The trio listening to Roald Dahl

Last Thursday Debbie took Sam and Henry to Palm Desert where they were ball kids at  The BNP Paribas Open. This was sort of uncharted territory for me. I mean I’ve been away from Debbie and the kids for work for up to 3 weeks and I do spend a great deal of time with them, but never alone for days. The only time I can ever remember being “alone” with the boys is when Debbie has given birth to one of the boys. That’s only been for one night (if that) and now that I think back this only happened once when Henry was born. So, here’s a few of the highlights of what we did. Oh, I forgot to mention I got a call from Dr. Gordon’s office informing me that all 5 of our kids tested positive for strep throat. Our first stop was the 10th Street Pharmacy to get 3 bottles of Cefdinir to combat the strep throat.

Say Ahhhhhhh....

Back to the house where it was Pizza Night!  We rolled dough and spooned sauce from Bay Cities Italian Deli. We made one cheese and one pepperoni. We also had an olive competition . It was a head to head battle between the Sicilians and the Castel Vertranos. Who cares who won. They are both from Sicily.

In this corner, from Sicily...

Shower time and then we all jumped into bed to watch The Indian in the Cupboard.

Saturday morning meant Omi’s pancakes grilled to perfection by Theo.

Proper use of fork and knife

Off to Temescal Canyon for a birthday party romp under the big oak tree and through the creek. Tricky part was to keep Simon awake on the car ride home so he could have a proper nap in a bed. Pete Seeger helped us with that with his Abiyoyo cd. Simon loves this story and so do I. At nap time I played my lyre while quietly singing “Abiyoyo, Abiyoyo…”

Crouching Child

With nap time was over what was next for our Saturday but  a naked wrestling match on the newly steer manured lawn.

Theo pinning Ollie

Most of the photos I took are too gross to publish. If you come over I’ll show you them in person.

Look, up in the sky!

Then off to The Santa Monica Airport observation platform to watch the airplanes take off and land. I knew it was time to go when Simon kept on trying run onto the tarmac.

Next I told the boys I needed to fill the car with gas but we really went o to the car wash where you get to stay in the car while you are engulfed by a mechanical device.

Do not open the windows

With a clean car exterior and hungry bellies (wrestling in manure always makes you hungry) we headed over to Sawtelle for goyzas and noodles at Asahi Ramen House. With a quick peruse and strange purchases (mini tennis ball machine, mini gun and mini angry ping- pongplayer) at The Giant Robot Robot store we headed home for dessert of Kinder Happy Hippos. In Theo’s words, “They are sooooooo gooooooood.”

Time for anti biotics, shower and then we all piled into bed to watch The Iron Giant.  With a restful sleep and dreams of a giant robot invading our home we slept in until 6:00 am. The toys that we bought at Giant Robot are already broken so Theo and Ollie were off with Aunt YY for fishing at the Santa Monica Pier. Simon and I went to the market for provisions for 2 more dinners.

Sunday night was cheese burgers with french fries and Monday was chili. But first we needed to work on dessert. Let me back up the story a little. We’ve had these five  7″ tall See’s chocolate Santas sitting around well, since Christmas.

Santas Helpers

Theo thought it would be a great idea to melt them down and paint them onto sugar cones with sprinkles. Sounded like a good idea to me. First we needed to disrobe and break apart the Santas. There was something strange about this.

Off with your clothes

Off with your head

There was something disturbingly reminiscent about this which reminded me of Aslan being shown by the White Witch and her throngs in “The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe”, which was disturbingly reminiscent of Jesus being nailed to a cross.

This wont hurt a bit

So, this morphing of Santas’ Workshop and Wonkas Chocolate Factory produced some mighty fine cones.

Almost finished

The chili was a bit on the spicy side. But have no fear, we had ice cream to put out the fire.

Brain freeze or ectasy

Well, this post, like the past 5 days is coming to an end.

Debbie called from the road. She and the ball boys are on their way home. They were not stopping for Kung Pao Chicken at Chung King in San Gabriel. They are going to have the spicy chili at home. They must have really missed us,and guess what,I really missed them.