Good Weekend

Saturday morning I took the kids to the library to hand in their folders for the summer reading club. The club started June 8th and Little Reader and Little Hugger were supposed to read 600 minutes and 400 minutes respectively. They were already done. I don't think the librarians really believed they had done it, but then again most kids going into 1st grade aren't already reading chapter books, and most kids don't bring books with them every time we go in the car. Those two things combined, plus story time at night add up to lots of minutes.They were very excited to get their book of coupons for treats from local businesses, and raffle tickets for prizes. 

We went home for lunch and midafternoon went to a friend's house for her 5 year old's birthday party. There were 22 kids and a bounce house, water balloon toss, pizza and brownies. Once the school friends had been picked up (after the usual 2 hour time frame) the rest of us opened up the adult beverages, and lingered another couple of hours before heading home. My husband was on call for the weekend so and had to resort to fast food for dinner since we had already eaten. I figured the least we could do us go home and hang out with him.

After getting the kids to bed, we just relaxed - him watching TV and me reading my latest book - the Expats - which is pretty good so far.

Sunday we slept in, all the kids came in to snuggle for a bit before breakfast.

We spent the rest of morning organizing Little Reader's room. Since we had gone through bookshelves the other day, she felt inspired to organize the rest of her room. She got rid of a few more things (which always makes me happy).

We headed to the beach around 2. My husband plays in a volleyball league with some friends in the summertime. It's every Sunday for 8 weeks, but the best part is that it gives us the right to use a beach that is normally only for that town's residents. It's on the North Shore of Chicago so has nice facilities, is never very crowded and gives the kids a chance to play at the beach (something we never had access to before he joined the league). Even though he was on call I took the kids to the beach to play. We actually left before our game started (and the rest of our friends arrived), but they never check. The kids had fun. As usually Little Reader wanted to spend most of her time in the water, Little Hugger stayed mostly on the sand looking for shells and building sand castles (or today "muck soup"). Little Man stayed mostly in the sand, but dipped his toes in a few times, but it was too cold to really play in the water.

We had dinner with my husband, Popsicles on the deck, and got everyone cleaned up and off to bed before settling in to watch Aaron Sorkin's new show. I've been missing well-written dramas (that are not cop or sci-fi shows). The West Wing is still one of my favorite shows and this is very similar. The pacing and dialogue is typical Sorkin. Unlike Studio 60, I think this should have a good run since it's easier to come up with good story lines when the show is based on a news station - good "ripped from the headlines" stuff. The premiere was about the BP rig that exploded in the Gulf. As usual Sorkin doesn't hold your hand, you have to pay attention and keep up. He throws industry vernacular at you, but doesn't dumb down to the audience by explaining it at each step. In the West Wing, Donna and Charlie were the ones who usually had things explained to them (and therefore clarified to the audience).  In this case he offers a recent college grad who was newly promoted from intern to the newscasters assistant. Any questions you may have are usually explained as she figures things out.

Once that was all done I decided to make a carrying bag for our beach umbrella. It's in two parts and it's a pain to carry to the beach as it is too long to fit in our big tote bag, and kept falling out. Even with the kids carrying stuff, I dropped it probably five times on the way to the parking lot (almost hitting my son with it a couple of time).

I found some leftover curtain fabric (I wanted something strong) gave it a drawstring and attached a strap from an old CD case. Now I just need to find the little squeezie thing that keeps the drawstring tight.

Overall a good weekend. Would've been better had my husband not been on call, then he could have enjoyed it with us, but he's off the next few weekends, so it all balances out.