Overscheduling

It's been a packed several days here in the Rodius household. On Thursday, Thumper and I drove to Dallas to visit Grandma and Grandpa. Biggest Brother, his girlfriend, Number One Niece, and her boyfriend all came over to visit, too. It was a fabulous time, and Thumper did everything he could to show off all of his skills, especially his sugared up singing and dancing skills.

It turns out that Cuz found me because Biggest Brother had done some reaching out of his own. It was kind of surprising to me, because I'd always thought of myself as the one, and maybe the only one, who was interested in family connections. Turns out he is, too, and wanted to reconnect with his uncle and cousins, and his reconnecting brought me back into contact, too. Thanks, Biggest Bro!

So I just wrote a long "here's my life over the past 30 years" email to Cuz, which has put me in a strange and sentimental mood. Forgive me if none of this makes much sense in the way of a unified narrative, but I felt like I should blog, since my mother wants circus pictures, and I don't have any because I forgot to bring the camera. But I do have a birthday party picture:



Yeah, he looks kind of wiped out, huh? We drove to Dallas on Thursday, partied like rock stars, drove back on Friday, went to the circus on Saturday, and birthday partied today. There's been a lot of sugar mixed in there, too. Tomorrow we're volunteering; that is, I'm volunteering raking and bagging leaves and cleaning gutters at a low-income housing development while the impressively mature young Freckles keeps the boy busy. Which is to say, I don't think that tomorrow is going to bring the boy much rest, either.

Tuesday, though, we'll be back on schedule. He's been a busy, busy young man. Maybe he needs a vacation.

Oh yeah, and what about the circus, which was his first arena event? It was kind of a sad little circus, certainly not the greatest show on earth. The tiger trainer was ridiculous, the sound was horrible, and there were too many slow-paced acrobat and contortionist acts in a row to hold a toddler's attention. But he did really well. The snow cone helped. We left at intermission, but that was longer than I expected him to last. I thought he'd either be traumatized by the lights and noise or bored sitting in a seat. He was a little upset when the tigers had to jump through a ring of fire, but it was brief and he recovered quickly. I'd definitely try that again. He didn't even make us buy him overpriced and short-lived souvenirs. Bonus!