Weekend Update

I'm still making progress! Yay me!
This week I called the mom of a friend of DD's. She has 4 daughters ranging from 8 to newborn. I took the 5 year old with us swimming for the afternoon. I think she was grateful.
Yesterday I was going to take the kids swimming again and called another friend to invite her family to join us. They were unable but at least I made the effort and the phone call. I'm doing better in the friend department and treating my friends to actually being a friend instead of just being the recipient of the friendship card.

I had to work on Saturday. My FIL and his wife took the kids. After the Mother's Day incident FG had a major talk with his dad about the kids. Now I've been told that I should just be happy that I have people willing to take my kids for me. But you know what, I am happy and I know I am lucky that we have 3 sets of grandparents around here that will watch our kids for us and are willing to take them overnight. But you know what else? So that's our lot, we won the lottery with that but that doesn't mean it's fun to un-do all the damage that they can do in one day. That doesn't mean it's fun to re-correct behavior. The IL's don't seem to get that they are sending a message to the kids that it's ok to ignore the rules when Mom & Dad aren't around. I'm thinking that if they learn that NOW, that will be 10x worse when they are teens. Again, part of me not wanting to confuse my kids. So an extra ice cream or a later bed time (though NOT 11:30 for a 5 year old!) is an ok way to bend the rules but to let them think that it's ok to completely ignore them when we don't know about it is not good in my book. So all of you that say "be happy someone will take your kids for you", PHHHHHHTTTTT! Because my kids come first; before my intense need to get the hell away from them for a short time. If it means I have to jeopordize all the work FG and I do with parenting and raising them to be good people, then I'll pass.
So they took the kids with instructions to take DD to a birthday party (drop off), use sunscreen if they go to the beach and to bed at a reasonable time like 9:30. I didn't feel that was too much to ask and apparently, neither did they because they wanted the kids. DS came home with a new toy (always with them) but besides that, there were no huge rules that were to be followed or broken. I do hate that they "buy" the kids with stuff everytime they spend time with them. But at least time I didn't have to have any rules like "No extra treats because of bad behavior" like I have in the past only to have them blatently break the rule. I guess if there is no major rule like that, it can't be broken. (Yes, we have had that happen. I remember distinctly one time that DS was being just awful with back talk and behavior and I said "NO buying him toys or treats because I will not reward bad behavior." and they did anyway. Other times too.)

Annnyyyyywaaaayyy, back to this weekend.... When I worked FG was volunteering at the Celebrity Golf Tournament at Lake Tahoe. (I always want to say "in Tahoe" but that would technically mean in the lake and that seems hard to play golf in a lake full of melted snow). He knows golf, he knows TV, he knows sports. Good weekend for him. After taking one of the producers out on our friend's boat on Tahoe, the producer asked him who he wanted on Sunday. He gave him Michael Jordan, Jerry Rice and Ray Allen. FG doesn't get too star-struck but he was pretty excited. We watched on TV and saw him several times. He told me all about chatting with Jordan and how he asked FG if he went out last night. FG explained that he's local (as in, we don't generally hit the casinos because duh, there's slot machines in our grocery stores, it just isn't a big deal) but that he was lucky enough to have the kids gone for the evening and go out to dinner & to the Chocolate Bar for chocolate martinis with his wife. Jordan commented that that sounded really nice. I sent FG an text telling him that if they wanted to stop by, I would share the fresh peach pie I had just baked. Hee hee. Wouldn't that be a kick? Jordan and Rice just stop over for pie.