To say this was a crazy busy weekend would be an understatement. Here is an overview of what we went through.
Déla and I got up and left the house about 7:40, a little later than we had hoped. We had to get downtown to the convention center where she was competing in the Emerald City Feis.
Her first dance was at 8:30 and she was dancing almost solidly through the morning.
She danced great, coming in with some respectable results, but the real surprise was coming in 1st in the Reel Special.
This event was a landmark for her and I will be making a blog post about it for tomorrow.
While I was with Déla, Laura took Ciarán to a birthday party as well as picked him up. I only had the one child while she had everybody else to contend with.
Déla and I arrived home about 1:30 or so, but there wasn’t a lot of time to rest. Laura and I planned and coordinated, then I took Déla to her gymnastics meet. Unfortunately I knew I wouldn’t be able to get any good shots of her since the meet was held in the one location (out of three) where the sight lines were horrible. I took the opportunity then to go to the grocery store and get much of what was needed for the rest of the coming scheduling storm. And I had Tevye with me.
While I was with Déla and Tevye, a friend of August’s came over to spend the night. Saturday was August’s 13th birthday, an event that wound up getting zero pictures.
Laura took Ciarán, Xavier, August and his friend to mass at about the same time Déla was finishing up with her gymnastics meet.her team came in 2nd. On the way home we stopped off at a different grocery store for one more thing then it was to home where I started dinner. Laura and the kids picked up another of August’s friends who would be spending the night on their way home from mass.
Dinner was ready when they all arrived, which was good, because we didn’t have a lot of time. After eating our dinner and cake, which August had picked out at the store earlier that day when Laura had taken him on the way to the birthday party Ciarán was attending, I took August and his friends to see Captain America: Civil War. Despite rushing out of the house and cutting the cake time short, the showing we wanted to catch was sold out. Thankfully it is not only a major release but this was the 2nd weekend of its release so there were plenty of other showing. We were able to catch the next showing which was just a half hour later. And we got decent seats.
We got home at 11:30 where I went right to bed, but the three boys stayed up for another hour or so playing video games.
I wish there was more to this momentous occasion to post about, but unfortunately August’s 13th birthday was a massively understated affair. He got to do exactly what he wanted – invite a couple of friends over to see Captain America: Civil War and spend the night. Sometimes it is simplicity that is best.
Sunday morning we woke up and started prepping the house for Xavier’s birthday party. This took longer than expected and I didn’t get to the store to pick up Xavier’s cake when I was supposed to. I was almost two hours “late” – it was supposed to be ready at 10 but it was nearly noon by the time I got there.
And it was the wrong cake.
One freak-out and slap-dash recovery later I get home and we put the finishing preparations on the birthday party together. It all worked out well enough, mostly because those boys who spent the night with August helped out.
I will be writing a blog post about Xavier’s birthday party this week as well.
When it was all over I was ready for a beer.
We still needed to get dinner made, which was simple enough, but in all the various trips to all the various stores, not one beer was purchased. And I was simply too tired to go back to the store.
And if I was tired, well, all the kids were, really. I found Déla curled up on the chair asleep after dinner. It was early bedtime for everybody.
