Day 130 ~ Recovery

I have talked about the importance of adult, friend time once you have children, or at any time in your life.  There is something grounding about spending a few hours without worries.  Talking about a funny memory, something that makes you sad and cry, and planning for the future all in the course of a few moments that is just home-like.

Friendship is something that has boundless value.

Fast forward through my Saturday (which was very quiet, because Brody was with my mom for his special day, which meant food wasn't constantly out, toys weren't thrown all over the place, and the temper tantrums were almost forgotten.  But man, did I miss all of that after about an hour of silence.) to having Keira help me pick out my dress, and put on my make-up.  If you are wondering, she picked a coral dress over a floral one, and she insisted she needed to put on mascara too, so I let her, cringing when it came a little close to her eye that I would have liked.  She helped me do my hair, pick out jewelry, and I let her pick out a necklace to wear too.

I want Keira to know the importance of girlfriends in her life.  I want her to have fun getting ready to go out for a girls night.  I promised her I would help her get ready when it would eventually be her turn to go out with her friends, if she would let me.  I then made her promise to let me.

I tucked her into bed a little while later and stayed with her until she fell asleep.

Then, I kissed my boys and headed out for the night.

Kerrie and I went to City Bar, where our friend Kristina is a bartender.  It was rejuvenating and it was almost like a recovery session, after school vacation week and the end of my day yesterday.  It was exactly what I needed.

When we left the bar, sometime after midnight, snow was falling.  We dashed around searching for a cab.  We laughed with our driver, where we proclaimed we were by far his best cab ride of the night.  Thanks Johnnie from Egypt.  It was so fitting to have you for our driver, another fun story to laugh about for years to come. 
Kerrie convinced me to stop at Falafel Palace, where she quickly ordered more food than there was people, telling me she got stuff for Nathan and Arjun (her boyfriend).  Twenty minutes and lots of laughs later, we had our bag of middle eastern food, and headed back to hail a taxi.  That part should have been easy, but the snow was falling hard, and it was not much earlier than two in the morning.  We finally found one though and home we went, vowing that we would do this far more often.

And you know, despite Keira waking up right at 6 in the morning, and only getting about three hours of sleep, it was SO worth it.

 My favorite bartender, Kristina.

 Kerrie with her lovely hand gestures while waiting for a cab after the bar.

Me, pouting while waiting forever for a cab after getting falafels.  It was really raining/snowing hard then.

Six am wake up calls are not fun.  Notice my make-up is still on from the night before.  I am not good at taking off my make-up before bed.  Maybe turning thirty will change that.

Day 129

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days...

No seriously, it was.

We were up and out of the house by 8am.  Sadly this was about fifteen minutes behind schedule.  We darted off to Newton for a casting for the kids, which we waited for about 45 minutes to have their pictures taken. 

After that we rushed to my mom's house so I could pick up her camera to borrow for the day.  We then dashed to my house so I could pick up a few things that I forgot, and headed right back out to my friend's house.

We had a great time at my friend's having lunch and getting pumped up to see Toy Story on Ice.  We then left and had a BALL at Toy Story.  I can not express enough gratitude to my friend for taking us all to see it.  It was so much fun watching all of our kids interact, and it is always great to see their moms and have adult conversation.

By the time we got home it was almost dinner time, and I had to make a grocery store run.  I made my list and headed out, only to get a very upsetting phone call on the way home.  Because of the personal and upsetting nature of the call, I am choosing not to discuss the nature of the call here, but I will say, it left me shaking, sobbing and with my heart beating out of my chest.  I ran into the house to talk to Nathan for about 3 seconds, before going as fast as I possibly could to attend to the matter.

When I returned home it was about seven, and thankfully Nathan had fed the kids for me.  I snuggled the kids up with their pillows and blankets and put on a movie for them.  Brody and Keira ended up wanting to sit on the couch with me and we all passed out by eight.

I woke up at 11:30 to strange classical music, that sounded far away and kind of static-y.  I searched and searched for it's mystery source to no avail.

I gave up out of frustration (and maybe a bit because of the creepy factor) and went to bed.

(The mystery was solved this morning... one of the boy's headphone walkie talkies had been left on and somehow picked up a classical music signal.  Super strange and random.)

The kids keeping themselves entertained during our 45 minute wait at the casting.

When Life Gets Tough, Just Dance

As I stated in my last post, it has been an emotional few days for me, so when I got a call from one of my oldest, dearest friends, Kristina, last night, asking me if Keira and I wanted to come to her house for a "girl's night dance party" we jumped at the chance.
I was mid way through cutting up the homemade pizza (pizza that Brody and Keira sprinkled all the cheese on themselves!), and I had already folded five loads of laundry and gone through a nail biter of a basketball game, (Ty's team won by one point, and Ty fouled out of the game with one minute left!) and basketball pictures (just what I want to spend money on the week before Christmas), and a week and a half's worth of grocery shopping, and putting away of said groceries (which also means batting away children who can't control themselves and are suddenly transformed into ravenous wolves when new boxes of snacks arrive), and cleaned the house, and put about twenty ornaments back on the tree that those sneaky kiddos love to take down, and made breakfast and lunch and, and and and and... you get the idea.  I had not stopped a once!  SO when that call from the Kristina who makes me sign up for races and then doesn't run with me, (who from now on shall be called Kristina who saves me from a busy day with a dance party) came I let Keira finish eating her pizza and then handed over the reigns to Nathan for some boy time and Keira and I dashed like mad out the door for some much needed girl time, fun and laughs.

And then we danced.

And danced.

And danced.

And I didn't feel bad that I was too busy to go for a run yesterday, because I was working up a sweat and having more fun that I have had in a while.

Keira was having fun too.  She watched everything Kristina's daughter Savannah did, and tried to copy it exactly.

I love moments like last night.  I love the unplanned fun that jumped into our laps, the girl time that I got to share with Keira, the laughs that came from the ridiculous dance moves, the pajama pants and tee shirts, the wine the adults got to have, and the fun Sav and Keira got to have with us.

It was needed.

It was perfect.

Zoo, Painting, Etc