Boys Only Weekend

Apr 17, 2010 by Spencer

If you read Lindsay’s post earlier this week you know Lindsay is in Ohio going through her mom’s house to sort EVERY SINGLE ITEM.  It was a trip she didn’t want to make but one she had to.  If you haven’t already, you can read about it here.  Because she needed to actually get work done she left the boys at home with me.  So that meant a BOYS ONLY WEEKEND!

On Thursday when Andrew woke up the first thing he said, “Where Emmy go?” I told him she was in Ohio.  He proceeded to ask, “Where Caroline go?”, “Where Joel go?”  After answering him and changing his diaper and going through the morning routine, as we walked out for breakfast he finally asked, “Where mommy go?”  It’s nice to know he is concerned about mommy  Oma and papa, my grandparents, keep the boys in the morning and my mom kept them in the afternoon.

I took Friday off of work so we didn’t need to have sitters for two days in a row.  My first chore was to get new tires on the van.  We had noticed some bad noise and some shaking in the van lately.  On Wednesday evening I checked the tires and found this:  

An obvious problem, thankfully we found it before the tire blew out on our way to the St Pete airport at 5:00AM Thursday morning or something like that!

So Friday was our work day.  Between naps we went to get more mulch then oil and filters for both cars.  Thankfully AdvanceAutoParts.com lets you order online and pickup in store.  This was a life saver with two little ones in an auto parts store, they don’t have carts you can put kids in…  Plus I just entered my vehicle info and it automatically showed only oil filters for my car, much better than flipping through those books at the store, then searching the wall for the right filter.  I have done the book and search process with one kid but with 2 it would be a nightmare.

After naps I found this:

I guess Joshua wanted to help so he cleaned out the baskets in their room, pulled out some wipes, and starting dusting the shelf.

Andrew also helped by putting away the folded laundry.  I told him to put the towels in the bathroom.  When I went to inspect this is what I found, I guess he got most of them in the bathroom…

Today, Saturday, we needed to get more work done.  If Lindsay is going to be working all weekend we needed to do our share at home.  Andrew helped with our Saturday tradition of pancakes and bacon.  Unfortunately, as I was teaching him to look for bubbles in the pancakes, he leaned over and learned the hard way that a skillet is HOT.  His hand touched the edge of the skillet for a nano-second, and now he knows way daddy always warns him not to touch the skillet…  He was ok after about a minute and with no signs of a burn on his hand, so he could still help me work the rest of the day

After breakfast we hit the road to get supplies at The Home Depot.  Andrew’s favorite part of our trip:

He also loves getting a Mickey Mouse sticker from the paint desk, thankfully the employees don’t mind giving them away.

So we worked, played and ate all day.  We had an early bath time and dinner so we could watch a guy movie before bedtime, Toy Story 2.

I laid out the blankets, the large pillows and cued the movie while the boys were eating dinner.  Needless to say they were pretty excited.

I also promised them popcorn.  They love popcorn.  Popcorn is the perfect snack because they both love it, and they can eat it in the living room with out making a huge mess.  I went to the kitchen to make the popcorn with one little boy yelling, “papcorn, papcorn” and another little one tugging on my leg, begging for a bite.  After searching the pantry for what seemed like eternity I called Lindsay to discover we were out of popcorn!  My two little Toy Story watching, popcorn loving boy were devastated and couldn’t understand why they couldn’t have any popcorn.  After calming them down and reassuring them I still had a special snack, I had to think of something quick.

We had icecream, strawberries, and graham crackers so I whipped up our Cold Stone knockoff, found here.  I did this with much trepidation, knowing  a) the mess potential was through the roof and b) pumping the boys full of sugar right before bed is not always the wisest thing to do.  But I proceeded to make good on my promise for a special treat.  Thankfully the boys loved it and the messes were kept to their bare bellies (they ate in diapers only).

After an hour and 15 minutes of Toy Story Andrew was still watching Buzz and Woody and Bullseye, but Joshua was getting a little distracted.  Two boys in bed by 7:30, mission accomplished.

All in all it has been a great boys weekend but we will all be happy to have mommy home tomorrow.  So on Monday I can give Andrew my usual answer when he asks, “Where mommy go?”  ”She’s still in bed, you want to go tickle her?”