the mark haley holler: For A Change

I think the reason I caught flack for all the flowers from my dear mama is because she'd really like to know what is going on in the lives of her grandchildren. So I think I can oblige.

Over the weekend, my oldest friend brought Charlie's oldest friend to visit. Elaine is my oldest friend-- she's got to be like a hundred. No, wait, I mean we've been friends since kindergarten. We like each other so much we decided to have our first babies within three weeks of each other. So my Charlie and her Haley have known each other since they were... I don't know... between six and nine weeks old, maybe. See, our oldest friends!

Anyway, I really know how to show a guest a good time. To kick off the weekend, my directions got Elaine lost in the dark getting to my house. When you tell someone, "Take the left fork at the black barn" and it's dark and all the barns are black... well, oops. Once she did get to my house, our four collective children ran screaming upstairs, downstairs, and through the house until all but Charlie dropped over in a deathlike sleep around eleven o'clock.

Eleven is late for most children. Charlie calls it, "just getting warmed up." I did eventually convince him to go to sleep though. I let him sleep in Abraham's crib, since we kicked him out of his own room so that Elaine and her kids could have an actual door. Most people wouldn't think sleeping bent in half in a bed that might possibly collapse under their weight was fun, but Charlie is always up for adventure.

In the morning, the real festivities started. Elaine took Haley, Noah, Abraham, and me to my doctor's office. Why? None of your business. Elaine waited in the car with the kids for fifty minutes while I got felt up by a man with a head that bore a striking resemblence to Charlie Brown's. Then we went to Walmart. I told you I know how to show guests a good time.

On the way home, we saw no less than three suicidal box turtles, warming themselves on the pavement of US 27. We didn't oblige any of their death wishes, though.

Once we got back from Walmart, we put Noah down to nap. Abraham said, "no thanks," he would rather chase the two older kids around the yard instead. We ate Hannah's Tacos, which involve lime rice, Great Northern Beans, absolutely no Ortega powder, and a lot of cilantro. See me later for the recipe.

After lunch, we introduced the five year olds to five small kittens. That was not as big of a hit as I thought it would be. Haley's kitten scratched her, and Charlie's had a tick on it. Both kids dropped their kittens like hot rocks and said, "Can we go play now?" Sorry, I didn't know I was such a bore!

When we had run the gamut of swing set, sidewalk chalk, bikes, bubble soap, and milkweed growing up through pavement (see previous blog entry) I decided a little nature walk was in order. Little is the operative word here. We walked about fifty feet into the woods, where the kids whacked each other with sticks and I took *gasp* pictures of wildflowers. But I did take a picture of kids too. Here you go, mom.

While I was taking that picture, I almost rolled down the hill we call the river cliff, and I discovered this cool little flower, which might or might not be Yellow Adder's Tongue:

At that point in the afternoon, the sky was beginning to look ominous, so Elaine and I decided that would be a perfect time to wake Noah up and take the kids to play at the park. What were we thinking? I have no idea. We packed up all the junk food we could fit in a cooler, and trundled off to Kincaid Lake State Park. It rained while we were en route, so the kids had fun water slides to slide down and extremely wet butts within seconds after arrival. We decided to call it a day when the rainfall became so dense we couldn't see the car in the parking lot any more.

Another thing I love to do when entertaining is spoil people's children, so after we got back to the homestead and thawed the kids in the bathtub, I made chocolate chip pancakes for supper. Elaine was proably already deciding at this point that she would never visit me again. The kids, once again excepting Charlie, were all in bed by nine, just in time for Elaine and me to fall asleep watching Sherlock Holmes.

The next morning I cemented Elaine's determination never to return here by taking her daughter to the creek to get muddy again right before getting in the car to go home. On that drive, we saw another box turtle in the road. This time, I stopped and picked it up. Did you know it is not very entertaining to pet an animal that has no apparent head, feet, or tail? We picked bouquets of blue phlox to give to our mommies on the way home, proving that little kids are all romantics at heart, and that the French use way too many redundant vowels.

Neither Charlie, nor I, wanted the weekend to end, but no such things can last forever. We bid our friends farewell with fries and ice creams at Howard's Place, with the hope they will want to come again.

In all the driving around we did with our friends, I saw a bunch more flowers I want to subject you to, so that's how I'll close this installment.