Labor Day activities

This Labor Day weekend, I'm taking time off from endless summertime activities to do a little work, which sounds awful, but is actually a bit refreshing.

The past three weekends, we've been out of town, trying to cram the last bits of summer into our busy August. We've been camping near Newport (South Beach), camping at the Gifford Pinchot (Panther Creek) and hit the Kite Festival in Long Beach, staying at Toni and Jim's beach house.

This weekend, I am finally getting back to finishing up some things. My polka-dot party invitations are, finally, completely finalized and approved. Now I'm just waiting for the final transaction to take place before I can get these all printed up and assembled and mailed off.

A few months ago, the boys and I were walking through the neighborhood and saw some kids on scooters about their age. Always one to find new neighborhood playmates, we returned with their scooters and they scootered happily, side-by-side, without ever talking, as kids often do.

As the social experiment seemed to be working pretty well, I took the next step and located the overseeing dad and introduced myself. We exchanged pleasantries, names and the names of our kids. In reponse to his query about the boys' ages, I told him that they were eight.

This was followed by the inevitable question, "Oh, are they twins?"

Now, any parent of a new child gets a certain amount of attention, but when you have twins, you get a lot of attention and curiousity, especially when they are babies and adorable. Even today, though, I have a certain amount of odd pride in the fact that we have multiples, so I did as I often do, which is to look down, feign modesty and say, "Yes, yes they are."

This time, though, I was immediately one-upped when he told me that his kids were triplets!

(and, as if this weren't enough, both he and his wife were also identical twins)

Ka-zing!

Anyway, the triplets are over this morning for a playdate. They playroom door is closed and I don't hear sounds of destruction or anything, so I'm going to say that all is well. I went in a little earlier and was immediately pressed into building Lord Vladek(or something)'s castle, demonstrating how the Imaginext volcano worked and trying to pry hot wheels out of the hot wheels track. I quickly extracted myself and am making myself busy at the computer and things are a lot simpler now.

I might make a peach pie for dessert. Our neighbor, Tricia, is making us dinner tonight. Earlier this year, we started a dinner exchange program. Every week, one of us makes the other family dinner -- since it's often just a matter of doubling all the ingredients, it really is not that hard and it's so wonderful, every other week, to receive a home-made dinner, delivered to our doorstep. It gets us to try things that we normally wouldn't have ventured to try. The boys are more likely to give new foods a chance if they are made by her.