Weekend Rolling

It's a hardcore bunch we roll with.
Though I'd been looking forward to an uneventful weekend (other than math club, basketball practice, sleep over, basketball game, etc. ) I couldn't turn down a friend's invitation Friday to take the kids ice skating. Three sets of parents & kids with a friend thrown in for good measure.

Since we've never done this activity before ( or at least I haven't since I was a kid,) it was a learning experience.

The fancy place we first tried had a line of pre-teens out the door for a half hour before the public skate session even began. So we were turned away when they quickly met their occupancy limit. Now we know, next time, be there a good half hour before the rink opens and be prepared to stand in sub-zero temperatures outside in line.

It was 9pm at that point and the kids were still amped up to go skating. So I made a call to my Globo Gym Purple Cobra hockey playing brother for the next best location and our three vehicle caravan was back on the road to find another rink.

Fortunately we scored. And the ticket gal even gave us a discount since we'd missed part of the session.Their first time around the rink took them all about half an hour because they were inching sooo slowly along the wall. That's not an exageration. Half an hour!

But things loosened up after that. There was a DJ playing Lady GaGa and even Michael Jackson's 'Thriller.' 'Thriller' is a superb ice skating song btw. I squirmed on the sidelines wishing I was out on the ice, but I was definitely too old for that crowd.

But not too old for this crowd.Big pinball tourney goin' on amongst the adults. Vending machine coffee drinkin', pinball playin' good times.

11pm and closing time finally rolled around, but did we head home? No!

Table for 11 at Eat 'N Park, please. And we laughed and ate breakfast and stayed out past midnight.

Lily was so proud of arriving home at 1AM. She's a party animal, she is.

And having breakfast at midnight enabled us to postpone Saturday's breakfast until after lunch. The girls and Aggie's friend were busy most of the day working on some sort of video. There was makeup & hair doing, musical arrangements courtesy of the electronic keyboard, and fancy introductions.

Their photography was not so great. Not sure how the final video turned out, but they were happy for a long time so I just kept to my own beeswax.Aggie and friend. They're good eggs. But I still made them take the makeup off before we took them out for Mexican. They totally pouty faced us into that one.And friend's parents make some incredible homemade wine. They gifted us a nice hefty bottle of red that went magically with our Sunday supper of homegrown T-Bone steaks, asparagus, mushrooms, and Mawsi's homemade macaroni 'n cheese.

Neko Case playing in the background. Mark's grandma laughing a little more freely over her wine. Mark & his grandpap chewing on their steak bones.

Supper was after I'd spent several reluctant hours on hands and knees poking the vacuum in every nook, crannie, crevice, corner, hole,...you get what I' saying, and then, on hands and knees again, mopping the whole first floor by hand.

I made the mistake of busting out the magic eraser on the laundry room floor. Ah, the bane and boon of flooring that so effectively hides dirt. And the agony and ecstasy of the magic eraser bringing to light just how much filth you've been living in all this time.

So I was riding high on that Just Cleaned The House feeling. Supper was perfect. I'd bribed the girls to extra clean their room with the promise of 1 month of Club Penguin membership and Lily was beside herself with joy. She told me as much, and I wish I'd videoed her beaming and squirming in her seat as she logged on. So I'd basically bought myself some sisterly love and peace for about 12 bucks.

Mark & Sam were engrossed in a video game.

And I topped my 2 glasses of wine off with a concoction of amaretto, creme de cacao, and milk (probably has a real name, huh?)honky tonk music on the Sirius (I have an occasional love of the ickiest, most inappropriate honky tonk songs; e.g. I'd Love To Lay You Down by Conway Twitty. So wrong, but I just can't look away or stop listening,) and a fresh, squishy brownie as I lounged like a contented hog on my bed.

A giddy moment.

YoYo was PO'ed because he wanted in the house. He's so handsome, even when he's peeved.

All I wanted was one day of clean, buddy. Things will be back to normal today, paw prints and dead ladybugs everywhere.