Friday Night-Family Night

Zackery grabbing my leg as I walked into the house this evening.

The plan for tonight: drive over to our friend's neighborhood school and attend a Sock Hop

What we did instead?

Go to Dinner at Mimi's Cafe and enjoy each other's company. Mom got home too late for us to make it to the Sock Hop, so we made adjustments to our plan. On the way to the restaurant, Mom was talking to Dad about the current situation: she's had a very busy week and feeling overwhelmed by all the things on her list to do. "If I spend my free time grading, planning and reading then you and the kids are losing a part of our family time and that makes me feel horrible. Then on the other end, if I devote my energy on just us, I'm losing out on reading, grading and planning. It's a no win situation." Luckily dinner with the family helped Mom feel so much better.

We had a great night of sharing our highlights of our day and some disappointments. Layla delivered some jokes. Zackery entertained us by simply being himself. There were lots of hearty laughs and the food was fantastic.

Our highlights:

Zackery: "making my penguin at school"

Layla: "keyboarding class"

Mom: "spending time with you (pointing to Layla, Zackery and Dad)

Dad: "finishing up on my project at work"

Zackery led us in a vote.

Our disappointments:

Zackery: "my DS is dead. Dad you need to charge it"

Layla: "since I went to keyboarding, I missed the spelling bee I was practicing for"

Mom: "having so much to do in a small time frame"

Dad: "having to go to work."

Sometimes, all you need to do is stop for a moment to breathe to get it all back into perspective. I'm glad I took a moment to breathe.

Other moments worth of sharing:

Zackery offering a bite of his grilled cheese sandwich to me and Dad. He gets to Layla and offers it to her then as she is going in for the bite, takes it away and says "No! You can't have it!" We asked him, "Why?" Z: "Layla is dangerous, Mom! She can't have any!"

Layla taking a big bite of her "worms in dirt" and looks at us with her front teeth blackened from the chocolate pudding. She was trying to say something serious and we couldn't help but laugh at her. We couldn't get one word out and ended up pointing at her mouth to let her know what we were laughing about.

On our way home, we started talking about the new Muppets movie and Zackery says, "IN CONTROL! Dad say it!" Dad: "IN CONTROL!" Z: "AGAIN!" D: "IN CONTROL!" Z: "ONE MORE TIME!" D: "in control." Z: "Please one more time!" D: "NO!" So Mom chimes in: "ONE MORE TIME! ONE MORE TIME! ONE MORE TIME!" Layla and Zack join in, "ONE MORE TIME! ONE MORE TIME! ONE MORE TIME!" Derek had no choice, "IN CONTROL." Uncontrollable laughter ensues....Z: "one more time! one more time!" (all alone)

One last moment: Zackery and Dad hiding behind the building and scaring Layla and Mom as they left the restaurant. Z genuinely scared us and got some screams from Mom and Layla that it scared him.