Family dance and kid dates

Spencer's school hosted a family dance on Friday night.  They did it last year as well, but the kids were either sick or we were out of town.  I don't really remember.

There was a luau theme for the dance.

We dressed accordingly.

And threw in a silly picture for Elliott.

The dance was held under the big ramada outside of the cafeteria, on the playground.  I was happy to see a good turn out.  These things are always more fun when more people are there.  Oh and lest you worry about a dance being held outside in February, the high that day was 85 degrees and it was in the 70's the whole time we were there.

There was a snow cone truck, so we bought two for the kids.

See the guy in all black?  That's the principal.  It's so nice that he dressed up/dressed for the theme of the night.

Spencer spent most of the night with his friends running around being crazy, so there aren't many pictures of him.  I did get a few of him participating in the "surfing" contest.

Elliott was the only preschool kid to go up for the surfing contest for preschoolers so he won a prize by default.

He also GOT DOWN on the dance floor.

A family dance is not my number one choice of activity for a Friday night, but it was only two hours long,  the kids had a total blast and it was reasonably fun for the adults, so I am glad we went.  Spencer already asked if we can go again next year.

On Saturday morning we split up and each parent took one kid on a "date".  My two sons have done nothing but fight for months now and we thought that breaking them up and giving them some individualized attention might help.  We're planning on switching kids this upcoming Saturday.

Michael and Spencer went out for breakfast burritos and Starbucks.  They came home after they ate and played video games.

Elliott and I went to the Gilbert Farmer's Market.  We saw Mr. Chad and bought food from his food truck.  Then we went to Ross to look for new shoes for Elliott.  We didn't find any.  Well, we did, but not in his size. Then we went to Walmart and bought shelf liner.

After our kid dates we stayed at home for the rest of the day except for a quick family trip to Trader Joe's.  I needed ingredients to make a nibbly, snacky type dinner for the date that Michael and I had on the couch that night.  

Ho-Hum

Last week was a pretty standard, boring, ho-hum week.  It's nice to have those every now and then.  Busy and on the go is fine too, but it's tiring and I feel like I fall behind on taking care of "stuff".

Spencer found my nail buffing block last Sunday and wanted a demonstration so I buffed all of his nails to a glorious shine.  Michael walked in during the demonstration, stood silently staring at us, left and came back with the camera.  I think he slowly shook his head in disbelief at one point. 

Elliott and I went to the mall on Monday.  I saw this shirt at H&M.  It is a somewhat decent attempt at writing in the International Phonetic Alphabet.  But, and this is a big but, IPA does not use any capital letters.  And the diacritic marks are completely wrong.  And the vowels in "don't" are highly suspicious.  I guarantee they did not ask a speech language pathologist to do this transcription.

Anyway, I posted this picture to the Speech Language Pathology group I belong to on Facebook and it set off a firestorm of discussion.  We all agree that the capital letters are unforgivable and that they were transcribing a speaker with a typical British accent.  Oh, and that the "don't" is just wack.

SLPs are rather particular and nerdish about our passions.

Monday was National Margarita day so I bought this as part of the celebration.

Elliott was more than happy to test it before lunch.

I made a Mexican fiesta for dinner and low-carb, sugar free margaritas for the adults.

Spencer and Michael were both wearing green shorts that evening.  It was cute.

\Elliott and I ran a bunch of errands on Tuesday.  We ended up at Hobby Lobby where drawer knobs happened to be 50% off.

This happened.

Before

After

Before

After

The whole desk

Spencer got new wires in his braces on Wednesday.  I feel like we should rent a studio apartment in the orthodontist's office. The office is in Mesa and we spend more time driving there and back than we are actually there.

The appointment was on the short side, but I still struggle to keep Elliott occupied while Spencer's in the chair.

He wanted to take a picture together but the assistant needed to talk to me just as we took this.

He occupied his time while I was talking to her and I didn't realize the camera was still on.

The zoom button on our camera is sticking and I was messing around with it on Thursday night when I accidentally discovered you could change one of the features to take a "burst" of pictures.  This is the burst that I didn't take on purpose.  It changed the lighting and filters on its own.  I didn't pick them.

And that is where I will leave you.  We did do some fun stuff over the weekend, so I will let you anticipate that for the next post and not cram it in here at the end.  I promise it will be less ho-hum.  Not awesome by any means, but not boooooooooooring.