All Worn Out

We have had a very busy weekend. On Thursday night (technically not the weekend) we went out for dinner with Tim, Fran, and Ben at TGI Friday's. MG and C were good, mainly because they were bribed. MG saw Chuck E. Cheese when we pulled into the parking lot and said, "Hey, look Mom! It's Chuck E. Cheese!" and I said, "Yeah, wow! We're not going there!" Feeling guilty, I told them that if they were good we could go and play Skee Ball after dinner, and sure enough they were good so we did. $5 worth of tokens will buy you a lot of good dinner behavior, if you're keeping track at home. I mean, she even ate her food. Totally worth the investment, IMHO. That's 20 games of Skee Ball - that's about 17 hours worth of Skee Ball when you're two, and enough to get 4 Tootsie Pops when you cash out your tickets at the end. If it weren't located firmly in the fourth circle of hell, we might go there more often.

Big News though, all you locals, in the same shopping center where The Rat lives, they're putting in a Sonic!! Right next to the Starbucks (the place on the corner is going to be another Walgreen's, because it's not enough that we have 157 pharmacies in this town already). Have you ever been to Sonic? It's fantastic. They have awesome beverages (blue coconut slush - hello gorgeous!). And they're half price every day from 2 - 4 (Happy Hour!) so I can totally see us going to Sonic at 2, smuggling our delicious beverages into Chuck's (because, let's face it, the only thing worse there than the constant noise and screaming, adrenaline drenched kids is the food), hanging out for 17 hours of Skee Ball, and then heading home.

Playdate anyone?

Wow, I digress. And this totally isn't the same as the time when I started the city wide rumor that they were going to put in a Trader Joe's, only to have everyone near suicidal when they actually put in a new Goodwill. There really is going to be a Sonic.

Right, so then Friday night we went and saw Ben Folds at the local U. It was really fun. Uncle Chuck came down with his friend Serena, and we went with two girls from work (sort of, they work for the company that leases our space to us). It was awesome. The only problem is that going to a concert, when you're 31, with a bunch of 18 year old college freshmen makes you feel exceedingly old.

So, we got to bed at like 1 am on Saturday morning, and then drove 45 minutes south for a family party with BJ's step-cousins. They are super cool people - they're the ones who do The Program at Christmas. It was so cool to just get together and hang out with them. We had a great meal, and the girls had a fabulous time with their cousins.

Then, we drove 2.5 hours to "Grammaland" where MG and C went to Gramma Denna's, Mommy went to Jenny's for a wine tasting, and Daddy went to play with Grandpa Ben. Mommy had way too much wine (see, when you're tasting 10 different wines, and you end up really liking the Riesling in the blue bottle, and then Jenny opens a new bottle just for you, you tend to get a little bit festive...). Things occurred at the party. However, I was specifically told that I would be killed if I blogged them, so I am just going to say it was really fun, and Jenny and Brian's friends are hard core. And when they say they'd kill me? They are totally not kidding...

Moving right along... We finally left (poor Jenny and Brian were passing out, and we're still standing there yakking because we have no tact. Finally I said, "We need to go home so these folks can go to bed," and they were all like, "THANK GOD they're finally gone! Jeez, I thought we were going to have to charge them rent!") and then we totally almost hit a deer on Division.
BJ the Sober was driving, though, so we are fine. Stupid wildlife. I joked on the way home about how I felt like we were breaking curfew, and we were going to be in trouble, and then Mom met us at the door and we both said, "Busted!" at the same time! She had an alarm clock in her hand, which was funny because she used to set the alarm clock for 11:05 in the hallway, and if I didn't turn it off before it went off, they knew I wasn't home and I was grounded. It didn't take me long to figure out that Chuck would turn off the alarm clock for $5. However, it was very odd to have her meet us at the door with an alarm clock in her hands (she said that she had taken it to work so she wouldn't forget to check in for her flight to Florida yesterday, but you never know with my mom). The girls were both asleep so we had a glass of wine (which was exactly what I needed, because the first 6 really didn't phase me) and talked until Claire woke up at 3 am, and I went up to put her back to sleep and promptly passed out.

The rotten babies got me up at 7:00 am. Ugh. I thought I was going to get another 5 minutes of sleep when Mom turned Charlie and Lola on in her room for Mary Grace, but then Claire woke up, too. It was alright, because we met Gramma Susan and Gramma Diana and Ken for breakfast, so we needed to get up anyway. No rest for the wicked. Then we drove home, where it's 57 degrees and we've turned off the furnace and opened up the house.

Claire is saying "nie nie" which seems to mean, "I want my nap, woman!" so I'm going to take her upstairs and pass out for a while. I hope you all had good weekends, too. If you need me this week, I'll be upstairs catching up on my sleep!