The kids like to party

Between kid's birthday parties featuring egg hunts, egg hunts coupled with feasts, feasts accompanied by bottles of wine, visits from one grandmother while taking care of the other grandmother's dog, it was one of those weekends that managed to be extremely full and yet somehow still low stress. Whenever weekends are full, I tend to complain about not having any downtime, whereas when weekends are completely unscheduled, I complain that we never do anything. I'm just impossible to please.

Saturday morning found us at the party for the second birthday for Henry's friend Stella. It's a lot of fun having friends whose kids are around the same age as our own. Indeed, watching toddlers interact is one of the true joys of being alive.
Seeing as how it was bunny weekend and all, there was an egg hunt.And as the party wound down, the goodbyes got a bit emotional.

And that was just Saturday morning. That afternoon, the boyos got a visit from Grandma and Great Aunt Holmes.
Can you tell my mom is in total baby heaven here? Yep, she is.

Sunday found us at not one, but two feasts, the first of which featured only the children brought by us. This meant that all those pesky eggs had to be handled by Henry and Henry alone.The second feast featured the same crowd of parents and children that had been at the previous day's birthday party, except that since it was evening instead of morning, and Easter instead of Stella's birthday, we were free to pop open the wine.

Labor Week

I kept intending to write this week, but the time kept getting eaten up, as if by magical creatures who sustain themselves on precious precious time. Consequentially, I dont' remember any of the stuff I was going to write. Anyway, our place is good to go now and it's up on the great big market, so now somebody just needs to come along and fall in love with it. It is quite lovable, after all.

We did still manage to have ourselves a little gathering of folks over here this weekend. I guess it was the house-warming party that we never got around to having. Maybe we'll do better about warming up the next place.

This one's on me.

Getting shit done is for losers

So it was one of them there productive weekends 'round the old Holmes household. We didn't plan it, it just worked out that way. We managed to transform the room formerly known as the Pit of Don't-Go-In-There Clutter and Shame into the Office of Dope Smooth Relaxification. It was an assbuster, but we got it done and kept the fighting to a minimum. I also hooked up my new router that The Ash got me for Father's Day. No more stealing interwebby for me!

Oh, I also managed to write my very first post for DadCentric. The good lads over there invited me to join in their merriment, and only a fool would've said no. Oh, the daddy wisdom dispensation has only just begun.

My wife left me this weekend

Just me and the dog this weekend.Ashley and Henry were off visiting family on the far off planet of East Texas, so Elliott and I had the place all to ourselves. I kept meaning to hop on the old bloggio and document the happenings of the weekend, but the happenings kept happening and just kept going by undocumented. So here's a few segments from the Holmes's first weekend flying solo since, well, uh, since....since I can't remember when, to be quite honest.

- I watched Borat Friday night. I don't think I've watched a movie alone since my bachelor days, and it felt weird to be laughing all by myself. I realized that from our couch, my laughter sounded kind of odd without Ashley's there to accompany it, like the time in my old '94 Ford Taurus when the speakers on one side decided not to play anymore. That's when I realized that RATM's Evil Empire album was mixed with the guitars on one side and bass on the other. Anyway, there's a particularly gross scene in the movie that had me laughing my ass off until I realized that if somebody were to walk by our condo and glance in the window, they might think I was watching very bizarre and very gross porn.

- I painted our bedroom, a task which desperately needed doing since the color it came in was whitey. All told, this took up most of Saturday and part of Sunday. I managed to get the room emptied, prepped, painted, cleaned, and all put back together again by the time Ashley made it home. Hell yeah.

- The paint I used was this non-toxic stuff that you get at this little hippie home improvement store close to downtown that also sells biofuel, organic clothing, and children's boardgames about saving the world from corporate greed. Since Ashley took our car on her trip, my transportation to get to said hippiemart was her dad's ginormous F-150. They still sold me the paint.

- While I was painting, I had ye olde Zune on shuffle. The combined force of this household's musical collection comes out to about 25GB, so plenty to listen to, though there could always be more. At one point, some fluttery treble-laden bit of instrumental annoyance that I didn't recognize came on. I checked and it was Enya. I rolled my eyes, muttered under my breath, "Dear God let it end soon" and resumed painting. Enya came to an end and was immediately followed by Slayer. I guess that was the answer to my little prayer.

- I went out to the Alamo Drafthouse with my friend Brandon to see Severance, a horror-comedy which does not disappoint on either side. It easily wins the award for most hilarious beheading. After the movie we went downtown to watch an improv comedy competition, which was less funny and did not feature any beheadings, but perhaps should have.

- I couldn't sleep for shit all weekend. I had the bed all to myself, so I suppose I should have taken the opportunity to enjoy the extra room, but I've grown so accustomed to sharing the space with Ashley and Henry that I just felt alone. On the plus side, it meant I was up bright and early to get going on the painting both days.

- My dog is a lazy son of a bitch. I busted my ass all weekend painting and watching movies, but every time I turned around he was passed out asleep. Finally, I said enough's enough, enleashened him, and headed out for a walk. I thought I was being smart by taking him out to the designated dog-toilet before we got going, but then ten minutes later he shit in somebody's yard. Since I thought he had already taken care of this little bit of business, I was completely unprepared to clean it up. The turd had to stay. We continued down the street, me whistling innocently.

- I was incredibly happy to see Ashley and Henry when they got home. I knew I was going to miss them, but I had also thought I would enjoy having a bit of time to myself. Yeah, sure I enjoyed it some, but it was also lonely. It's funny, Single Holmes was pretty good at being alone back in the day, but Family Holmes ain't so much. Ah well, Family Holmes has plenty of other superpowers that more than make up for it.