Oh What A Wonderful Life

Yesterday marked the first day that Brad has been home all week! He'd been in Santa Clara, California, all week for work and we all missed him! Life went on as usual, with all the kids' activities, but only me to run them around! Anyway, Brad and I had a leisurely brunch at LePeep, followed by and exciting trip to the library, bank, and finally to Hy-Vee to pick up all of the food for the 5th grade LFE Halloween party. I am the grade level chair and had quite a large role in planning, researching, organizing, and purchasing for the 5th grade party. The 5th grade party ended up being a great success and all of the parent volunteers were happy with results of our labor!
So, even after a successful party, you still have some type of "interesting event or aftermath", right? My "interesting aftermath" was the leftover fruit and juice from a fruit tray spilling all of the middle seat and carpet of my van! UGH!! Thank God for carpet cleaning spray!
After cleaning up the van and refrigerating the "keepable" leftovers, we rushed over to central office to see Rhys' artwork on display. He was so proud to have his work framed and on display! He is quite a talented artist and I wish that we had the funds and he had to avenue to develope his talents further.
So, Lauren went to a Halloween costume party last night, Rhys went to "Extreme" and Brad and I had a "date night". I loved the time with Brad, especially with him being out of town all week, but the kids both being gone is bittersweet. I miss the times that we were all available to spend time together, when we were their whole world, and they used to bug us about family movie night or family gamenight, when they'd say "we haven't spent that much time together lately". Now it seems like we're all scattered in different directions and we're both running someone somewhere for something. I guess this is the natural process of preparing them and us for their "fleeing the nest".

Today, we had screening passes for 2 different kids/family movies this morning; "Tangled" and "Megamind". Since both kids wanted to see different movies, we parents divided and conquered the screenings. Lauren and I saw "Tangled" and Brad and Rhys saw "Megamind." "Tangled" was well attended and filled with families of little girls.
Brad and Rhys said that the auditorium for "Megamind" was fairly empty, but this about the 3rd screeing for that movie in the metro. They both said that the movie was pretty good. This is pretty high praise for a Dad that didn't really want to go and a tween boy. Rhys even said that he thought that the soudtrack would be a good cd.
No, Lauren is no longer a little girl, but was a HUGE Rapunzel fan when she was little. Everytime she'd go over to her Grandma's house, she'd watch an animated version of Rapunzel. She'd go around saying, "Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I might climb the golden stair." Everytime we'd pass the bell tower at Unity Village she'd say, "Mommy look! It's Rapunzel's tower!" Ahh, the sweet memories of her youth. Anyway, the 3D animation was wonderful! The imagery and lighting was spectacular and the character expressions (even the animals) were spot on! Neither animal characters spoke and all communication was either sound or facial/body expressions and movements. If you have a dog or are a dog lover, you will love Maximus the horse!
Brad and Rhys are now off to another soccer game and I'll be heading out sooon to drop Lauren off at church for an evening of bonfires and hayrides with the youthgroup.
It will just be the 3 of us tonight (Brad, Rhys, and me), so we'll make Mummy Dogs and perhaps watch our free Redbox rental or a Wii streaming movie from Netflix.
Today is a sunny 70 degrees, but the summer days are shortening and with the darkness the chill sets in and sweatshirts come out. We all love the fall with the firepit burning, fall/winter baking resumes, and family togetherness increases with our being "stuck indoors".
I hope that you all have a wonderful evening and enjoy your last taste of summer and first tastes of fall!