Le fin du weekend

Saturday night we had a long delayed dinner out with Uncle Ant and his wife Candy. Candy has been living a monastic life for a few years working on her Clinical Psych degree, and we went out to celebrate the end of her actual schooling. Her next step is a 1 year internship, which is thankfully close to home, after which point I can only hope she can actually begin to practice. Ant has been supporting her through this by working full time and freelancing as well, so I imagine that once DOCTOR Candy enters the workforce, he'll be rolling in rare single malts... oh wait, he already does. ;->

We went out to a fantastic restaurant in St Paul called Luci: Every single mouthful of everything I had was divine. Now, funny story: Back in 1990, I worked at a coffee roaster, and the owner of Luci would come in a few times a week for fresh coffee for the restaurant. I thought we had a semi-friendly interaction... so one night I decided to check out the restaurant. Midway through the meal the owner stopped at my table, sat down, and demanded to see my ID for the wine I was enjoying (just a glass, not getting loopy here, and I was 21 at the time). I showed it happily, but he really worked me over: He held it up to the night, checked the embossing, and told me that IF it was fake he could lose his license. In short, he spent a few good minutes making me feel very unwelcome in his restaurant.

I confess that I held a grudge these intervening 18 years - sure it's a great restaurant, but the owner was a total jerk to me.

Well, last night, I decided that all is forgiven. I'm a different person now, and I'm sure he is too (if he's still involved - I didn't see him around). So I'm definitely planning a return visit. I should also mention that the evening was just great: the conversation flowed and the time flew by. In a strange bit of coincidence, Pamela had actually seen Candy sing on stage back in 1988, 3 years before we met, and 5 years before Ant and Candy met...

Today was a heavenly day: We slept in a bit, then went off to my mom's house for a couple of hours: Bella and Isaac had a wonderful time playing with all of Grann's bells, puppets, dolls, drums, and furniture... and she had worked up a light bit of brunchsnack which we devoured. Mini pancakes, sausages, mango, strawberries, cream puffs. It was a great visit.

Back home, the sun finally broke through the clouds, so we worked on the front porch, taking everything out, sweeping and hosing it down, and putting it all in with cushions and pillows. The porch is open for business. The kids were playing in the back yard for hours, building sand castles, climbing the castle, playing in the "RV". Isaac loves being outside and kicks and screams when it's time to come in.

Isaac is a huge fan of airplanes by the way: All afternoon, anytime he heard the sound of a jet, he'd stop, scan the skies, find the plane, point, and announce "AIRPLANE!!!!" (which is actually EH-PANE). He'd point until the jet passed from sight, and then continued with his playing. Now, we do live in a flight path, so around 4-5pm, he spent a lot more time pointing than doing anything else.

His vocabulary is growing, and his play is getting more engaged: up to last week, a classic game for him was running in circles around the dining room table giggling. Now the game is called "RUN!!!", and we stand until he yells RUN, and go until he stops, and then he points which direction to go next, and yells "RUN" again. He's also pointing at cars (DAR) and squirrels (DURL) with almost as much vigor as Airplanes (but jets are his first love).

One more Isaac moment: He was flipping through a magazine and found an ad featuring a woman walking with two large wolfhounds. He pointed at them and said "WOOF!!!" smiling. His smile broke for a moment, he furrowed his brow, and said "NEIGH????" In his mind, he was reevaluating whether these beasts were dogs or horses. It was a great moment of reflection to have caught.

Not to leave Bella out of the picture - she was an active player all weekend, and she got some rosy cheeks from the sun. She's still not 100% sure about this whole "Riding a Bicycle" thing, preferring instead to sit on the sidewalk watching her friends ride. But we know she's a watcher, and she's figuring it all out, and will hop on that bike with confidence once she feels she's figured it out from her observations.

On her way to sleep tonight, she said "You know, we've never seen Roo's dad, have we?" Not really sure where that came from (though it's true, Kanga's backstory is never really explained. I'd like to think it had to do with something noble - Perhaps Gallipoli (working the Australian angle here)).