Tornados and thunderstorms blew through mid-Michigan this weekend. One tornado drove my sister to a dark crawl space with two howling cats while my brother in law searched for flashlights with working batteries. Another storm shook and swayed my brothers mini van with his wife and two kids inside outside of the Walmart off of Lake Lansing Road.
Don’t you love crazy weather?
I wish I could blame the lack of Work at Home Moms Talk Radio this week on a tornado or wicked thunderstorm but I can’t. I only experienced a blip of electricity loss.
No, my show isn’t up because of another swirling whirlwind of energy and humanity… the five year old’s birthday party.
My great-niece Macey (big sister to the Quads) turned five on Saturday.
It was decided that Macey should have a new swing set for her birthday – and with four up and coming swingers in the family, they chose a monstrously large model which declared on its instruction sheet that two people could build in sixteen hours.
Yeah right.
Macey’s Dad, my son and a plethora of other manly individuals gave every afternoon and evening in the last week over to this project. Even counting the trips to the hardware for stronger bolts, broken drills, new pieces of wood to replace those cut wrongly – the project easily gobbled up 40 hours.
In fact, the swing set – complete with enclosed spiral slide (with water slide functionality) and rock climbing wall, six spots for little behinds to swing on plus who knows what else – was only finished in the dusky hours before sunset the day before the party.
Which by the way meant that I stayed nine and a half hours past my usual time on Saturday to help my niece with the babies (plus another nine month old who belonged to one of the guys helping with the swingset).
Which by the way meant that I only had time to sleep before returning for Quad Watch that night.
Which by the way meant I didn’t have time to go to the store to buy the five year old a present. (Epic Fail)
And since the party was at 4pm – meant I had to go home and sleep the early part of the day in order to shower and come back for the party – which didn’t end until 9pm – which meant I only had time to take Sean home, eat something that didn’t have sugar in it and come back for another night of Quad Watch.
I won’t say much about my contribution to the party itself except to pause for a moment of silence to mourn the hours wasted in a failed attempt to create chocolate dipped strawberries on a stick with chocolate that never hardened.
(It was a Strawberry Shortcake Party)
And yes – it DID thunderstorm cats and dogs just as the birthday party started – keeping a dozen kids from playing on the new swingset until about 8pm that night.
I’m dizzy. There’s no show. And I’m sorry.
Want a piece of cake?
Mon, Jun 9, 2008
Working at Home