What a busy, girlie day today
Posted on July 14th, 2007 in On Parenting, Personal Messages, Rants | No Comments »
So today we celebrated my the birthday of my second daughter, Rebekah. Well, we didn’t celebrate it entirely, and it wasn’t entirely today spent celebrating.
We started the day of with some baked French Toast (that I promise, one day, when it is allowed, I will post the recipe for). I made too much (there’s a surprise 
) and ended up with an entire batch left over. Not a problem, we are having a sleepover tonight, so that will come in much handy tomorrow morning (more on that later).
After breakfast was wrapped up I had to take the kids to the back with me to withdraw money out of their saving accounts to pay my wife and I back for all the shopping we did for them over the last two weeks. And please try not to misread that. I mean they shopped for each other’s birthdays on my dime. So they were reimbursing us. I also had to open a new savings account, so I did that while I was there as well.
After the bank it was off to George’s barbershop. I want to link to George’s web site, but unfortunately I can’t because I haven’t gotten him to agree to let me build him one yet (in his defense, I haven’t ever tried to talk to him about it). Anyway, Aaron and I both got haircuts (Aaron needed one, I went along for the convenience). Aaron came out looking his same cute self. I, on the other hand, came out looking like a barber school students failing final exam. Man, this was possibly the worst George has ever done to my hair ever. But, all things hair grow back, at least on me, so I am sure in about three weeks or so things will look better. A slow and agonizing three weeks, but still, three weeks.
After our haircuts we went to pick up one of the girls that is spending the night with us tonight. Since it is somewhat of a ritual to get slushies (Slurpies (R) ) at the local 7-11 after a haircut, and since we were picking up a friend, I decided to hold of slushies until we had everyone. Since I knew I had to go to the store to pick stuff up for Rebekah’s party tonight, I figured I’d hit up the 7-11 closest to the stores so we didn’t have spillable slushie in the Suburban longer than we needed to.
We stopped off and I unloaded the truck. And almost instantly all hell broke loose three times over. We got into the store and all five girls and my one boy (hereinafter known as ‘The Kids‘) decided they wanted to get their slushie first. This is normal, and usually I am prepared for this by beating them to the cups. But not today.
They all had their cups (except the two youngest, Alaynah and Aaron) and so they started filling them. Well, one of the slushie dispensers was out of whack and was spewing only liquid with no slush, so one of the girls realized that it made an explosive entrance into her cup and decided to share the excitement. Soon all the kids were trying out this great little experience. And then moving on to the others. Things were chaotic, to say the least, but somewhat under control. Since the older girls seemed to be doing OK on their own, I decided to take the younger three and look for some chips. As I was walking back to the slushie machines, Adriannah, my third daughter, showed me her cup… sans lid. Yes, the lid had blown off from being overfilled (did you know they did that?) and she showed me the slushie marks trailing down her arm onto the floor. Thinking that I needed to fix this immediately I headed straight for the slushie machine where the older three girls were finishing up.
As I got there, I noticed that Rebekah had seen what happened to Adriannah’s cup, and she decided she wanted to duplicate this by blowing the lid off of her cup. After setting her straight, I realized that Aaron was pulling all of the cups out of their chutes, so I went to tend to him while stopping along the way to fix Adriannah’s cup and lid. After giving her the cup back, I tended to the mess that Aaron was making while watching Adriannah start filling her cup again. Remember that liquid only dispenser? Yep, she hit that one first. From a distance. Ever seen what propelled liquid does when it hits the top of a lid that is about six inches away from it?
Meanwhile, a few feet away, Sarah, my oldest daughter was calling to me. She had dropped her slushie and spilled the entire cup on the floor. As she knelt to pick it up, she began to spill it afresh on her clothes. Feeling impending frustration setting in, I asker her to move as I grabbed some napkins and started to clean up. While this was taking place Adriannah was making another mess at the slurpie machine, which I was able to tend to because the store clerk told me not to worry about the spillage. So I went to tend to Adriannah yet again when I turn around to find Aaron squating at the site of the spill eating slushie off the ground. Oh yeah, and if I didn’t tell you, Alaynah, my youngest daughter, was patiently waiting her turn for slushie. This was a fiasco worthy of an Oscar.
Anyway, we managed to get out of the store without a lawsuit, we made it to the stores that we needed to hit up and made it home in time to get things prepared for a party. Which we had at about 4:00PM. My in-laws came over for a little while to have (cup)cake and ice-cream, then the two of the girls that were sleeping over had to take off because they had church things in the morning. A few hours later things calmed down a bit, and we were finally able to get some quiet in the house and my wife and I prepared to retire for the evening.
So the night ended much like they always do. With my wife and I exhausted, lying on the couch wondering the name of that train that just ran through our day.