Weekly Wrap-Up: The Mean Mom and Dad Edition

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I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day week. It’s been a busy one for us and I’m just now starting to feel slightly caught up. Between an extended date night, a birthday, a used book sale and planning for a birthday party, it’s been a crazy week.

It started last Friday when Brian’s parents came to get the kids for the weekend. Brian and I went to our favorite Japanese steakhouse for lunch, then, went to see Wolverine. After the movie, we did a little shopping for Brianna’s birthday (couldn’t find what we wanted), then, we went to Carrabba’s with the gift certificates I won during the 5 Minutes for Mom Ultimate Blog Party. I had never eaten at Carrabba’s. Yum! And, their sweet tea is to die for!

The next day, we went to a surprise birthday party for my step-dad and, then, went to another movie! Yes, two movies in one weekend. We haven’t done that since we were dating. We went to see Star Trek, which was excellent! Then, well, we went out to dinner again. Yeah, we’re pretty much eating beans and rice this week now.

We didn’t do much for Memorial Day, just enjoyed a day off together. We did grill out some steaks (okay, maybe we haven’t been eating beans and rice all week). Tuesday was a used book sale with a couple of local homeschool groups. I sold more than I expected to, which is always a nice surprise, and I only bought two books (SOTW, Vol. 3 and Handbook of Nature Study…to use with the nature study that we are going to do this year. Really.) so I actually got to bring home a little tad of change. I was terribly disappointed to discover that that complete and unused La Clase Divertida set that I was going to snatch up had VHS tapes instead of DVDs. We don’t have a VCR anymore. Oh, well.

Of course, Tuesday was also Brianna’s 14th birthday, so, well, um, we went out to eat again. So much for bringing home a little tad of change from the book sale.

Wednesday, I finally got to stay home long enough to try to catch up on laundry…and emails and blogging, of course! Thursday we had roofers come to put a new roof on the house. We knew we’d be getting roused out of bed early, so we attempted to go to bed early. Megan had asked to sleep in the living room, which she enjoys doing sometimes. Josh and Brianna were in their rooms. About 12:30 AM, I awoke to voices in the living room. They’d already awakened Brian and he was already down there giving Megan and Josh, who had gone into the living room to talk to her, down the road for being up.

When he came back upstairs, he told me that he ought to wake them up at 5:30 AM when he got up so they could see what it felt like to try to get through the day on five hours’ sleep. My reply? Do it!

So, he did! He woke them up a little after 6:00, actually, just before he left, and told them to go down to the basement and get to cleaning…and not to wake anyone else up. Well, I didn’t sleep worth a flip after that, knowing that they were up, but it was so worth it. Megan was almost in tears when I explained that the tiredness that they were feeling was what Dad feels like every time they wake him up like that.

They got the basement cleaned and then they played outside almost all day. Megan had a ballgame last night and, though she played well, you could tell how tired she was. We made both her and Josh go to be at 10:00 last night (yeah, I know that’s still late for most kids, but it’s early for my night owls). Nobody had any trouble at all going to sleep last night. It’s 11 AM on Friday as I’m typing this and they are both still asleep…and we have roofers here pounding on the roof and dropping huge bundles of shingles that shake the whole house. They’re both snoring. I bet they don’t wake their dad up after midnight anymore. lol

The whole thing reminds me of the 911 call. I know most of you have never heard that one because I posted it way back when before I moved over to Blogger. This post is already getting long, but the story is worth telling, so I’ll try to make it short…

We had been to some fire safety event thing at which the kids were given coloring books about what to do in an emergency. One page was all about calling 911. Josh and Megan were probably about 4 and 6 at the time and we’d explained to them about not really calling 911 unless there was an emergency. Well, you know where this is going. They called 911.

They hung up when the dispatcher answered, so the sheriff’s office called to check it out. I explained what happened and later that night we had a stern, serious talk about not calling 911 unless there was an actual emergency. End of story, right? Nope.

A few days later, the kids were supposed to be having lunch and watching TV. I was on the computer reading my email when the phone rang. It was the sheriff’s department again, saying they’d had a 911 hang up call from this phone number and asking if everything was okay. I explained that everything was okay, but that it might not be when I got off the phone and got ahold of two kids. She chuckled and was about to hang up when I had an idea.

“Do you have a police officer in this area who isn’t terribly busy right now?” I asked. She caught on immediately and asked me to hold while she checked. Soon, she came back on the line and told me that there would be an officer at my door shortly.

I didn’t say a word to the kids. When the doorbell rang, I waited a few seconds before going to answer it because I knew all the kids would go running to see who it was. When I opened the door, a big burly officer said, “Did somebody here call 911?”

“I didn’t,” I replied innocently. Then, looking around curiously, I asked, “Did somebody call 911?”

I knew immediately who the guilty party was…or guilty parties were, as the case may be. Poor little Megan’s face crumpled and she clung to my leg. Josh looked like he’d seen a ghost. The officer ruined it all by taking pity on them and offering them candy as he explained how bad it was to call 911 when there wasn’t really an emergency. They have never called 911 again.

The doorknob story runs a close second to that. Every once in a while, we have those parenting moments where the punishment really fits the crime.

Today, as soon as my poor, tired kids rouse themselves from bed, we’ll be taking off to run some errands to prepare for having a house full of giggling teenage girls for Brianna’s slumber party tonight. Brian and the younger kids are escaping to the grandparents house for the night…which means I get to sit up late and play online! *grin*

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Kris Bales

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Kris Bales is a newly-retired homeschool mom and the quirky, Christ-following, painfully honest founder (and former owner) of Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers. She has a pretty serious addiction to sweet tea and Words with Friends. Kris and her husband of over 30 years are parents to three amazing homeschool grads. They share their home with three dogs, two cats, a ball python, a bearded dragon, and seven birds.

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