Weekend Wrap-Up

Another weekend is practically upon us and I haven’t even caught you up on last weekend, so here goes.

Friday night was my second Dance Party for Veterans. Frankly, it was a little tragic. For my first party, I was worried that no one would show up, and then we really got a decent crowd and everyone was both very generous and enthusiastic about doing it again. So for the last party, I was much more confident that people would come, and then. . . hardly anyone came. Eventually, some more people showed up, and almost everyone who showed up had fun dancing, I think, but it was still a little bit pitiful. Prior to the party, Cute W had struggled a bit with putting together the playlist, so I felt guilty about that, too. Bottom line, I think we might try to make it an annual or semi-annual thing and just triple-check everyone’s calendars and really try to market it. At least I had fun dancing.

While Cute W and I were dancing, M had a sleepover at a friend’s house and J was at a neighbor’s party. Earlier I’d told her that if it was still daylight out and she wanted to come join us (the legion’s a few blocks away), she was welcome, but otherwise, she should just walk home. Fairly late, a neighbor dropped her off at the legion for us after hearing that she was considering biking in the dark to join us. I was simultaneously grateful for the village and mortified for fear that someone would call CPS on us. Poor J took one look at us actually dancing and was so appalled that she fled the dance area. Luckily our sweet helpers from the legion taught her card tricks until it was time to go.

On Saturday morning I tabled for KidsOutAndAbout at the the HeartWalk at Empire State Plaza. If you don’t recall, it was very chilly and pouring rain, so in spite of all of the lovely and civic-minded people, it was not my favorite tabling experience ever. There were literally people wearing mittens and shivering and buying out every umbrella at the New York State Museum’s gift shop.

With everyone recovering from their late nights and busy mornings (J had gymnastics practice all morning), we just slobbed around all Saturday afternoon. We totally deserved it.

On Sunday morning we visited Mountain Ridge Adventure, the brand-new treetop challenge course and zip line park in Glenville.  We were very excited to hear that a place so nearby was opening up, and we had a ton of fun. In fact, I have a little bit of a rant about this, but I promised on Facebook that my next post wouldn’t be cranky at all, so I’m saving it for later. Meanwhile, here’s the Review of Mountain Ridge Adventure I wrote for KidsOutAndAbout.

This week’s crazy-busy. I’ve had end-of-the-year activities like wrap-ups for the Working Group on Girls of Schenectady and J’s food for her Western Hemisphere project, which happened yesterday. Somehow I also managed to schedule multiple appointments: orthodontist for J (still procrastinating on braces, thank you Dr. Hoskinson!), a haircut for me, and a blood donation. What am I, nuts? I think that, six months away, I forget how busy the end of the school year is and all I can think is that appointments are easier without the kids around. But it’s a bad plan, and I’ve got to readjust. I actually did try to donate blood a month ago, but they were so short-staffed that I waited too long and had to leave to do something else. With the haircut, my kids heard that I was getting a haircut and they each said that they wanted a haircut, too. Which is nutty, because they never, ever want a haircut. J’s been growing her hair out, and M literally hasn’t gotten a hair cut since the shave over two years ago. And I’ve asked if they’d like to get a haircut probably once a month for the last year, because they were both looking pretty scraggily. Suddenly the girls were up for a trim, and so I threw two more appointments into this week asap. I wanted to get them in before they changed their minds. So far, J’s done it, and if I do say so myself, she looks like she could be on a shampoo commercial now:

That’s about all that’s happening here.