Weekend Activities

Right now we have no weekend soccer games, swim meets, or other activities scheduled, so I have been totally unproductive. Natalie spent Friday night at her friend Allison's house, so she was gone for most of the day yesterday (Saturday). Patrick, Eric, and I decided to go to IHOP for breakfast. It was interesting that Eric said that he was "just at IHOP with Grandma and Grandpa" although that was over three weeks ago. He would have rather gone to Starbucks! Still, he settled for IHOP because Patrick and I hadn't been there in a while. I shared my food with him as usual, but he asked for extra sausage. He ate three sausage links and one blueberry pancake. That's a lot for that little tummy.

After breakfast, Patrick and I went to Lowe's yet again to make final decisions on the new appliances and tile for our kitchen/bathroom renovation. I'll have to do a post later this week or next week, some time before they start. The scheduled start date is September 23rd. I'm excited and scared at the same time.

In the afternoon, I took Eric to a birthday party at Artworks. I vaguely remember taking Alex to one of these around when Alex was this age. Kids love art at this age. There was a cool art station where we put a small paper plate inside a salad spinner, dropped different colors of paint on the plate, then spun the plate inside the salad spinner. That seemed to be the most popular station because the kids kept lining up there. In this photo, Eric was dabbing dye onto a shirt to make a tie-dye shirt. We're supposed to leave the shirt alone for 48 hours, but I'll be sure to take a picture of the final product.

We had some down time after the party, then we went to church on Saturday evening. We've been going to that mass lately so the kids can get to bed earlier on Sunday before school starts Monday. I probably shouldn't be taking pictures at church, but I had to take this one. Eric put his hand on Alex's hand and Alex remarked on how tiny Eric's hand was. Eric's pinky finger is about half the size of Alex's pinky finger.

Whenever Alex and Eric sit together at church, they tend to get a little rowdy. Alex can't resist touching his little brother, which means that he ends up tickling Eric. Eric is so ticklish that it doesn't take much. I have to admit that I might have tickled Eric once or twice during church also.

We picked up Chipotle for dinner before going home. That's a family favorite and a sort of "reward" for Patrick for cooking dinner four out of five days this week. Go Patrick! We watched the second new Star Trek movie "Into the Darkness" after the little ones were in bed. Now we need to watch Star Trek Wrath of Khan again!

This morning, Eric again asked to go to Starbucks. I saw no reason not to. Patrick traditionally gets donuts on Sunday morning, but I usually don't eat them. He wanted to go to Starbucks too. I took one photo of Eric eating his blueberry scone and accidentally included my finger. I showed him the photo and he laughed. Then he suggested that I put the photo on Facebook because it was so funny. The silly boys is always saying that I should put photos of him on Facebook. That is in sharp contrast with his sister who never wants me to take any photos of her, and when I do, I'm strictly forbidden to post it on Facebook OR my blog. In fact, I have some photos of her playing with her noodles. She was putting them on her face as a mustache. They're hilarious but blurry because she was trying to block me from taking the photo.

I bought Eric a lightsaber during our weekly visit to Target today. The kids used to have one but that broke, so Eric has been using some foam swords and calling them "lightsabers". He loves playing Star Wars so much that I couldn't resist. This is a picture of him trying to looking intimidating, I think. I think he looks adorable, of course. He has been using this so much today, turning it on and off, listening to the lightsaber sounds it makes and looking at it lighting up. I'm sure we'll need more AAA batteries soon.

This afternoon, Patrick tried to go to a local sports bar known to have a lot of Green Bay Packers fans (among other fans--it's a popular sports bar), and he took Eric with him, but it was so crowded by the time they got there that they only stayed for a bit then had a father-son lunch elsewhere. Tonight we watched more football at home. Patrick is enjoying his kid-activity-free weekends, for sure.