Weekend Respite

It was a nice weekend free of scheduled activity. My roller hockey season ended last weekend. I'm still just trying to keep up, but our team did win the championship and the season was a lot of fun. The boys didn't have any games scheduled this weekend because a bunch of kids were playing in tournaments with the travel teams.

I was supposed to be playing tennis this weekend in the ALTA playoffs, but our captain emailed us earlier in the week and told us that he had mistakenly played some guys out of position last weekend, which resulted in our team forfeiting a match and missing the playoffs. Oh well. This was a new team for me because my long time team disbanded after the fall season due to the condition of our home courts. There were a lot of foreign guys on the new team: several from Czechoslovakia, a Russian, a Serbian, an Egyptian, an Englishman, and my partner was from Singapore. They're good guys and it was fun hearing new stories and new perspectives.

On Friday, Derek ate dinner with his friend Blake. Adam tried to get a sleepover going after we reluctantly agreed, but his friends were busy. We grilled and ate out on the porch. It was a nice evening and Helen and I sat on the porch after dinner watching Adam piddling around in the back yard playing with a stick and shooting his bow and arrows and we agreed that it was so nice. Who needs sleepovers, xbox, and the outside world? I loved it when the boys were young and Daddy coming home each day was the best thing in the world. When we were their world and they were ours and there was nothing they would rather do than play in the back yard together after dinner on a beautiful evening.

On Saturday morning, Helen and I did a yoga workout. We alternate between Jillian Michaels and Jackie Warner workouts with some Jillian yoga thrown in here and there. After we finish a yoga workout we always wonder why we don't do it more often. It's really good and it kicks your butt.

I spent the rest of the morning doing what I do - ordering an unordered world. In my general sweep of the house, finding a place for the Easter candy resulted in a full out re-organization of the pantry. Helen commented that it was on her list and that she planned to get to it...on May 29th, which is the big joke because that's when school is out and when she plans to tackle all the various things that she doesn't want to think about right now. I told her that May 29th was starting to look kind of overbooked.

On Saturday afternoon, we went to Helen's school to see the students perform the "Hairspray" musical. We've always gone to see various school productions and the kids used to love it, but now they're starting to push back. Why can't they just stay young? They ended up going with only minor complaining and, afterwards, they agreed that it was pretty good.

We took the bike that Derek got from Uncle Paul to the shop to get tuned up and to get a kickstand. Then we took the boys by GameStop to buy Modern Warfare 3. Helen felt bad when the clerk looked at her and asked her to confirm that she was, indeed, allowing her children to buy a game rated for mature audiences only.

We went to our favorite local Mexican restaurant for dinner. The one where they're constantly topping off your margarita. It was extra festive because it was Cinco de Mayo. Helen only drinks a little since she knows I won't be able to drive, but it's still enough to send her to bed early. The boys played Modern Warfare and then watched the end of "True Lies" with me.

On Sunday, we did the usual grocery shopping and yard work and then went to see "The Avengers" in late afternoon. It seems like almost everyone went to see that movie this weekend. After the movie, we stopped by to meet the new young couple that just moved in across the street. Helen had baked some banana bread for them. They were so young - just married in August. They reminded us of ourselves moving into the neighborhood so many years ago.