Today was a great day not to be at work. Well, actually any day not at work is a great day, but today worked out so well. A while back a friend of mine, Sarah, had invited the whole family to a party at her house. I automatically said that I can’t go because it was on a weekend. That is my usual response. However, I took today off because tomorrow we are going to King Richard’s Faire. So, when I saw something about the party come up on my Facebook feed, I checked with Allison and we decided to go. It was even better that the drive to Sarah’s house takes less time than it does for Andrew to buckle himself in. I can’t believe how close she lives. The party was great. Everything was so laid back. We just brought our chairs and our bathing suits and ourselves. Sarah took care of everything else.
Andrew started off shy but then he was all about his personality and he was up and down the inflatable waterslide over and over. Then he was jamming out to the live band that they had. The band was called “Last Call” and they were a lot of fun, doing great covers. Food was plentiful and a couple more of my friends from college were there. My friend Laurie and her boys and my friend Meg and her son and husband. It was great to see them. I had not seen them in forever. Here is our photo together.
Today we took a trip further down the Cape to visit my grandparents and also our good friends, Aaron and Denise and their kids.
We picked Eva up from Science School and headed to Harwich to visit Grandma Bennett. She had picked up a couple new pieces of technology and wanted me to share my opinion of them with her. She bought a VHS to DVD recorder which could come in handy for the whole family to transfer their VHS tapes to DVD. There are some nice services for this like, YES Video, which I’ve worked with in the past. They are great but a bit expensive with so many things to convert. With this new device Grandma can save lots of her VHS tapes to DVD. The nice thing about this is once those are on DVD they can be converted and edited to digital files so that we could watch the best parts of the movies.
After seeing Grandma, we went over to visit Grandpa Bennett. He had a health scare a few weeks ago and has been rehabbing for a while. He was looking much better than the last time I saw him. In great spirits, too. He’s getting out soon and is looking forward to that very much. Andrew was a bit standoffish at first. He can be that way sometimes. Eva was less so but still a little. I think seeing Grandpa in a bed kinda threw her. But she recovered well. By the end of the visit the kids were taking turns telling jokes and being silly. They warm up pretty quickly. I think the funniest thing was that Andrew was showing grandpa his painted fingernails and toenails and his right foot’s toenails perfectly matched grandpa’s bedspread. We all got a laugh out of that.
After our visit with Grandpa we went over to spend some time with our good friends, the Prestons. I knew Aaron from High School and a sad event brought us back together to make the discovery that we lived not five minutes from each other. We got together with our families soon after that and the kids have been fast friends ever since. The parents have been as well. They are an exceptional family who comes up with great fun projects. One of those projects has been doing mini “Chopped” competitions between the kids. That was our activity for the night.
I picked up some toppings for ice cream and, of course, went a bit overboard. The kids had a ton of things to choose from in order to decorate their scoop of ice cream. Each kids received one scoop and had to make the best looking creation that they could. The older kids were more on the minimalist side creating “less is more” creations. The two younger kids went for the “there’s no such thing as too much of a good thing” approach. In the end all four kids had made some very special creations. I took video of the whole thing and then put it together. Please watch it on YouTube and leave a comment on which one you think was the best. The kids give some nice presentations on their choices at the end of the competition.
Of course, giving the kids that much sugar at 8:45 at night wasn’t the best choice and so to get them to kinda get it out of their system they had a game of Charades. There were some very funny antics during that and Aaron also played his guitar, a very music soothes the savage beast melody. It was just a great night, lots of fun (We also visited Long Pond for a sunset swim and had delicious pizza from Sweet Tomatoes) and we treasure those nights when we can spend time with our friends. It was also the first time that I didn’t have to run off to work at my vampire night job!
