The Weekend's Over Already?

I had grand plans for this weekend. "HAD" being the operative word. I overslept and missed church today. I teach Sunday school and I overslept. Good job. Then I signed up to help with Crop Walk at my church this afternoon. Last year after nearly keeling over as I finished the walk, I swore this year instead of walking, I'd volunteer to help prepare refreshments. Because I missed church, I wasn't sure what time the walk started, but my dad, who'd been in church this morning, informed me it was at 3:00. At 3:00, I pulled into the church parking lot to see walkers just finishing up. On the marquee was a sign that read, "Crop Walk Oct. 21st at 1:00 pm."

Great. I missed church and I missed the Crop Walk. Feeling like a huge loser, I came home. My mil, fil, bil, and sil had taken the five oldest kids to a corn maze, so my husband suggested we run out and get a bite to eat. We drove to a new restaurant in town that had just opened yesterday. At least that's what the sign said. It wasn't open. Next we drove to a little place at which we'd never eaten, but it was close so we thought we'd try it out. About a thousand motorcycles filled the parking lot. Now I have nothing against bikers, but I didn't really feel like going into a biker bar for dinner with my husband and baby, so we went on to a little Italian sandwich place. It was closed. Are you seeing a pattern with my weekend here?

Yesterday I fully intended to turn off the computer and clean my house. The kids dragged out Halloween costumes, I picked them up. My daughter found a pair of sparkly "glass slippers" that I'd made by gluing sequins onto a pair of Mary Janes, and she wore them around the house. With each step, several sequins fell off leaving behind a glittery trail. As I vacuumed the sequins, my son grabbed my open container of pop (or "soda" if you live in the north, or "coke", if you live in the south) and spilled it all over the counter tops, dripping sugary liquid onto the floors I'd just scrubbed. Do you ever have days like this? I swear I never sat down, but at the end of the day, you couldn't tell that I'd done anything! It's frustrating sometimes.

I cleaned one thing, the kids destroyed two more. Saturday continued pretty much like this until we went to our friends' house for dinner. It was pretty quiet, everyone was eating, talking quietly in between bites, when out of nowhere, Clay shouted, "Underwear!" He then when back to eating his chicken. (No, he doesn't have Tourette's Syndrome.)

When we finished dinner, the kids (there are ten between us) ran off to play while the adults stayed at the table talking. The kids put on a somewhat demented fashion show for us. We enjoyed seeing the boys parade downstairs wearing tiaras, Power Ranger costumes, glamorous rings, baseball caps, purses, scarves, and of course weapons of destruction. You can't have a glamorous Power Ranger princess without a plastic sword, dagger, or Nerf gun. This is common knowledge, of course. This strange parade of fashions went on until our friends' youngest son, (we'll call him Sean) came downstairs wearing an eclectic combination of clothing, carrying his sister's Dora doll, and wielding a plastic sword.

He went through the motions of "decapitating" the doll, then tossed it on the floor, took off his costume and his shirt and body slammed the doll a la pro wrestler. We watched in fascination. Then my friend, (we'll call her Jen) said, "I think kids just do what we only think about doing." We might think about taking out our frustrations, but we wouldn't dream of tearing off our shirts and actually body slamming someone into the floor! We might want to break the silence by shouting out, but we wouldn't actually yell, "Underwear!" during the middle of our meal. Kids are funny that way.

There's nothing better than sharing a meal, visiting with good friends, and watching our kids act like nuts.