I scream, you scream...

The driver of our ice-cream truck has been keeping eccentric and erratic hours this year. We've heard his siren song while cooking dinner, or while the kids are drifting off to sleep, but nary once in between. Despite numerous trips to Dairy Queen and various other purveyors of quality frozen treats, the Princess has continued to bemoan a summer without a trip to the ice-cream truck. Yesterday he drove by just as I'd dumped some tortellini into it's pot of boiling water. I looked out the window and saw him stopped at the park. What was a good mom to do?

"Princess! Bad! Grab your shoes - Let's go spoil our dinner!"

We ran down the street to catch him before he drove off; and ordered chocolate-vanilla twisty cones to eat as we slowly ambled back home to finish cooking dinner.

As I set the table the Princess said "Mom, I want to give you something," and she laid a big kiss on my lips. "Thanks for letting us have ice-cream before dinner. This is the best thing we've done all summer!" Then she pranced around the kitchen singing, "We catched the ice-cream truck! We catched the ice-cream truck!"

Is there anything better than a heartfelt (and un-prompted) thank-you kiss from your children? Worth spoiling dinner for? Anytime.

A Birthday Fete

My dad has his 69th birthday this week, and in honour of that momentous occasion all of his 5 children descended with spouses and offspring to disrupt the peace and quiet at my parent's idyllic country abode.

We invented a new Olympic sport - Canadian Rules Badminton, anyone?


Hmm....why do our gatherings always degenerate into zerbert-fests and bum biting?

It was wonderful to have everyone together, which doesn't happen nearly enough. My favourite part was watching my children play with their cousins. There are 15 years between the oldest and youngest, but they're all amazing and I love them.


The 6 best kids ever. I am not biased.

Happy Birthday Dad! (and I hope you're enjoying the peace again, now we've all gone home!)

Resentment

I love my kids. But sometimes.... Like this morning. They were playing quietly, and I decided to run upstairs and make the beds. That decision cost me 20 minutes of scrubbing crayon off the walls in the hallway. Which made me look closely at how dirty and scuffed those walls really are. ANd how dirty the floor is, even though I just mopped it yesterday afternoon. Sigh. Get your shoes on kids - we're going to the mall. Retail therapy - plus someone else is paid to clean there.