I should have known it would start this way, with the noise and the “I’m hungry” and the “Did not!” and the “Did too!”. Seems as though almost all day-afters are the same. The thing that made this morning a little different I think was the sheer volume of what had to be done today to make today work.
First, and probably the most difficult, thing of the day was actually waking up. After last night just the thought of getting out of bed this morning was daunting. Then the thought of a living room that was beat to hell seemed to add to the stack. Throw in the fact that we needed to leave early this morning for the festivities of the day AND that I had to feed this army of a sleepover and it is easy to see that I was not looking forward to being awake at any point today (except for the fun stuff that is).
After coming to grips with what the day had in store for us I decided it was time to handle the feeding of the flock. And what better way to do that than with some eggs. But how many should I cook for eight girls, my son, my wife and I? This is what I calculated:
2 dozen eggs ought to do it
Yep, you counted right. 24 eggs. Two dozen of them. That is a lot of eggs (don’t be fooled though, we go through 14 just in my family alone). Alas, I even needed to haul out the big bowl to harness all of them things.
2 dozen eggs in a bowl... the big bowl
So I scrambled up those eggs after beating them something fierce and was able to serve up the eggs and toast in just enough time to get us out of the house almost an hour late. Fortunately for us the hour late was made better by the fact that the people that were going to be there when we eventually end up there were also late making the beginning to our festivities better.
Where is there? There is here, the Malibu Grand Prix and Castle. Bekah wanted to drive go carts for her birthday so we hit up the go carts, bumper boats and mini golf for the day. The reason we wanted to be there early was because a group of 25 was scheduled for a party immediately after ours. Like I said though, they were late too so we actually had the track almost entirely to ourselves for the duration of the driving. I was blessed to be able to take my daughter Adriannah on two laps and a friend of my daughter Rebekah’s on two laps (which means I got four laps baby, yeah!).
After the driving was the bumper boating which was a blast. Sandi took Alaynah on the bumper boats and had great big water battles with all of the other kids. She was soaked, they were soaked, it was a big old soakfest. Which was good because the sun was starting to peak and it was getting hot. Not to mention that fact that were about to embark on hitting the greens with eleven of us, count it, eleven of us playing.
Golf did not go as well as the rest of the day did. It was nice that we made it through about five holes, after which kids started dropping off like flies. By the sixteenth we had five playing and Alaynah wasn’t even hitting her ball anymore, she was walking it up to the hole and dropping it in. It was hot, there was no shade and we had killed all of our water by the fourth hole. Crap.
The nice thing though was that we hit the arcade soon after that. The arcade is air conditioned and for the most part devoid of life as we know it. We were the only people on the place for a while until a few other people decided to crash the joint. By then though we were out of tokens and just basically playing on the various sit down games. Not playing the games, playing on them.
We managed to leave the place after only about four hours which was truly just about all I could stand of it. It was hot, I was tired and the kids were cranky from not sleeping enough last night. At the end of the day (the play day that is) we all needed a little R&R. Which is what we are having. Right now.
Tonight marks the night my daughter Rebekah will be celebrating her 11th birthday. It is a little late, but scheduling circumstances outside of my control necessitated this weekend be the weekend we do this.
What that means to be is that tonight I will be flooded with young girls eating, playing, screaming, eating, screaming and screaming. I already know that it is going to be loud. And that I am going to get eaten out of house and home. And that I am going to get very little sleep. I am prepared for that. I think what I am not prepared for, and what I truly do not know how to prepare for, is the physical impact this will have on me and my wife.
Of course, knowing me, I am going to throw myself headlong into the festivities. I always do. And I will probably end up setting up games or something fun for the kids and see to it that they stay up too late. That just seems to me to be something that I am drawn to. So I am rather looking forward to having some fun tonight.
I guess I am just not looking forward to the noise, the food bill, the noise and the noise. But with a house full of girls, should I really expect anything less?
Today was a day to end all days of soccer momming, driving, taxiing and shuttling. Wow. Did I ever drive today!
It started out not driving, but still having some responsibility to get things done for the kids. Blueberry pancakes was the order of the day and as is usually the case when pancakes are called for it falls on daddy to do. So I did. And they were you-uh-me. Or so I was told.
There was not enough blueberries for a full batch of pancakes to be made with blueberries. In fact, I was only able to make half the pancakes with blueberries. So I did. 22 total pancakes, 11 of which has the little blue orbs of goodness and juiciness that is the blueberry.
And with five kids in my house, two of whom are blueberry fanatics, you can imagine that 11 blueberry pancakes do not get very good mileage. So I had the regular ones.
After that it was time to start working on some technical stuff I needed to do for my clients. I was able to spend all of five minutes on that if I remember correctly. From there it was time to get the kids ready for their events of the day.
My two oldest daughters had a party in San Jose they were invited to. And I had to get them there by 1:00 just after stopping by the pharmacy for some meds for mom. I was a little late.
My two younger daughters had a party at 2:00 that they were invited to. Lucky for me I was a little earlier for that one. I dropped the two girls off and headed home by way of McDonald’s.
This is the part of the show where things get a little interesting. I had about four weeks of work to do today. My wife had a few hours of sleep to catch up and some preparing to do for a party she was going to tonight. My son was supposed to have slept during this time so both my wife and I could get done what we needed to get done (and no, we didn’t “do” that).
AJ decided to sleep earlier in the afternoon so the plans we had were shot straight to heck. But neither my wife nor I ever talked about what we were really planning on doing. To that end she decided to put AJ in the bedroom with me while I worked so she could go sleep on the couch. Except I did know she was sleeping on the couch. So I kicked AJ out of our room. Sandi called me out loudly and I knew it was time to leave.
I grabbed AJ and we headed out the door. I didn’t know where we were going to go but I knew Sandi needed sleep so I left. We ended up hitting up Big 5 and playing with boy toys for a little while. Then we left to go get the two younger girls whose party ended at 5:00.
Luckily we got home in time for the three youngest kids to say goodbye and goodnight to mom. She left a few minutes after we got home (looking hotter than ever I might add 
).
It was just a few moments of quiet then it was time to head out to get the older girls from their party. It was about 7:20 when we left San Jose and one of the girls mentioned she was hungry. After a quick vote we decided that it was time to hit up Claim Jumper.
The events that unfolded at dinner tonight are totally for another post at another time. In fact, this is a great place to end this days recap since it only gets worse from here.
I will say that I had an awesome day with my kids today. It was busier than crud, but still awesome. Plus they got to get out of the house and see some friends. And I got to spend some boy time with my son.
Yep, everything today was awesome.