Post-Thanksgiving Recap

My apologies to all of you eagerly awaiting my blog posts. Okay I guess that is probably just Mom - sorry Mom! We have been busy entertaining the "Quincy contingent" -- Aunt Abby, Uncle Mike, and cousin Charlie, who arrived Thursday and are departing bright and early tomorrow morning. So here's the recap:

1. Successful turkey cooking with the help of Switchin Kitchens for all the side dishes, so the actual meal preparation was not nearly as arduous as it could have been.

2. The cousins have been getting along well for the most part -- Charlie idolizes Ben and is very possessive of him so the only issues we've had in that respect have been when Ben has tried to play with someone else... Charlie yelled at one of the neighborhood kids when she tried to come over to play ("That's MY Ben!") and threw sand at one of Ben's school friends who we happened to run into at the park. He just does not want to share "his" Ben. Becca follows the two of them around trying to compete for some of Charlie's attention -- "Hey Chah-yee! Hey Chah-yee! HEY CHAH-YEE!" (No response). There has also been some toy sharing issues between the two of them. Okay, a lot of sharing issues. But overall, lots of good cousin fun.

3. Friday we took the kids to Monkey Joe's and then Abby and I went out to dinner and a movie, and Saturday we went to the Schiele Museum enroute to which Joel got a $380 traffic ticket for failing to get out of the right hand lane when passing a police car conducting a traffic stop on the shoulder -- I didn't even know there was such a rule -- so I will call that excursion not terrifically successful. Sunday we went to Freedom Park and the Nature Museum, and today (with Ben and Becca back at school) Abby and I did some shopping.

4. tomorrow it's back to business as usual, but I shall leave you with a hodge-podge of random pictures taken over the last five days....

To-Do List

My day-before-Thanksgiving to-do list looked something like this:

1. 9:30 a.m. appointment with cleaning service to do a walk-through & estimate
2. Occupy Ben somehow, off from school today, while working at the same time
3. Pick up pre-assembled side dishes for tomorrow's meal
4. Drop Ben off at the hospital so he could hang out/have lunch with Joel (who had a half day today)
5. Be back by 2pm to supervise delivery and assembly of an elliptical machine (while working)
6. Fix dinner, start the turkey brining (while working).

This was all totally screwed up by Ben, who very early in the day started complaining that his ear hurt. I took him to the doctor in time slot #2 above, which of course screwed up the "while working at the same time" part. #3 above was done while Ben howled in increasing pain, and #4 was replaced by "take Ben to the drug store for tylenol with codeine where he howled in pain and begged for medicine for the entire 20 minutes it took to get the prescription filled". Numbers 5 and part of 6 were with the addition of "while Ben howled in pain because the tylenol with codeine wasn't working".

Finally the medicine kicked in and he happily played computer games with Joel, allowing me to get some of my to-do list done in peace! Turkey is not in the brine yet, and I am going to be finishing up some stuff for work later tonight, but it's all good... I think...

Totally psyched to see Abby, Mike, and Charlie tomorrow!

I Finally Have my Old Kitchen Back!

Back in, oh April sometime I think, Joel decided he wanted to paint the kitchen. He primed a couple of walls, put some paint samples up, and then did nothing.... for months... Eventually he decided he didn't like any of the paint samples he'd put up and didn't feel like painting the whole kitchen, and didn't feel like hiring someone to paint it for him, so he decided he was going to re-paint the kitchen the same color it was before.

By this point I'd been living with paint-smeared kitchen walls for like half a year, and I didn't care what the hell he did as long as MY KITCHEN WAS PAINTED ONE SOLID COLOR BEFORE THANKSGIVING.

So here we are, a couple of days before Thanksgiving, and Joel finished painting the kitchen! The exact same color it was before. Only it wasn't even just as easy as that because he didn't have enough of the original paint, so had to go buy some, which turned out to be the wrong finish, so then he had to go buy some more.

Let's all make fun of him now.

Bonus Room

(Minus elliptical, which is arriving Wednesday).

It's a Good Thing She Has a Hard Head

Becca ran full speed into a table while we were out doing errands this morning. It was out on the sidewalk in front of a store, and rather than go around it, as there was plenty of room to do so, she ran straight into it even though she appeared to be looking where she was going. She hit it right between the eyes, so hard that it knocked her over flat on her back on the sidewalk. I, walking a few steps behind her, was absolutely horrified, but after a few minutes it became apparent that she had no other injuries except the one in between her eyes which Joel assured me is a very thick part of the skull! She is fine now. She just looks like she, well, ran full speed into a table.

Deceptively Angelic

Kathleen was kind enough to send me a picture of Becca she took last weekend. I especially like the halo effect.

More Pee, And Some Other Stuff

1. Rebecca peed on the potty AGAIN tonight! This was her second straight successful peeing attempt. This time she sat down on the potty with a very determined look, and refused to get up until some pee was forthcoming.

2. Ben successfully tested for his yellow belt at Tae Kwon Do yesterday. Of course, being the absent-minded guy he is, he forgot to tell me about it beforehand. So I MISSED GETTING TO SEE HIM BREAK A BOARD! Okay, it was less board-ish and more small-piece-of-balsa-wood-ish, but still! So proud, so proud...

3. Joel spent his week off buying me a 50 inch Samsung plasma TV for our bedroom, which is replacing the 46 inch Sony LCD we had in our room, which is going (has gone already I should say) up into the bonus room. He also bought me an elliptical trainer, so that I can work out in the bonus room while watching a very large TV. Way to go Joel!! Quality way to spend vacation time, I must say. Neither purchase is actually in-house yet, but we are hoping to have them both before Thanksgiving.

4. In reference to #3 above, Joel moved the 46 inch Sony up to the bonus room today. After dinner tonight Becca headed into our bedroom to demand we put Backyardigans on for her (as is her usual after dinner habit) and when she went into the room she stopped, looked all around with a very puzzled look on her face, and yelled, "WHERE MY PEEDEE GO??"