Our Weekend

I feel like I'm falling behind! We were out all at the zoo all day on Saturday and then we were out of town on Sunday and Monday. When I came back I had a ton of email to go through and everyone's blogs to catch up on! And I think I left the camera case (with it's cord to connect it to the computer) in the Honda, which Steve drives to work, so I don't have any pics just now, but I can at least put up the happenings :) That's rather silly, seeing as how the camera itself is sitting right next to me and I can't get a single thing out of it! Let's see...

Sunday we went to church, where we picked up the Girl Scout cookies we had ordered the week before, and then headed out on the road towards Steve's parents' house. We made a detour through Lowe's, where Steve had a $10 gift certificate that was a Christmas present from one of his co-workers that he chose to spend on a couple of new dremel bits, another detour through Taco Del Mar (excellent burritos!) for lunch, and a third detour through KMart so that I could pick up a purse-size tube of lotion (my hands have been like sandpaper here, surprisingly) before getting ourselves up to Bob and Judy's house.

Although any excuse to visit with family is a good excuse, the real purpose of this trip was to work on Pinewood Derby cars. This year, we have four cars to enter. Kellen's (of course) in the cub scouts' races, and then Bob, Steve and Madison are each entering a car in the open races. Kellen told Papa what he wanted his car to look like, and Bob cut it out for him. Kellen did the sanding, Bob and Steve manned the spray paint (red, to Kellen's specifications), and then Bob showed Kellen how to wax his car. It looks great! Bob had his car finished already when we got there, so his is all ready for the races. Madison picked a shape of car out of four shown to her (two each belonging to Bob and Steve from THEIR cub scout days) so that Papa could cut, sand and paint her car for her. Steve decided to be a little adventurous with his car this year and is trying to create a Jeep, drilling out the interior with his dremel. He wasn't able to finish it before we came home, so hopefully he'll find time to finish it before March 8th. Anyone who has read my posts that include comments about his work schedule will understand that that prospect is a little risky!

On Sunday evening the kids had dinner with Grandma and Papa, while Steve and I sat and talked with everyone, because we had plans for later in the evening. A little before 8pm we took ourselves out the door and down to the Olympic Club. This is a bar-pool hall-restaurant-theater near his parents' house. It's not normally the kind of place we would frequent. But the theatre is set up with love seats and tables where they serve dinner while you watch a movie. It was quite a unique experience for us. I had a "Yardbird" (turkey, bacon and swiss on toasted sourdough) and Steve had a burger of some description while we watched "Into The Wild". We wanted to go to ColdStone for dessert afterwards, but it was 11pm when we got out of the movie so that was obviously out :) In all, it was great to be able to go out for a while without the kids (we haven't been able to do that since my birthday back in August) and we enjoyed having a little adult time together. I don't remember the last time we got to sit together and hold hands during a movie...

Monday morning we learned that Madison had been quite difficult about going to bed the night before (without either Steve or myself there), regardless of the fact that she had been exceptionally tired. We were so glad that Bob and Judy had been willing to do this for us, and hope that it won't deter them from doing it again sometime in the future! Monday continued the work on the Pinewood Derby cars (the levels of completion mentioned in the first paragraph were spread out over the two days) and Kellen almost completed his Whittling Chit (spelling?) which permits him to carry a knife at cub scout camps. He had been working on his sculpture out of soap (an exercise in learning how to handle the knife) when it slipped and knicked his thumb. Kellen happens to be terrified at even the thought of blood and certainly can't handle any level of pain so the sculpture ground to an immediate halt while he got a band-aid and went to watch cartoons instead :)

After lunch, we loaded our stuff up in the car and headed back home. I sincerely wished that I had not packed the camera into the diaper bag in the trunk because I saw many shots of the sunset over the city-scape that I would have loved to capture on the drive home. Oh, well. We stopped at a local Chinese buffet a half-hour from home for dinner, since Steve was in the mood for Asian food, and then got home around 730pm. It was a very nice weekend out, and we thoroughly enjoyed the break from the normal routines.

But we have a lot to look forward to this week, too. Our pack is holding its Blue and Gold dinner on Thursday night and, not only is Kellen going to be awarded his Bear badge (for completing that rank) but Steve's parents will be driving down to go to the dinner with us. We are all excited about Kellen having completed another rank in scouting, and we will be certain to post pictures of that. I think that about wraps up the weekend; sorry this one was so very long... I am hoping to have pictures from this weekend up tomorrow :)