It was a little blustery, but after the deluge of last weekend, it was nice to be out and about this weekend. I spent a lot of time with my older boys, which is a little unusual because when we split up the family for activities, I’m more likely to take the younger kids. However, this weekend, we had Porter’s baseball game (he made a good play, tagging a runner out in between 2nd and 3rd), which we all went to watch. Harlan was getting a little squirrelly by the time we got to Seamus’s game, but he held it together, and we made it to Gilbert’s game to pick him up.
I took S&G climbing at the climbing gym, and Gilbert just dances up the wall, but they were both tired from their baseball games, and they were trying much harder routes Saturday than they did the last time they went. We did some cat-sitting for our friend and headed back home, where we played Jackbox as a family and watched the new season of the Great British Baking Show. Jackbox is a party game where players come up with creative ideas to answer questions and then the other players vote on the best answers. Harlan isn’t quite old enough to play, but there is an option that makes it easier for him, and he enjoys himself. There was much hilarity around a game called “Faker” where Harlan was the faker and didn’t know it, but no one guessed him. (It reminds me of the time we were playing sunken sailor with our friends, and our friend gave all of us the sunken sailor card, so no one had any idea what they were doing!) Harlan has been very pleased that he was able to make all of us laugh so hard.
Patrick cut Gilbert’s hair into a mullet, which is both horrifying and awesome. Gilbert enjoyed getting reactions to it, so I hope his day at school is satisfying for him. His trumpet teacher was very excited about the mullet. And incidentally, the band teacher at the middle school commented that Gilbert’s lessons where showing well.
On Sunday, Seamus, Gilbert, and I went kayaking with the 4-H club along the Anacostia River. Finally, it felt like we’d spent enough time for them to fall into a funny rhythm of talking about whatever came to their minds, and it was relaxed and actually very amusing. We kayaked awhile, but it was hard, even though we were going down river, so we turned the seats around, thinking we were maybe backwards, but that turned out to not be the case, so extra-funny there. The boys deflated the boat on their own, and rolled it up, so we could take the Mazda kayaking! My arms are very sore today, because at one point, they just gave up paddling, and I had to take over. They said their arms hurt from climbing and baseball (and now I’m thinking, the kayaking was free, and we should just let them do that for their workout!). But they wanted to stop for Takis on the way home, and Seamus cracked up when I pressed “Forgot Card” at Giant and the computer gave me a discount anyway. He couldn’t stop laughing about “Why do they even have a card anyway, if you don’t have to have one?”
Patrick was working when we got home, so we enjoyed vegetarian chili cheese hot dogs for dinner and played a few games and read some books and headed to bed. It was a fabulous weekend!
Academic Leigh Speaking 