Checking In

A catch-all, catch-up post

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Father’s Day weekend

Wow. All of this in one weekend.

  • Friday evening: Seaboard Music featured a bluegrass band. We kept the kids up past 10 PM: a rarity for us.
  • Saturday morning/afternoon: I spend 5 hours at the Raleigh CAC retreat while the kids attend a birthday party. We later all meet up for a few hours of swimming at Ridge Road Pool.
  • Saturday evening: The family visits our neighbor’s house for their annual neighborhood party. Dozens and dozens of neighbors are there, and another bluegrass band. The kids make new friends but quickly wear out and Kelly takes them home. I visit some more before walking home around 10 PM.
  • Sunday morning/afternoon: Father’s Day! A family bike ride on the greenway, followed by lunch. We then make the trip across town to visit my parents. My aunt is visiting this week so we chatted a bit and showed off the kids.
  • Sunday evening: I grill chicken for dinner. We watch more of my Planet Earth DVDs and tuck the kids into bed.

Now its time for me to relax as this has been a high-energy weekend. Sure beats being bored!

Zydecopious

The family and I went to see Zydecopious play at Seaboard Music Friday evening. My parents and brother’s family joined us and a bunch of our neighbors for the free show at Seaboard Station next to Peace China. Hallie and her cousin Hadley got the dancing started and by the time the show wrapped up there were dozens of couples dancing to the zydeco music.

The kids had been looking forward to this show for a week because we’ve been talking it up. Travis has played his zydeco CDs non-stop for the whole week. We knew they would love it but I have to say I didn’t realize just how much they’d love it. I’ve never seen happier faces on Hallie or Travis then I did Friday night. Both got time on stage playing the rubboard and tambourine and both clearly relished being onstage.

Now we’ll have to see when we can see them play again. It was a fantastic way to spend a Friday!

You name it, we did it this weekend

Whoa, where to start? Quiet evening at home Friday evening due to the rain. Saturday morning took the dog for a walk and had a nice chat with a neighbor before returning home to finish up preparations for Hallie’s birthday party. Got done right before the first guests arrived.

Had a great party for Hallie. I was in charge of kid festivities and had some playing soccer while others played on the playset or drew with the sidewalk chalk. Then my parents, my sister-in-law, and niece joined us for lunch at Moe’s. We got home and went bike riding and Rollerblading in the neighborhood before the kids went over to play with their Italian friends down the street, leaving Kelly and I an opportunity for a Saturday afternoon nap. Ah, what a luxury!
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Roomba zoomba

We had not been using our Roomba that much until this spring, when I thought I’d turn it loose on the dog hair that piles up. Roomba would clean half a room before stopping and complaining: its battery would no longer hold a charge. I remedied that last month when I purchased a replacement battery. Now Roomba is back to cleaning like a pro, sucking up “dog-hair sandwiches,” as I like to call them.

It’s nice to have a vacuum that does the cleaning for you!

Weekend spent outdoors

It was a weekend spent outdoors.

Friday evening I stopped by the Seaboard Music event to meet my neighbors and hear some music. Saturday morning the kids rode their bikes while Kelly and I Rollerbladed up and down the streets in our neighborhood.

Then they went to a birthday party while I pulled on boots and waded through Cemetery Branch creek picking up trash along with six or so neighbors. We picked up many bags of trash and got that section of Cemetery Branch looking great. Unfortunately, we had to stop before we worked further downstream, as I suspect that’s where all the trash is (and the homeless people). After the stream cleanup was done, Kelly told me that the Dolls had invited us over. I got cleaned up and we all spent time visiting with them, heading home around 8 PM.

Today we talked about going to the pool or going biking, but instead Kelly took to weeding the flowerbeds and I mowed the lawn and sprayed the poison ivy. Before we started though I recalled finding an injured baby opossum during my morning walk, so we all piled in to the car and went to fetch it and deliver it to an animal rescue place. The kids really enjoyed helping out an injured critter and so did I.

After lunchtime piled into the car again and headed to Five County Stadium to take in a free Mudcats game. In spite of the 90+ degree day in the sun and the kids’ lack of understanding of the game, we all had a great time.It was surprisingly affordable, too, so I think another baseball game is in the cards.

Now I’m home and quite tired. But, hey, I earned it!

Zydecopious

After we returned from the dinner party, we put the kids to bed and Kelly stayed put while I went out to join the Dolls and friends for a show by Zydecopious at the Blue Martini. I’m not used to heading out at 10PM but I soon caught up with the crew at the Peace Street R-Line stop and we rode the bus over to Glenwood South.

It didn’t take long for that zydeco music to get our feet moving! We took over the dance floor and had an amazing time! I got the chance to play tambourine on a few songs and even joined the band onstage to play the frottoir (the rubboard) on Mystery Train.

Hopefully there’ll be some pictures on the Zydecopious site that I can point to. In the meantime, make plans to see Zydecopious when they play at Seaboard Music June 12th. And bring your dancing shoes!

[Update: 9:37 PM] Here’s a link to the photos from the show.

Dinner party

We spent the evening with our friends Lisa and Craig’s home, joining some of their friends for drinks and dinner while the associated kids played in the yard. I had been dragging most of today, with the heat and humidity (and, er, the beer I drank last night while still suffering from a cold) sapping my energy, but I perked up considerably from the socializing.

One of the couples were teachers and they had quite a bit to say about Governor Perdue swiping a huge chunk out of their paychecks without warning in her effort to balance the budget. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard this complaint. As our friends said, teachers paved Perdue’s way into the Executive Mansion and it will be teachers who will show her the door.
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