Arts as Astra

My in-laws finally left on Friday. They had originally planned to leave Thursday, but had second thoughts upon hearing about snow on the New Jersey Turnpike. So I've spent the weekend reacquainting myself with my family, though DS1 seems to have decided that I'm rude and he refuses to associate with me now.

On Saturday, we decided to spend a sunny albeit still a bit chilly afternoon hiking along the trail behind our house. The outbound trip was quite leisurely, at least for me and DH, since the kids actually moved under their own power for once. The trip back was faster, but quite strenuous for me and DH, quite leisurely for the kids, since we ended up carrying them the whole way back. But hey, they walked almost two miles on the outbound trip, and we took the shortcut home, so it was all good.

Later, we went to dinner with a bunch of friends of mine from work at a Cuban restaurant in Adams Morgan. It's always kind of awkward for me to hang out with people from work, because either they are my peers in age and career status, but without kids, or they have kids and are senior to me both in age and career status. And even so, DS1 is the oldest among the group of children we tend to hang out with. Go figure.

The waitress brought over a couple of bottles of hot sauce while we were waiting for the food to arrive, and DS2 was immediately smitten by the bright green bottle labeled "habanero sauce." So what does DH do? He pours a drop onto his finger and feeds it to the poor kid, who immediately puts up a wail that turns all the heads in the restaurant. It took him quite a while to calm DS2 down, while the people in our group watched with a conbination of amusement and horror. It took him a while to accept any other food offering from us.

We ordered some appetizers of fried plantains and yucca, and I guess kids will eat anything as long as it's fried, because even Mr. PickyEater ate quite a bit and asked for more.

The kids were mostly well-behaved, and the wait staff were very patient and courteous. They even brought over pens and paper for doodling. Then, as we were putting on coats to leave, DS2 took off -- I caught a flash of him running past me, just as another group was heading out the door, so I had to shove them all aside in order to catch up with the kid, who had practically made it to the front door. I like to think they forgave me for my rudeness upon seeing me catch my quarry...

Sunday (today), we took the kids to the park and tried out our not-so-new (I think they are older than I am) tennis racquets that DH's parents had brought. DH and I tried to get a good volley going, but we're both out of shape and I've never been good at it. Our kitchen is more-or-less back in order, now that DH has installed the trim around the edges of the flooring. I tried to decrease some of our freezer/fridge contents by doing some cooking, so now we have apple-pear-cranberry pie (with a criss-cross lattice crust because I was feeling creative) and Leftovers Soup, Yum.