Friday morning, I had to jump right in early and deliver yet another conference presentation, but this time it was in my home, via Zoom. The presentation was at 8am, so I helped get Amelia ready for school, and Henry ready for his in-home therapy, and then suddenly realized I had about 4 minutes before I was supposed to be online.
Now, a lot of the presentations I do via Zoom don’t involve me actually being seen, so I can do them in sweats, but this was one where I actually had to show my face. So I hurried upstairs and used those four minutes to quickly tame my hair, put on a shirt, tie and jacket, and rush over to my computer. I have long joked about wearing the shirt, tie and jacket on top with running shorts underneath, and this was the first time I actually did that.
Sorry…no photo available.
But, I caught my breath, and the presentation actually went quite well. It was nice to have it out of the way early so I could spend the rest of the day getting caught up on some other work stuff that had piled up during the week, since I’d been running around and on the road.
For the kids, the entire day was an endless countdown and slog toward the fact that they were going to get the spend the night at Grandma and Pop Pop’s house. They were taking the kids for the weekend so Erin and I could have a little breather.
All day, about every 40 or 50 seconds, Henry would ask, “We go to Grandma and Pop Pop’s now?” I’d explain we were going to go later and he’d ask, “We we go later?” And on and on did this question and answer repeat throughout the day.
But, 3pm finally came, Amelia finished with school, and it was time to take the kids over. I got their suitcases packed, Amelia took great care to pack her new walkie talkies and selected the stuffies she wanted to bring. Just before heading out, we had a delivery of yet another gift, from our good friend Patrick in Chicago. Uncle Patrick had sent Amelia a cool new pair of binoculars, and she was super excited to bring those with her, too.
I drove the kids over and was about to head home when Amelia came to me with the panicked realization that she had left her new American Girl Doll, the pink-haired little girl she named “Star,” at home. I indidcated I could drop her off tomorrow, and Amelia said, “But Star wanted to have TWO sleepovers.”
Sigh.
Erin and had reservations for dinner downtown, and of course decided to alter our route a little to drop Star off before heading to dinner.
We got dressed up, delivered the doll, and were off to Denver. We wanted to go to Larimer Square, which has set up as a pedestrian only block with outdoor dining moved out into the street.
We ate an Italian restaurant we like, Osteria Marco. The street setup is awesome, and I frankly hope it stays this way, even after COVID. There were street musicians and a really cool vibe overall. We got seated, and when we told the waitress we were having a date night away from the kids, she brought us two glasses of Prosecco to start things off.
We had a really nice dinner and enjoyed a beautiful evening outside. It was some much needed time together and a nice respite for the insanity of day to day life. After dinner we walked around a bit and headed home.
Party animals that we are, we were home well before 10pm and pretty much relaxed and called it a night. Dinner and early bedtime…that’s parent partying.
