Thursday, after school, one of the other moms at the bus stop told me her son was "dying to play with Jacob." I said, "Great! Would you like him to come over now?" Well, it turns out that her son "dying to play with Jacob" was more of a "can you baby-sit my kid while I run errands". I agreed to have her son come over, and somehow managed to acquire two more guests on the walk home...that means I had five boys in my apartment all at once. At some point they all decided they were hungry and thirsty. I offered them all water. "Dying to play with Jacob" was not in the mood for water and helped himself to my fridge. After telling me that he wanted chocolate milk (which costs about $6 for half a gallon) I told him that water was his only option. "Dying to play with Jacob" was very obvious about his agitation with my beverage restrictions. It was then time to come up with a snack. The boys all voted for pancakes. I went into the kitchen and began to make the batter. Seconds after I poured the first pancakes into the pan, one of the other boys walked in and asked where his pancakes were. I told him, "I am making them right now." He responded, "Make them faster!"
Now, the wasn't a cute, "Make them faster!" This was more of a, "Make them faster, you idiot!"
Note: If either of my children ever says or does anything of that nature while visiting any of your homes, please inform me immediately and they will be appropriately punished.
Two and a half hours later, "Dying to play with Jacob"s mom showed up to collect her son. While I wanted to go straight to bed at that point, it was then time for me to make dinner. "Pancakes anyone?"
Friday night we went out with another couple. They offered to have our kids come to their place and then their twelve-year-old daughter could watch both families' kids (a total of seven children). Jacob and Andrew were in heaven. Immediately upon arrival, the light sabers were whipped out and the chasing began. My favorite comment of the night was when the other mom asked her son to take the activity upstairs because the baby was asleep and he said, "But Mom, this is a bigger 'slaughter' room!" The little boy was four and it was the funniest sounding thing ever!
We did not get home that evening until midnight.
The next morning I woke up to Scott yelling, "Catherine! Get up! We are leaving now!" As I came to, it was soon clear that we had greatly overslept for Jacob's soccer game. It takes twenty minutes to get to the school where the game is played, and we woke up two minutes before the game was to begin. Actually, the whole thing was my fault. I had misread the game schedule and told Scott our game did not start until 11am. Scott (who is also the coach) happened to look at the schedule at 9:28 and noticed our game was at 9:30am. Anyway, it was a wonderful way to start the day.
That night, our family was invited to a "Lantern Festival" by one of Scott's co-workers. The Lantern Festival is a Chinese tradition where the children carry lit paper lanterns and moon cakes are served for dessert. The party was at the co-worker's apartment complex. There were about 100 people at the party, and there were a number of games and activities for the adults and the children. At the end of the evening there was a lucky draw. Half way into the draw, Jacob was very upset that we did not have a ticket for the draw. "Where's our ticket? Why don't we have a ticket? Mom, where can I get a ticket?" I told Jacob not to worry about it because we were guests at the party (not residents) and that the draw had already began. Jacob was adamant he have a ticket and set out to find one. I did not see him for the next ten minutes until they announced the winner of the grand prize.
After reading the winning number, my seven year old approached the emcee to retrieve his prize. Jacob won us a free night at a hotel in Malaysia. (I guess Scott will have to forgive for the underwear comment from last week).
My personal favorite (note sarcasm) part of the evening, was when an extremely drunk Russian man tried to spark up a conversation with me. It was a very awkward conversation adn i was desperately trying to get out of it. I don't remember how he brought up the fact he was Russian, but when he did I said, "Oh! My mom is Russian. Well, she was born in the U.S., but her parents were from Russia." Shortly after that, I thought I had successfully disengaged from the Russian. To my surprise, a very drunk Russian woman suddenly plopped down next to me and started to speak in Russian. I guessed she said something like, "You are from Russia!?" I then had to explain that my mom was Russian, but was born in America. This really confused her. Anyway, I was then stuck in a conversation with the drunk woman. I was finally able to escape when Scott's co-worker all invited us up to his apartment.
We left the co-worker's place around midnight, and the Russians were still partying strong. We tried to walk by quickly with a short good-night, but the Russian guy pulled Scott aside. They talked for a few minutes - meanwhile the boys were complaining about how tired they were. When Scott caught back up to us I asked what they were talking about.
The guy wanted Scott to give him a job. Scott gave him his co-worker's apartment number and told the Russian to talk to him. I am hopefully optimistic that the Russian was too drunk to remember the address.
On a side note: that night was also the first time Andrew and I partook of a common Singaporean dessert...ice-cream served in-between a slice a bread (green bread I might add). These things are sold on the street for a dollar a piece. I thought they looked rather frightening, but decided to give it a try this one time. Oh my gosh! Super yummy!!! It tastes like the fried ice-cream they used to serve at Bennihana's. Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise after an evening of eating a few mystery foods.
Okay, enough. Time for me to get to bed!
No comments:
Post a Comment