To spread some holiday cheer (and offset the fact that stay-at-home moms don’t get a corporate party), I invited a bunch of people to a pub for dinner, drinks and a few party games last weekend. Chris was not too thrilled at the idea of the games, but after a beer or two even he thought they were fun. Many thanks to Teri for taking the photos!

I realize we’re terrible parents for never (that’s right, never) taking our kids to the beach, even though we live in the kind of place people flock to for vacation. The heat is on these days, though, and we needed to do something different, so we finally headed to the lake downtown. We also brought the boogie board Brayden got as a birthday gift from one of his buddies, which turned out to be a huge hit. This is what summer’s supposed to be.

We’re supposed to be at a hotel in Langley right now, but it just wasn’t in the cards. The weather went to !@# about a week ago and today we woke up to a steady snowfall that lasted all morning. The mountain highways are a mess, so we opted to call off the trip rather than risk life and limb on the Coquihalla. It’s disappointing, but we still had fun today: we took the kids to the rec centre to swim (in their brand new swim shirts and goggles), which kept all of us busy for an hour and a half, and then we went for a very successful lunch at Montana’s.

Afterwards I went out to play racquetball with Laura for the first time this year. I haven’t been able to play since my dental surgery, but now, after 53 days of not biting anything, I only have three more to go, so I figured racquetball was pretty safe. (And as it turned out, I was safe, but Laura took a ball to the head a couple times. Ouch.)

So here we are at the halfway point of spring break. The kids both did a little mini-camp at a local park for three mornings this week, which they seemed to like, even if I had to send them in full winter gear (damn this crappy weather!) Plus we did a trip to the library, and to the Energyplex, and Justin went out on a couple play dates, so there seemed to be a good balance of time at home and time away. Next week might be a different story, but we’ll see how things go.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day!

Perhaps I don’t give Justin enough credit. His various therapists have been working with him on expected vs unexpected behaviors (to help him understand social nuances) and apparently he’s been taking it to heart — when we talked to him about the incident on the playground, he knew full well that the kids shouldn’t have been doing that to him. And the recess supervisors tell me he doesn’t hesitate to go to one of them when he has a problem, so I guess he knows how to handle himself. Maybe I don’t need to worry about him as much as I think I do.

Justin was so excited about his Christmas concert at school this week that he was literally vibrating as we waited for the school doors to open. I don’t get how a kid with anxiety issues can be so thrilled about performing in front of large crowds, but hey. His class did a really neat skit about how Santa got his job, and each kid had to say a line into the microphone — they did great, and it was super cute.

Brayden’s preschool had their Christmas party this week (an hour of standing around in the park in sub-zero temperatures…ho ho ho). Santa usually comes to deliver presents to all the kids, but apparently Santa was charging some not-so-jolly rates this year, so they had Mrs. Claus come instead. She gave Brayden a Cars storybook collection (courtesy of Mom, of course) that he loves, so we’ll call the party a success, even if I froze my toes.

Justin went to his very first play date at a friend’s house a couple days ago (first one without Mom, I mean) and it was a tremendous success. He’s had lots of play dates, but always at our house, at first because I didn’t feel comfortable dropping him off somewhere and later because no one was asking him to come over. I finally just asked one of the moms to have him over for the practice, and she was totally willing to help out, so we gave it a try. He had lots of fun and his friend even asked if we could do it again soon — that just made my heart sing.

Christmas break has officially begun, and while I would normally shudder at the prospect of 17 straight days of the kids not being in school, we have enough going on right now that I think it’ll be OK. There’s even a moderate amount of snow right now and I think we’re going to try sledding this morning. It should be good.