This weekend was an unusual time in House Holt. On most weekends, I know my place is pretty much to back off and let the kids enjoy all of the time that they can with Bethany. However, on this weekend, Bethany found herself heading to Branson for a women's retreat leaving me and the kids all alone.
There's an old saying that seems quite appropriate in this case. When Mom's away, the kids (and Dad) will play. I realize that's probably the rule of thumb in most homes. It's true that in our home, I do most of the "house-running" stuff on a day-to-day basis. However, when Bethany is out of town like she was this weekend, I'm definitely going to go out of my way to make sure it's a fun and special weekend for the kids.
Those fun and special times began on Friday night when Ethan and I picked Ellie up from school. We promptly headed to Sam's Club to pick up a big, freshly-prepared, take-and-bake pizza. After we spent about twenty minutes wandering around the store with no pizza to show for our trouble, I finally resorted to asking an employee for help. Imagine my surprise when she let me know that Sam's no long sold those pizzas. With that sad news, we left the store without our prize.
Never fear though for I am a man of great resourcefulness. While sitting in the Sam's parking lot, I promptly went to Casey's website to order a pizza only to find that the wait time was far too long. Therefore, I instead checked Pizza Hut only to learn the same. Finally, I decided to try Domino's only to find that our pizza would be ready in ten minutes. Success! About 15 minutes later, we were home with a hot-and-fresh ham, pineapple, and green pepper pizza all our very own. As one can probably guess, the kids were absolutely stoked to have a special treat and it slightly made up for the fact that Bethany was gone.
On Day 2, our original plans changed slightly but it wasn't all bad. We started the day with a trip to see my parents in Savannah. My mom had purchased a new TV stand for the living room and needed help unhooking everything in the original stand and re-hooking everything up in the new one. For me, this was a slight unfortunate job as I found myself without some of the necessary cords and connectors to complete the job and ended up having to make two trips to town to stock up.
For their part though, Ellie and Ethan certainly enjoyed their time at my parents' house. For one thing, the two of them are largely able to run free since my parents live in the country. There's also always lots of four-wheeler rides from my dad and plenty of pushes on the swing. My dad even loaded both kids up and drove them over to the fields to watch harvest.
We ended up leaving Savannah right after lunch to head home for Ethan to take a much-needed nap so that he would have enough energy for the second treat of the day. Earlier in the week, I had promised the kids that we would have a movie night on the projector in the basement since Mom was gone. The movie of choice on this night was Cars.
Now, Ethan has been slightly obsessed with Lightning McQueen since we purchased his "new" bike a few weeks ago. Taking that into account, I felt confident that Ethan would love to see the actual movie. Right I was. Accompanied by a big bowl of popcorn, Ellie and Ethan spent close to two hours being entertained by the denizens of Radiator Springs. While Ellie has seen Cars multiple times, the story was new to Ethan. However, that didn't stop him from grasping every important plot point. In fact, when Bethany later quizzed him about the movie, he was able to share a ton of details about it. The one unfortunate thing about movie night was that Ethan cried when it was over because that meant it was time for bed. Fortunately for him, there is a Cars 2 and a Cars 3 to enjoy at some point down the road.
Fast forward to Sunday and our last day sans Bethany. Of course, we started the day at church. This Sunday was special though as I asked Ellie to sit with me since the sermon was over baptism. She's been really curious about the concept lately so I wanted her to have the opportunity to ask any questions that she had. While there were a few, she mostly just had fun coloring and reading books. That's ok though because it was still awesome to get to sit next to her during church.
As far as the rest of the day, it went fairly fast. After getting home from church, we ate a quick lunch of breakfast burritos before the kids headed to their respective quiet time and nap a little before noon. That gave me time to watch some of the Chiefs game (UGH!) before Bethany got home. Once Bethany got home, we spent some time talking about her weekend before the kids finally joined us. Once that happened, it was time for the last highlight of the weekend: Pumpkin carving!
While we had picked out a pumpkin a couple of weeks prior, we hadn't actually carved it yet although Ellie had picked out her dream design of stars and the moon. After tracing it on the pumpkin, it was time to do some cutting. We actually embraced a new method of pumpkin carving this year. Instead of using a knife exclusively, we used a drill to put holes in our pattern and then simply used a knife to connect said holes. Not only was it a little more precise but the actual cutting went so much faster as a result!
While it goes without saying that we definitely missed Bethany during her weekend away, it's indisputable that we had a great time as a trio despite her absence! As anyone can definitely see, it's certainly true that when Mom was away, the kids (and Dad) did play! #DaddyWrite
P.S. - I just realized that I completely forgot that Ethan and I joined our friends, the Blackwells and the Thomanns, at the Kansas City Zoo on Friday morning for some zoo-time fun. You know it was a crazy weekend if I forgot all about that!
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