Goings on and moronic behavior

What have we been up to lately? Well on Friday Susan and Frannie came over for lunch, Janette and Jules came over for dinner, and Mark went out with his friend Jenny to the new music venue at Johnny Brendas. On Saturday we went to Tripp’s second birthday party. As per usual Holly went above and beyond – she rented a hot dog machine, a popcorn machine, a cotton candy machine and an ice cream machine. There were activity tables for the kids – play doh, paints, and masks. There would have been a clown too put the idiot cancelled on her. It was a lot of fun and though I don’t intend on doing anything that elaborate for Noah’s party I do find myself trying to think up any excuse to rent an ice cream machine and make sundaes. Like maybe because it’s Tuesday. On Sunday we drove out to Sellersville to meet my Mom at a fair event that was to be held at Lake Lenape Park. At the last moment they decided the park was too muddy and relocated the event to my former junior high school. And God was it weird walking around that place. Especially since I was really overtired and pissy that day. Noah danced a bit to the old-timey folk band that was playing until he tripped over a crack in the sidewalk and led the charge down to the ground with his face. He’s sporting a lovely brushburn goatee as well as a matching set on his knee and elbow.

Yesterday myself and neighborhood friends Holly, Susan and Morgan gathered up our toddler tots Noah, Tripp, Frannie and Stella as well as infant Finn and headed to Linvilla Orchards to pick apples. It was a nice little field trip for us all. We won’t win any apple picking prizes since most of the time we were too busy chasing toddlers through aisles of trees to pick anything, but the kids really enjoyed the idea of eating apples right off the trees. In fact I swear half the apples we picked didn’t make it to the checkout process. We also picked out pumpkins and had a nice picnic lunch under a shady tree. I really enjoyed the precursor to Fall and also the feeling that we’ve formed our own little happy clique of Moms and kids. I really value that sense of community.

So two major idiotic things happened this week. The first is that at Tripp’s party Susan’s husband gave me an envelope containing a check for $150 for some freelancing we did, a key to our house and the directions for how to feed our cats and deactivate our alarm system. Obviously there was some great concern when we realized we came home without it. And even more concern when we called Holly the day after and she hadn’t seen it when she cleaned up. We were feeling like grade A feck-ups. Luckily however Holly soon found the envelope wedged between the cushions of the sofa we were sitting on. Hooray. The second involved our carpeting estimates. We were blown away when I called Lowes for their estimate and found out it was $1200 less than the neighborhood flooring place we had hoped to use. However last night we went to Lowes to get a print out of the estimate and found out that the quote they gave me over the phone did not include the actual carpeting! Yup – they gave me the price of installation, cushioning, etc but hadn’t added the carpet we picked out. DUH! Talk about service. It’s still a better deal at Lowes but now only infinitesimally so. Now we have to decide to go with the neighborhood place (Buy local!) that has far superior customer service and more accountability or Lowes who has the better price and actually the better looking carpet for our buck.

We’re off to my Dad’s this afternoon.