Me and Dave day

I did something today that I used to think I never would. I let David stay home from the school swimming carnival even though he was in perfect health and hadn't actually asked to not go. In past years I've been well aware that Dave didn't really want to go. He was certainly never going to do anything so radical as enter an event, or, you know, get into the water or anything like that. But I was never much bothered by the idea of him sitting around all day doing nothing, not even able to talk to his friends (given that they're not in the same sporting house and the kids have to sit in their house groups), any suffering on his part was well worth not having him underfoot unnecessarily. Then last night I found myself saying to him, that if he'd rather not go he had the option of spending the day with me instead. Like he was ever going to choose to go to the carnival - HA!

I suppose it's something to do with him having turned into quite a pleasant human being whose company I rather enjoy. Who'd've thunk it? That and I'm a bit over the whole come along and cheer for your team/school spirit thing.

So he came with me to Weight Watchers (I lost 0.3kg, still heading in the right direction), we wandered in JB HiFi for a bit (he pointed out all the cool games he'd really like for his birthday and I bought a Whitlams CD), we had some lunch (KFC for him, beef pho for me) and went to Games Workshop and retrieved the paints he'd accidentally left there on the weekend.

Then we went clothes shopping. I made him try on a whole bunch of pants and tops and we found one shirt, one hoodie and one pair of pants in Myer that were ok but it was jeans we were really after for him and nothing in the Myer or Target kid's sections came even close to fitting. So we headed off to Just Jeans where he eventually ended up finding a pair of mens jeans that fit nicely...if you didn't pay too much attention to the 30cm of excess length in the legs. Then in a fit of being realistic I decided that taking them to a tailor to be altered was a really good idea, which we duly did and they were done within the hour which meant we could pick them up before we came home. Much better than having them sit in my sewing to do pile for 6 months. While waiting for the alterations I dragged Dave along to Target so I could try on some jeans myself, I've had one pair self-destruct and another looking like they're on their last legs this last week. Got 2 pairs and they were 20% off too which was nice. Next was a quick grocery shop, dump a bunch of stuff in the car and then dash back to pick up the altered jeans.

After all of which we had no time left to go home and had to head to the school to pick up Caitlin and Tom. I think maybe Dave was regretting foregoing the carnival by the end of the day. At least he got some exercise, we must have done the length of Hornsby Westfield multiple times - I can certainly feel the effects of all the walking tonight!

Caitlin was over the moon, she'd come 1st in the 25m kickboard race and 3rd in the 25m freestyle race, she reckons she'd have done better if she hadn't forgotten to take her goggles with her. The first ever sporting win of any kind for any of my kids :) Perhaps she'll consider entering some of the 50m races next year.

The afternoon consisted of prodding kids to do homework, taxiing Caitlin to dance classes and cooking steak and kidney. All of which went surprisingly well. The homework all got done without any yelling on my part, I fitted dinner preparation neatly in between car trips with Caitlin and my dad came to dinner and was suitably appreciative, none of the kids were rude about the meal (though Tom was the only one who ate everything) and there was just enough left over for me to stick a couple of lunch-sized serves in the freezer for later.

And now I am tired. Sleep sounds good....