a weekend

The weekend began with the boys off from school on Friday. They went to the balloon fiesta with Cyndi, her sister, Elley, and their cousins. Later they rode their bikes on the ramps at the skateboard park. On the way home, I picked up some crates of halloween decorations from the storage unit. After Cyndi went to restorative yoga, we went to Monroe's. I talked with Ariel on the telephone. She was about to meet Chris. He was flying in that night and they would meet at Penn Station in Manhattan and have a pizza at about 1 a.m.

Saturday, the boys and Cyndi set up the halloween decorations around the house. Ry remembered where they were placed in the house last year, and Jackson found decorations he had made in school in years past. I worked in the yard a bit. Jack helped me plant some mums that were still in pots and rollerbladed on the sidewalk. Ry dug a little and skateboarded in the driveway. I fixed a sprinkler head that broke, mowed, trimmed, swept, watered, and cleaned the grill. The day was beautiful, sunny and warm. We invited Elley and family and Dorie and family over for dinner that night. We spent the afternoon making corn chowder and marinading the tri tip. Jackson set up the Polar Express and Ry drew pictures of a figure-eight train track. Ry practiced his counting and addition that day. He counts past one hundred and can add a string of numbers. He understands that two million plus two million is four million, that three plus one is the same as one plus three, and that 2 + 2 + 2 is 6. This year in Jack's second grade, there doesn't appear to be much of a push or challenge and the teacher, on instruction, she says, of the school system, is sticking to a pretty low level of a curriculum. We're not impressed, but Jack still loves school. He checks out Junie B. Jones books from his library, which are a hoot to read, and says he wants to know history.

The families came over, and we had a really nice pot luck dinner. Cyndi made a salad and an apple cobbler from the last of the apples from Mom's and a few from a friend at work. Her sisters brought garlic mashed potatoes, gravy, bread, ice cream, and more wine. We opened some wine, and I grilled the steaks while Pete and Don and I stood around the grill, talking about football, the balloons, and I don't remember what else. Brendan, Jackson and Rylee skateboarded in the garage before Nicholas and Lauren came over. Ry practiced his ollies, a move that lifts the board off the ground so he can jump over things. At one point in the middle of the meal, I watched the kids playing in the living room. Jackson was playing hearts on the computer at the moment. Lauren and Rylee were drawing pictures of a haunted house. After dinner and dessert, we all sat around watching "Hocus Pocus" and then we were all ready to crash for the night.

The meal and the wine were heavy sedatives and Cyndi and I woke up from deep sleeps the next morning. We all played a couple of hands of hearts. Ry shot the moon, although I was playing his cards while he was playing with a bicycle catalogue, and it was an open-handed play. Jackson and I spent some time figuring out how to network all of the computers in the house, and we discovered that we could access recorded tv shows and movies on the desktop to play on our laptops anywhere in the house. This came about after fixing the wi-fi router. It was all I could do to convince Cyndi not to do chores in the morning.

She planned a bike ride and we said we'd meet at the Academy. The tire stem on my back wheel had broken off in Monterey. I found an old innertube in the garage, changed my tire, pumped it up, and it seemed to hold. The boys and I rode up the street and along the bike path--an uphill climb--to the Academy. I contacted Cyndi by phone, and we decided to meet at the Starbucks, so the boys and I kept riding on the path toward Starbucks. Many walkers along the path smiled at the boys and me bicycling. It was a beautiful morning. Jackson took the lead and would wait for us at any intersection. The boys each wore their helmets and an unzipped sweatshirt. Rylee pedaled along at an easy speed. When we arrived, we parked the bikes in a rack, ordered our coffees and hot chocolates, and Cyndi arrived smiling. I walked to get bagels, and when I returned our friend, Paula, was sitting with Cyndi and the boys. We talked for a good while, sitting outside in the shade. While we were talking with Paula, the boys rode around the sidewalks. One lady watched them and told us how amazed she was to see Rylee weaving around the tables. On our way back, stopped together at a curb, two women commented to Rylee about how he wasn't using any training wheels. Rylee answered by jumping the curb. Jackson and Cyndi took the lead going back, and Rylee and I pedaled behind them. (Those little wheels only go so fast.) Ry said that from now on we can ride our bikes to Starbucks. It's better than driving, he said, 'cause he doesn't have to sit in the car. I agreed. We coasted downhill to home on the bike path. Maybe four miles total. Jackson complained that we were so slow.

The balloons didn't go up that morning--the last mass ascension and the last event of the fiesta--due to the wind at dawn. The wind died down somewhat but it still felt cool that day. It was very sunny, though. I shut down the cooler, and we had a fire in the fireplace that day.

The ride was so fun, we decided to go out again later in the afternoon. Cyndi thought we should try going to the driving range. I grabbed a few irons of my Dad's, and some old tees from his bag. We got a big bucket of balls and borrowed some junior clubs and ladies clubs. The boys loved. A group of teenage boys stopped to watch Ry hit. Both boys did great for their first time.

Ry is anxious to get his halloween costume. He's changed his mind so many times, and I think he really wants a ninja-star wars-transformer-action hero sort of costume, with a mask, from a store. I've been trying to talk him out of being a zombie skateboarder. But lately, he's also been back to where he started from after last year's halloween: a ghost. He talks about getting a sheet and cutting holes in it. I like that idea so much better, although I don't think Ry likes my idea of cutting a whole face out. That's not the way he knows it's done. He got interested after a friend of Cyndi's dropped off some old, bygone Albuquerque Dukes stuff, and of course Rylee put it all on and looked good, and he and I joked about being The Ghost of the Albuquerque Dukes. Jackson has pretty much gotten it down to a magician's costume, which is mostly a cape and a hat. He's been practicing magic tricks to perform, and he and Rylee joke about pulling his stuffed bunny from a hat.

A great weekend.