Spring Break, Day 1

Day 1 of Spring Break. Day 1 of 5. The first day of 5 long days of quality time with me and the boys. We are only 1/5 of our way into an entire week of togetherness. 5 whole days which have begun with rain, whining, wet sheets from Ryan's room, all of the bedding from our room thanks to Alice, the 15 year old passive aggressive neurotic now non-peeing cat who peed on our bed last night for some reason, and 4 dirty bathrooms. 5 days of no school and no plans. Well, we're having lunch with a friend today, but after that, zilch.

My weekend was much more interesting than anything I have going on this week, so we'll review that and take our minds back to fonder, gentler times.

On Friday Mike took my UW Husky hats to Venue. I threw in the football hat just to get Diane's opinion. My instructions were: if she likes it, put a tag on it. If not, bring it home. Apparently she loved it. She loved all of them. It seems there was squealing in the store and rumor has it one of the employees may have bought the girl hat. So I have some work to do. Mike also brought my cupcake hats to Willow and Bloom and I now have to whip up about 6 more. I would so rather be working on other things but I'm not really in a position to complain right now, am I.

I worked that afternoon then went to Leah's for corndogs, drinks, and chocolate birthday cake while we chatted for a couple of hours.

On Saturday morning I woke up at o'dark:30 and went to my 8:00 a.m sweater class. Apparently this was our last class because now we have received all of the instructions we need to complete our sweaters. After I finished sputtering and stammering and wiped the tears from my eyes, I told Shiori to clear her calendar because I'll be stuck to her like glue until this thing is finished. I also think I may audit the Wednesday night class which can only help me. At one point Shiori said something to the effect of "if you remember from your high school calculus class when you blah blah blah blah blah blah.....". I told her that the only thing I remember is the decision not to take high school calculus.

From there I went to Jack's 4th birthday party. From there I went to my sister-in-law Tiffany's baby shower and generously partook of the champagne punch while gorging on the incredible food. And from there I brought Mike's cousin Wendi home with me for a visit.

Wendi is the daughter of Mike's dad's twin brother. Gene and Jim are the best of friends, and they married Linda and Rose, who were roommates and also the best of friends. So the two families have always been very close. Wendi also has twin boys who are 18 months old and one of them looks exactly like Mike did when he was their age. Wendi lives in Vancouver now and we haven't seen her in a few years so I just knew I had to bring her home with me or Mike would never forgive me.

Listening to Gene and Jim tell stories of their childhood is a riot. They were born to Mike's grandmother in rural Spokane when she was just 18. She somehow survived these two and went on to have 4 more kids. Every story from their childhood seems to end with one of the twins falling in a well or trapped in the hog pen (until they were older and the stories are about the thing they were hauling with their car coming loose and passing them on the highway).

10 minutes with these 18 month old boys and I turned to Wendi and Mike and said "I now understand why every story about your dads ends with one of them falling into a well". The 3 of us could not control these little boys. They seemed to have a divide-and-conquer philosophy and each ran in different directions. Just as we would rescue one, the other one would be eating the cat food. Or playing with my computer. Or the washing machine. Mike's mom and sister then arrived and, you would think with 5 adults in the house we could manage these 2 little boys. But no--on our watch one of them managed to order a pizza through our satellite with the remote control. We weren't even aware of this feature until Joshua and Reagen showed up. I was really wishing for more of that champagne punch.

These little maniacs are completely adorable and we spend the entire time laughing, but we were all exhausted after just 2 hours with them. We looked at Wendi and said "what does your house look like?!".

Needless to say, I did not knit on Saturday.

Yesterday I worked all day, and well, now that puts us back to today. Day 1 of Spring Break. It's only 10:00 in the morning and the 3 of us already hate each other. Ryan and Eric seem to be incapable of doing anything that does not require my involvement. I have asked them repeatedly to stay out of the office we'll be leaving in just a little bit please just let me finish my work (it's just a blog but what to they know) you don't need any rubber bands and now that I know why you want them you really don't need any rubber bands seriously the more you bug me the longer this is going to take ok that's it you two go upstairs and play I will let you know when it's time to go.

Just 4 1/2 more days of bliss.