The Easter Party

Don't get me started on Daylight Savings Time and how I'll be all out of whack for the next week… I'll spend the next several days looking at the clock and thinking what time is it really, what time does my body think it is…?

We went to an Easter Party on Saturday at a ranch out in the hill country. (This is not as glamorous as it sounds. Some of what we currently call the hill country is a year or so away from becoming just another suburb of San Antonio.) This ranch was on some beautiful hills sloping down to the Guadalupe River. There were chicks and ducks and smelly cows. Don't get me wrong, I grew up around cows - I like smelly cows.

There was a gameroom with a fussball table. (Lefty swears this is the correct spelling from the German word for football. He's taken about a thousand years of German so I have no choice but to trust him.)
The Kid scores!

We went on a hayride and saw some deer.

Here's a closer but slightly out of focus shot.

There was an Easter egg hunt. I call this shot eggs in brown grass.

Here's a clip from the hunt.
Easter Party Pandemonium from Laura on Vimeo.

Max brought home an entire basket of candy. (I don't know about you, but there are only so many sweet tarts I can eat. I'm thinking about giving them away as prizes here on the blog.) I like this shot because you can see Lefty's arm as he dutifully carries my purse.

It was a rather nice way to spend a sunny afternoon.

Party for B at R and L's

We went to a party last night at our friends R & L’s house. They are wonderful and infinitely cool, yet they still like the not so particularly cool Lefty & me and invite us to parties even though we’re 10/11 years older than them. These are the highlights:

The Kid (who a year ago was so shy it hurt) playing party games with a gaggle of children he barely knew and enjoying himself and being a good sport when he did not win.

L tossing packages of hot dogs at R across the porch. She must have played softball because she has some serious arm.

R’s brisket which was the best.

L’s sangria and the fact that she gave me a bucket of it to take home. Yes, a bucket.

Confirmation from R that six is indeed the new terrible two’s but with more attitude.

We like R & L a lot. They are both smart, fun and kind, but the thing that attracts me to them most is that they like each other. They truly enjoy each other and that is sometimes hard to find out in parentland where the wives often all end up in the kitchen talking and the men end up in the backyard doing some man thing.

We had a blast and left before The Kid collapsed into a sweaty ball of exhaustion with, as I mentioned, a bucket of sangria. That’s what I call a party.

The Party

We had The Kid’s birthday party yesterday and it was a rousing success.

We celebrate his birthday near his half-birthday because he was born between Christmas and New Year’s and it is impossible to keep Christmas from glomming on to the birthday - so we have a party in the summer. We always do something special on his actual date of birth, a special dinner or a new toy, but his party is always in June.

We had a nice turn out. An unusual mix this year of his pals from kindergarten and his older buddies from his karate class. They all got along famously. It was a really great party – except for me tripping over Lefty’s leg and falling mid cupcake distribution. I have this clumsiness that has haunted me since childhood. I bump or spill or fall a lot.

He received some really thoughtful presents. It warms my heart to see how he is loved by his friends.

I discovered that one of the kindergarten moms is a closet writer who wants to write children’s books. She also said that she never shares her writing with anyone. This always astounds me because I will show a piece of writing to almost anyone at anytime once it’s out of it’s infancy. I do not however take critique or criticism. I just say here, read this. Any thing that comes out of their mouths after reading I take with a grain of salt, or maybe a fistful of kosher salt, or maybe a cup and a half of the chunky rock salt you use to make ice cream... There are just a handful of people I share work with for their critical advice and then I listen solemnly and take copious notes, but not until I’m almost certain that most of the writing and revision work is done. Quite often I’m proven wrong about this, but I wait always until I really think a piece is finished before I dress it up and take it out.

Today we are resting and eating leftover cheese pizza and chocolate cupcakes.

Tomorrow

We are now looking down the barrel of The Kid’s birthday party on Saturday. Thankfully it will be indoors so neither blinding sun nor pounding rain can derail our well laid plans. When I called yesterday to confirm everything (because I’m paranoid about things like that). The young guy who answered the phone pretended to be unable to find our reservation… as a joke. I could not believe it, I must come across on the phone as having a much better sense of humor than I really do. I laughed, but not after having one split second of heart stopping terror.

I’m glad it’s Friday. Isn’t it sweet, this feeling of the work week coming to an end and the weekend just stretched out before you – full of possibilities?

Dumb Luck

We went to a pool party last night – a party for a friend of The Kid’s at the snazzy neighborhood pool we cannot afford to join. (Outrageously expensive, really! I was disappointed that the place didn’t have oiled up cabana boys, or massage tables or some other extravagance.) It was fun to see The Kid’s friends from his kindergarten class together again. Fun to see some of the parents, some more than most. As an adult, it’s so hard to predict who you will click with – who you will find something in common with - but anyone over 30 who begins a sentence with “Dig this!” has got a space on my dance card anytime.

The Kid swam and swam. He looks so tall and skinny in a swimsuit, it’s almost hard to recognize him. We all baked in the sun despite my hat and industrial strength sunscreen. Having just this week had some “suspicious” cells taken off the bridge of my nose, I tried to stick to the shade but it was awfully hot no matter where you were. And we all talked about the heat as if we were surprised that it was so hot here in South Texas. At some point, I think, you have to surrender to summer. At this point, I think I have. It’s just going to be hot for the next 3 or 4 months and I’m accepting it.

The pool was awash in very well put together women – a lot of waterproof make up for one place. Also a lot of very tan women who are either spraying it on, rubbing it on or facing their own encounter with “suspicious” cells in the future. I am not the put together type. In fact, if I get home from a birthday party without blue butter cream frosting on the seat of my pants, I consider myself lucky. Last night, I was lucky.