My Weekend

We had nice weekend even though I forced everyone to clean pretty much all day Saturday and came very close to getting in a fight with Mr. Hobbitfeet when I told him that if wasn't going to clean the counters and stove top right (by using Soft Scrub instead of just a wet rag) than he might as well just go help Girl clean her room because he wasn't actually helping me any. Luckily things were eventually smoothed over and life went on.
On Sunday (after about an hour of the kids snipping at each other) I decided the best thing for us was to get the heck out of the house. Unfortunately there is very to do in my town on Sundays (pretty much everything but Walmart is shut down for God- God doesn't like people in my town to bowl on Sundays I guess). So we bundled into the car and headed for Champaign-Urbana to do our Christmas shopping (God does let the heathen Champaign-Urbanaites shop on Sunday).
Evidently before we got there C-U had had freezing rain, and though it had stopped and the streets weren't slick, the power had gone off all over town.
Luckily, the Target (our destination) had all the emergency lights on and the registers still running. Because of this, everyone had gone home. So we had a super-fun super-dark relaxing shopping trip. I didn't even yell at Mr. H. for not being helpful in selecting gifts for his family, which I think shows growth.
Then by the time we were done power was restored and we headed to the mall to ride the carousel, eat lunch and get our picture with Santa. The kids had already seen him (Boy rolling his eyes the whole time) but it was for free and the picture was horrible, Boy's eyes were closed and there was a really lame Mrs. Clause that looked like she had sprayed her hair gray with that snow stuff you put on windows. Boy was a really good sport for this other picture and though it cost $15 for a 5x7 and still had an ad on the bottom, the Santa was really nice and actually had a conversation with the kids. The little girl before us had drawn some pictures for him and wrote a letter and then wrapped them up for him. He talked to her, read the letter and looked at all the pictures, which even though it took forever, I thought it was really nice. I don't know maybe it was just because the power outages had significantly thinned the crowds. Maybe when there's lots of kids he just does the picture pose and tosses them aside. I like to think that he doesn't.
Then we had lunch. Mr. H and I ate at a different place than the kids. So we're sitting down to eat and the kids drink their pop and say "What is this?" and I say "It's Sierra Mist. It's just like Sprite, it's fine" So they eat and barely touch their drinks but don't say another word, and when they're done Mr. H takes them on the carousel which is in the Food Court and after dutifully waving at them on three go-arounds I head back to our table to clean up and since my drink is gone (also a Sierra Mist but from a different restaurant) I grab Girl's and take a sip, and it is disgusting. There was no syrup so it was only seltzer water. So I try Boy's and it was the same. Once everyone got back, I went back to the restaurant and they had put out of order signs on everything but the lemonade. So I got the kids new drinks and moved on, but I told them that in the future if something tastes weird, to let me know (even though they asked what it was they never said it tasted weird or bad) and not suffer in silence.
And that in my books is an eventful weekend, which probably means I am pathetic.