Power Outages and Crazy $#@ Malls and Ear Infections

The title pretty much sums up our weekend. Saturday afternoon, a huge storm blew threw our neighborhood. We lost power around 4 p.m. We knew it was bad because an entire utility pole had been knocked down. So we packed up and headed to the mall.

Now, the mall closest to our house is crazy town. It is Christmas-crowded ALL THE TIME. Seriously. And if you enjoy people watching, it's the place to go. Every manner of person goes there. Every ethnicity you can imgaine, every age, every color, every style. It's madness. And the biggest madness of all is the kiddie play area. It is truly Hell on Earth. And my kids LOVE it. It is not for the faint of heart. It is pure, complete, unadulterated chaos. Kids of all sizes run around like banshees, jumping off of climby things, climbing onto climby things, knocking each other down, tripping, crashing, screeching.

Before we let the kids play there, we made them walk the length of the mall, and we didn't give them anything to eat (even though they were whining about how hungry they were) because we needed some leverage to get them the hell out of there when we couldn't take it any more. Even so, it still took a good bit of threatening chasing cajoling to get them to leave so we could go eat. We ate at the TGIFridays (we're so cheap!) and then went to Barnes & Noble, where I read multiple stories to the boys. We finally got home around 9:30, to a still-dark house. The boys were excited to use the flashlights and camping lanterns (battery-powered). We got their teeth brushed and pajamas on and they both slept in William's room with a lantern on. What a day!

Meanwhile, Seth has been complaining off and on about his ear hurting--at least for the last several days. I've also noticed he's been sneezing a lot and sniffling quite a bit. So today (Sunday) we went to the Minute Clinic to get his ears checked out. And sure enough, the poor guy has a raging double ear-infection. It hasn't slowed him down one bit, though. I forced him to take a nap in the afternoon while Ed took William to t-ball practice (William is taking a t-ball clinic this fall), and in the meantime, our power came back on (yay!). But then went out again two hours later. (Boo.) But then came on again about an hour and a half after that.

So the upshot is, we ordered pizza for dinner, and at 9:35 on Sunday night, I'm trying to finish up the laundry, and I sent Ed to the grocery store (which I NEVER do because he NEVER gets the right stuff). Oh well. I guess things could be much, much worse. In June, while we were in Florida, a Derecho came through our town and our house lost power for 5 days. We managed to miss that whole debacle (and I even paid our cleaning woman extra to clean out our fridge and freezer before we came back in town), so this was practically a cake-walk. And now, I have to admit, I'm actually not too sad to see Monday morning fast approaching. :-)