Tuesday, December 23, 2008

December 22nd

Monday brought craziness as we prepared to leave for the Grandparents' house the next day, which involved packing and washing and sorting and wrapping and folding and picking up Jon's present from Heather and returning videos and library books and driving across town to get gnomes and playsilks for the stockings and getting Ana Taco Bell while I was at it and purchasing one last present for the grandparents at Walgreen's (of all places - they were frames for Aleks' art) and buying tape and sorting through excess toys to make room for those on their way and yet I actually managed to do the activity in no uncertain terms. Finally, back on track.With apple pie.
I give you an uncomplicated activity that I had the insane notion might result in sleeping children.
My crazy line of thinking lead to putting them in pajamas for the car ride.
While hunting Heather down to get Jon's box set of extended Lord of the Rings DVDs (for our yearly viewing pleasure), a friend at the bar where she was working told me about the light display at Nela Park. So that's where we went.
It was much better than the houses we had been passing. Bastian initially had lots of fun pointing out whenever there was a house with lights on it. Aleks complained that our house does not have a fabulous light display. I told him we could start one next year, which was not soon enough for his taste, but eventually I was able to convince him we'd absolutely have to wait as all the stores were closed, I preferred to thrift lights or get hand-me-downs, and because we were leaving the next day to celebrate Christmas at Grandma's and thus wouldn't be around to enjoy the dang things for those last few days they'd be up.
After that and the climax of Nela Park, Bastian got sick of pointing out lights and the boys started throwing things at each other in the back seat. I kept driving thinking we'd find something good. Bastian then started whining that he wanted to go home and Aleks kept trying to convince me to go someplace like a store or someone's house for a visit. They did not fall asleep in the car, needless to say. Jon dealt with putting them to sleep, however. Thank goodness. Too many errands and running around like a crazy person for me.

1 comment:

The Stewart's said...

the lights looked wonderful. we tried that last night with pj's and such. now such luck in her falling asleep and all she wanted to do was go to the light store to get lights b/c our house NEEDED lights.