This year we had a very fun, and tiring, Memorial Day weekend. E's school district had an extra snow day to use, and so were also closed on the Friday before, so she had a nice long 4 day break. At the same time, I had been cleaning like crazy during the week, because we were having our first house guest, Shirin, over! I was very excited, as I hadn't seen her in months even though we are physically so much closer in proximity than before. With her working, the kids schedules, and general life chaos, meeting up was as difficult as ever, but because of the long weekend, she would be able to come and stay for a few days.
Friday - 23 May
As always M doesn't have school on Fridays anyway, so I had to entertain both kids. I ended up bringing them to an indoor playground nearby. Thankfully it was fairly empty (less than 15 kids total at any one time), and both girls are old enough to mostly play with each other. So as they played and ran around, I managed to get some knitting done. The few times I played with them, I don't think they appreciated it very much when I pushed them in a car in tight donuts or figure eights, saying, "It's crazy taxi!"
After that we went to Stew Leonard's for lunch. E always loves eating there because she likes picking her food buffet style. In fact, she loves all buffets. Apparently she once wrote a book about buffets in her class in school. Then after that we all shared a large sized pineapple soft serve, which was really yummy. My phone battery was dying, so we went home for a short spell for me to charge my phone, before racing out to pick up some bagels I had ordered from Too Good to Go by 3pm. Then we went to Kumon for a bit, before returning home finally.
Saturday - 24 May
Because M seemed mildly sick during the week, I had kept her at home on Tuesday and couldn't go for my regular rowing class. Then on Weds night she woke up a few times and I was personally feeling too exhaustedly ill to go for yoga on Thursday (I cleaned at home instead). So I hadn't been able to exercise the entire week, and at the same time was feeling tubby. I instead went to a different rowing class on Saturday morning, which was meant to be more intensive than my regular class and included some dumbbell exercises. I mostly did my own thing, while trying hard to ignore the guy on the rowing machine next to me, who I could see going like a crazy jack rabbit out of the corner of my eye. It was still a very good work out, as always. I went home and manically cleaned for a bit, before we left to go to a friend's house.
I had met Anu at the kids dance and yoga classes that we had been doing at a nearby town's community centre during the Winter time. She also has two kids close in age to E and M, and her oldest child was having a birthday party. We were there for about 2h. The girls painted and did crafts and ran around, and I got to chat to a few different people which was nice. Then we went to get McDonalds on the way home because we were all still hungry (LOL) and I resumed cleaning as much as I could. Around 3:30pm, Jon left to pick Shirin up from the bus stop. I went inside to drop off my mug that I had been drinking tea from, only to find that the girls who had been playing outside had disappeared too. Apparently everyone but me had gone to pick Shirin up, pfft.
Later after Shirin had come, Jon and E brought her out for a drive around our area while I stayed at home to keep an eye on our dinner, which was cooking in the oven. I appreciated all this time to rest, because I had basically been going balls to the wall all day. Even when they got back, I was just resting and knitting in my usual spot in front of the computer for a bit, while I listened to the girls and Shirin play legos together. It was quite amusing listening to their conversation. We had a simple dinner of oven baked chicken wings and salad. After finishing my usual nightly chores of bathing a child (and of course myself), and putting M to sleep, I hung out more downstairs with Shirin. Over a 500 piece puzzle (Buzzy Bouquet by Galison, which turned out to have more bugs than I anticipate - ew), we chatted about family and all sorts of other random things. We finished around 11pm, having taken about 2h to finish the puzzle, and then went off to get ready for bed.
Sunday - 25 May
During the night, M woke up with an alarming cough several times. Then at one point I woke up really bloated and uncomfortable because I had evidently abused my sensitive stomach too much the previous day, and so was awake for a good hour+ Essentially, I woke up on Sunday morning -30 HP. I came downstairs to Jon freaking out about M being sick and wanting to bring her to the doctor to get tested for Strep, while vaguely mentally processing things. So while he brought her to Urgent Care, I had breakfast and we all waited to see what would happen next to the rest of the days plan. I must note that at this point, besides the really alarming cough she had displayed during the night, M had looked cheerful and crazy as usual when I had seen her in the morning, and was running around like a nut. In the end it turned out the co-pay cost would be $100, so Jon returned home with M without getting her tested or seen by the doctor, lol.
We ended up leaving the house a wee bit later than originally anticipated, heading up north to visit Storm King Art Center. It turned out to be a lot windier and cooler there than anticipated (STORM KING should have been a clue) so the kids initially were not very happy. After a while they started to enjoy running around, especially since they also had cool Aunty Shirin who would also run up slopes with them to look at sculptures. My lazy tired ass will stay down in the valley, thank you very much. We stayed there for about 2h until it was about lunch time. Then when we got to the car, it turned out that Nyack was a lot further from Storm King than I realised, so we initially thought to get lunch nearer first. The cafe we dropped by at however, had a 25 minute waitlist. So we piled back into the car for the 45 min ride to Nyack, which went through Bear Mountain State Park.
At Nyack we finally had lunch at Art Cafe, which was very charming. The kids didn't really enjoy the food though. Then we walked around Nyack, and I got to visit Knitting Nation, though I ended up not purchasing anything. We finally got back to the car around 4pm, to head towards home. M fell asleep in the car, so after we got home I stayed outside to knit on the porch while I let her nap for a little in the car. After about 20 minutes I carried her in, and she was of course very cranky. Then she ended up falling asleep on me while I sat with her on the couch, and I just ended up playing with my phone. The upside was that it was nice to lay sort-of-flat on the couch after all that walking. I had already started the day with aching legs because of my workout the previous day, and all the walking of course only made my legs ache more.
I finally managed to get M awake around 5:30pm, and we ended up eating leftovers for dinner. Because M had napped, I had a hell of a time trying to get her to go to bed later that night. In the end she finally fell asleep after a lot of fussing around 9:40pm. Initially Jon, Shirin and I had planned to watch The Goes Wrong Show together, but Jon declined to Jon us because it was too late. I ended up watching 2 episodes with Shirin, a new one (90 Degress) and a re-watch of my favourite one (A Trial to Watch).
Monday - 26 May
As Shirin was leaving around noon, we decided to get an early brunch in Ridgewood. I am thankful that I made early reservations, because soon after we arrived, the cafe became really swamped and busy. After brunch, we walked a little bit around Ridgewood before returning home. Then it was time for Shirin to leave, and so Jon went to drop her off at the bus stop (though apparently locating it was a bit of an adventure) while I stayed home with the kids.
At around 2:50pm, we headed out of the house again because we wanted to bring the kids to the LEAD carnival in Paramus. We arrived around 3:15pm, and were supposed to meet Mike and his kids there, but apparently the younger one fell asleep, so we went inside first. I had bought pre-opening unlimited ride passes for a discounted price, so we could do unlimited rides. I am glad we went early, because there were initially no lines, though of course it got crowded quickly. The girls had a good time, and were all sticky and hyper from the cotton candy. After a lot of texting back and forth, we finally met up with Mike and the kids for a bit, before going to navigate the carnival in separate groups again.
Finally about 5:30pm, we decided we'd bring the kids on one more ride before calling it. We ended up arranging to meet with Mike again to head to the food court. Somewhere during this time, Julie had apparently arrived back in NJ after her short trip to Cleveland, and she met us right at the exit. We all shared a big communal table at the food court and chatted for a bit before heading off, and we reached our car by 7pm for the drive home. We were all tired, and M actually fell asleep for a short period of time on the car ride home. Thankfully she didn't sleep too long because of course we had to get her out of the car and bathed, so she went to sleep by around 8:30pm last night.
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I have just returned from my usual Tuesday rowing class. I am feeling tired from the work out, and of the really eventful past few days, but I am feeling quite happy and content with the world and my life today.
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