Saturday, April 18, 2009

Anywhere but Home...

Emma and I were up to the wee hours of the morning, attempting to get caught up on some household chores. Before we decided to call it a night, or a morning rather, we decided that in order to preserve all the good work that we had accomplished, we'd try to keep the boys out for most of the day. Luckily enough, this morning we had some events here on Patch to keep the boys entertained. During the afternoon we had to do a bit of improvising but I think overall we were pretty successful. Here is the story of our day.
Like I mentioned earlier, Em and I went to bed late, so we were hoping for a bit of a late start this morning. Rhys and Caden had other plans in mind. Caden woke up first, just before six, and Rhys woke up about 15-20 minutes after him. We attempted to get Caden back to sleep at first, but he wasn't having that. After plying our little one with food to keep him quiet, Rhys trotted in ready for his morning kibbles. So after serving the boys and ourselves with some Saturday morning breakfast, we made our plans. First, Em would hit the gym, while I stayed behind to clean up/dress the boys. She returns, and we would get cleaned up and ready to light out for the day's activities.

Our first stop was the School Age Services building on Patch, which was hosting the Teddy Bear Rally. Basically, all the children and parents are invited to come in and participate in selected activities that mainly revolved around the iconic figure that is the teddy bear. Em and I walked to the SAS building (in the rain), entered and received our goodie bags for the boys. Our bags contained a white teddy to be decorated, some candy, and a bear shaped straw cup. Em and I had heard about the teddy decorating earlier in the week and I think we both were looking forward to it, even more so than the boys were.

So after getting settled in, we grabbed a booth and some fabric markers and went to town on coloring our bears. Em and I both enjoyed ourselves immensely, pondering and discussing what colors we wanted to use. The boys themselves got bored with the activity rather quickly. Rhys entertained himself by playing with the markers and crayons, and Caden entertained himself by trying to *eat* the markers and the crayons.
After coloring our bears, marking the boys' names on them and making them capes, we headed off to the other rooms to see what was going on. In one room they had a teddy first-aid station set up, which allowed the kids to play doctor and fix their teddies bumps and bruises. We wrapped a bandage around Caden's teddy's head to simulate the bruise that Caden himself got earlier this week. Rhys' teddy got a lovely band aid on it's elbow.
Once our bears were in stable condition we rolled over to the teddy bear coloring station. This room had print outs of different bears to be colored by each of the children. Rhys, at this point, was getting tired so he sat in the pram and watch Caden color his first picture! Caden thoroughly enjoyed himself, stopping every moment or so to tell us by growling or yelling loudly with a smile on his face. Em and I couldn't stop ourselves from grinning.

Coloring finished and stowed for later, we headed over for some lunch. The folks at the SAS had prepared some sandwiches for the kids and adults, bear-shaped jelly and cream cheese sandwiches to be exact, ants on a stick (celery topped with cream cheese and raisins) and Chex mix. Both the boys were hungry so they enjoyed themselves. (My sandwiches were quite tasty too, I thought.)


With full bellies and full pockets we left the SAS and headed over to the commisary to pick up a few bits for the week. Then off we went to the Panzer bowling alley to let the boys burn off all the rest of their energy. We spent a good hour and a half to two hours at the bowling alley, letting both of the boys play in the play area. Caden really enjoyed himself as it was the first time that he has been moblie enough to get inside of it. He spent a considerable amount of time exploring the lower area, growling and screeching his approval. Rhys was his normal self and climbing up and down the entire thing, escaping the playroom to harrass the bowlers, and chasing and being chased by us, laughing the entire time.

After the bowling alley we piled back in the car and headed to the PX/BX for a quick cruise around, then back on home for dinner. As I type these final few lines of the blog, Caden is in his cot sleeping, Rhys is in the kitchen making some kinda mess, and Em and I both are literally only minutes away from being able to fall asleep. Soon, I will get up from this desk, brush Rhys' teeth and put him to bed too, hopefully without much of a fight.


And so ends our day away from home. The house for the most part remains in the state that we left it, minus a few dirty dishes from dinner. All in all, I'd say today was a "berry" interesting adventure.




Yeah, yeah, I know. I had to work it in there. Sue me. : )

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