Long weekends totally rock.
I went home a smidge early on Friday (the office was dead, anyway) and spent the evening relaxing.
I discovered through the city twitter feed that a new farmer's market/organic food store was having a grand opening in Williamsburg on Saturday. I needed some tomatoes and berries for Sunday's dinner, so I tacked that onto Saturday's list of errands. We went to the bank, the farmer's market (which is not actually new, it turned out, but a new/added location for the roadside stand that's up by the Pottery -- this one is oodles more convenient for us, though, so yay!) and to Target for assorted stuff. And then after lunch, Matt took Penny back out to go to the library, where she got signed up for the summer reading program.
After lunch and Alex's nap, we went back into town to meet up with Adin and Braz and Braz's girls at the movie theater to see Toy Story 3. That was almost a disaster -- Penny'd brought her diabetes kit with her, of course, but somehow she'd missed putting the glucose testing kit inside it -- so we had no idea what her starting sugars were before trying to dose her for the popcorn. Well, Matt and I didn't want to miss the movie, so we just dosed her based on the popcorn alone (she got her very own small popcorn, and a matching 3.5-unit shot). Partway through the movie, she complained to me that she was shivering uncontrollably, and I worried that I'd overdosed her, but she said she didn't feel low.
Alex was pretty danged good for the movie, considering he's two: he wanted to get down a few times, and he switched back and forth between Matt and I quite a bit, but he never got so squirmy or talky that we had to take him out -- so Matt and I both got to watch the entire movie, whoo-hoo!
The movie itself... Well, you have to accept from the very beginning that the Toy Story movies are not actually movies for kids with adult interest built in, but instead movies for adults with kid interest built in. They're all about toy nostalgia, which kids don't really get. So I think Penny was vaguely lukewarm on them -- but she was excited to get to hang out with Emma and have her own popcorn, so that made up for a movie that wasn't actually geared for her. For Matt and I, it was great. We laughed our asses off, and then we cried like little babies. Braz and Adin admitted to the same reaction. Which is pretty much the best you can ask for from the movie experience, right?
After it was over, Matt took Alex back to Braz's while I ran Penny home for the rest of her kit. (We'd taken two cars because Matt had his monthly D&D game that evening, so the original plan was for me to take both kids to Braz's while he went straight on to the game, but with Penny's kit issues, it turned out to be a good thing.) I had Penny do a sugar check while we were home, and she came up at 180 -- with insulin still in her system processing the popcorn, that was pretty great, so I felt good about my estimate on the popcorn. Then we dropped by the grocery store to pick up some ice cream and diet soda, and then headed back to Braz's.
Matt headed off to his D&D game, Penny whisked off into the girls' room to play with them, and Alex wandered aimlessly around Braz's living room while I watched Adin play Super Mario Brothers on the Wii and Braz made dinner. (Adin's kids were with their dad -- I think Alex was a little confused not to see his new buddy Henry.) We had chicken and rice and green beans and some raw veggies with dip for dinner, and then ice cream for dessert, and as near as I can tell, everyone had a fantastic time. We didn't leave until nearly 8:30, so Alex got to stay up most of an hour past his bedtime, and Penny was up a good half-hour late.
Which did not stop them from popping up at the usual time Sunday morning.
We did the usual errands and chores Sunday morning, and then my parents came over around mid-afternoon. (Alex woke up from his nap and was slightly cranky, so I thought I'd put a movie in to help him make the transition to being awake. While I was still deciding, my folks called to let us know they were on their way over, so I pulled out one of Matt's Muppet Show DVDs, since those are short episodes. When Alex saw my pic, he immediately began to shriek with excitement: "MUPPETS! MUPPETS! MUPPETSHOW! MUPPETSHOW!" So Matt may be proud that he's successfully passed that love on to at least one of his offspring.)
We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs for dinner, and my mom brought her potato salad, which I love more than any other potato salad in the universe (and which I could happily eat until I'm back to being the size of a house -- dangerous stuff!) and we had an angelfood cake, blueberry, and cherry parfait for dessert. (Penny got to put the whipped cream on top of the parfaits, which excited her to no end. Sometimes, it's the little things.)
Not too long after my folks left and Alex got put to bed, Penny and I packed up and headed out to our Sooper Seekrit fireworks-watching location. We got there about an hour before the fireworks were due to start, and there were only a handful of other people there. (One group was a huge family that had obviously been there for most of the day -- they had a portable hibachi and a few large coolers of food.)
Penny got more and more excited as it got darker and darker, and then finally (surprisingly right on time) the fireworks started!
By the way, an open note to the woman who was sitting right behind us: while I'm sure you're absolutely right that having seen the Macy's fireworks display in New York City sort of dulls the thrill of most other shows, did you really need to spend the entire twenty minutes talking about it and ruining things for the rest of us? Geez. What the heck ever happened to the old "if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" rule?
At least, thanks to our Sooper Seekrit fireworks-watching location, it only took Penny and I about twenty minutes to get home (most of that was spent on the first mile). Of course, since they didn't even get started until 9:15, she was up almost two hours past her usual bedtime.
I took about 125 pictures of fireworks, and only about 25 had to be deleted for being too blurry or showing too much camera shake. Of the remainder, 40 were good enough to be worth a second look, and about half of those were nice enough that I cropped and cleaned and posted them to my Flickr account.
I also posted this picture of Alex:
which reminded me strongly of this old picture of Penny:
Monday, knowing the kids would get completely stir-crazy if we tried to stay home with them all day, we packed up and went down to Chesapeake to visit KT and Kevin and Jess. I was braced for mild disaster -- Alex fell asleep in the car and got all of about 10 minutes' worth of a nap, which was just enough that he didn't want to nap after we got there. But though he was obviously in a "delicate" mood, he didn't completely lose his cool, and we managed to eat lunch and then sit and chat until around 4 while Penny and Jess played in Jess' room.
Both kids fell asleep in the car on the way home -- Alex within the first fifteen minutes, and Penny about twenty minutes from home. This, naturally, gave both of them the energy to not fall asleep until quite late. Three days in a row of going to sleep late -- it's going to be a fun week trying to get them back on schedule!
But it's a short week, and the Summer Bash is Saturday! I'm getting excited!
And I should probably figure out what I'm going to make for it. Aheh.
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