I'm glad the weekend is over

I've been too busy this weekend. I spent a lot of the weekend trying to clean the house up enough for N's birthday party with his friends this afternoon. I felt really sick a lot of the time. I think I'm coming down with a bad cold and a minor tummy bug. Friday evening, I got the kids into bed by 8:30 p.m., and I put on my Battlestar Galactica DVD (the original series in which Starbuck is a man), sat in front of my new TV in the recliner, and I got a ways into the pilot episode before I got to sleepy to continue.

Mr. K had to work Saturday morning so I couldn't get much cleaning done. When Mr. K got home from work, we walked up my (busy) street to the church at the corner where they were having an Italian festival Because of all the rain we've been having, we called it the Italian Mud Festival. Sometimes we were sinking in the mud at the church's athletic field, where they held the festival. In some places, they had laid out boards. I thought my porchetta sandwich was icky. It wasn't warm (and it was supposed to be). It's a sliced pork sandwich with gravy. The gravy was cold and messy. I dumped most of it. On the bright side, I had the best cannoli I've had since I left New York state (where I lived for a bit over a year after college). There were a lot of police there, and I had to ask why. This part of town just isn't the kind of place people get into fights, and certainly not at church, and most of the people at this event looked like families. Most of the police were volunteering for the shift, and they didn't expect any trouble. It was because the church was allowing the sale of beer and wine that they wanted the police presence. They asked us when we arrived if we were going to buy beer or wine. Mr. K and I just started laughing. We both hate beer and don't like wine very well. Considering we'd both been rather ill, it just seemed like such a bad idea. N piped up that we could get some since we walked. We said, no, we weren't going to buy any beer or wine. I think they would have made the age determination (believe me, no carding would have been necessary for us), and stamped our hands if we wanted to buy beer or wine.

We ran into another family who also had walked that lives in the neighborhood across from the church but in another direction from us. Mostly the kids played at the playground, which was very small. They also had a moon ride N and J enjoyed.

The Italian Festival was very loud. We could hear everything clearly from our house, and there is a small stand of woods between us and where it took place, although I could see some of the tents from my front porch through the trees.

I managed to get the vacuuming done before we went to bed Saturday night, and I got the cake baked and decorated, and I got my grocery shopping done.

We did church and doughnuts this morning, and I continued trying to get the house clean. We put up some decorations, and Mr. K and N blew up a couple packs of balloons that we threw around the house. Most ended up popped. The girls drew faces on some.

Mr. K said the kids could play out in the mud, so I called the parents before the party to warn them not to wear good clothing. It was only in the 50s and rained on and off, but I was so glad to have the kids outside. They were horridly noisy, and here were only three extra boys, and two extra girls (who were younger sisters of the boys who were invited to keep J busy). The girls were so much quieter.

Mr. K did some archery with the boys for a while. We ate pizza that I ordered shortly before the kids arrived. We had punch, Doritos, and birthday cake. I guess it went okay. N was happy, but I felt like a limp rag as everyone left.

We cleaned up, and finally we went to the other grocery store as a family. I do the Saturday evening shopping alone, but we all go to Kroger's (a different store) if Mr. K needs stuff from there. He did this week.

Then I had to write up some sort of a contract this evening so that we'll hold our rental house until May 3 off the market and in turn, this potential tenant commits to signing the lease then or losing the money they gave me to hold it. We are being generous and not actually charging them "rent"" of any sort for this near-month as long as they actually sign the lease. If they don't sign, they'll lose what they give Mr. K tomorrow night. We just don't have the clientele who can afford to pay rent if they aren't actually there. They always have trouble scraping up cash. If we hadn't done it this way, they wouldn't have been able to rent from us. We are hoping they will turn out to be good tenants.

It's getting late, and I need to get some sleep.