and identify yourself?) At this point some woman from the adult pool says something about not cussing in front of her kids, which I fully ignore. What's your dog in this fight, anyway? The Brat decides to run into David headlong with the inflatable now, causing him to half-dunk his head. Now I lean forward and absolutely scream at him in my most threatening voice, "LEAVE HIM ALONE. KEEP LEAVING HIM ALONE." Non-cursing Mom now rises up indignantly out of the big swimming pool, comes over to the kiddie pool, takes Brat's inflatable away, says something to him which obviously identifies herself as Brat's mom, and looks at me to say, "I would appreciate it if you would NOT curse in front of my kids!" What I wanted to say (which the FTC would fine me heavily for, and which I can credit my ex-college-roommate for coming up with) differs vastly from what actually came out of my mouth. "I'd appreciate it if you'd make your kids behave, thank you!" She basically turned on her heel and ignored me, which was fine. I stayed around to see if Brat would continue to act up and he didn't, so I went and took a seat in the shade (did I mention the heat advisories out for the week?). That was basically that. Brat's Mom kept a close eye on me, and I kept an even closer eye on Brat. Why do so many parents have kids like that?
posted by Kelly at
4:02 PM
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