Paradise Lost

It's Sunday evening and about the first chance I've had to sit down after a long but very fun weekend.

I had all three kids for the first time in well over a month, which was just great. Our first stop was a local mall, where I cut them loose with a little pocket money and then wandered around with my youngest daughter for a bit. She found an overpriced but still cool drawing pad at the Disney Store. That girl is pretty big on any kind of drawing paraphernalia. In an unexpected reversal of roles, my older daughter bought computer games and my son bought clothes. Go figure.

We ate at the mall and then headed home for the main event. They wasted little time before settling down in front of the tube for a lengthy session of Lost. That was pretty much it for the evening, and everyone folded by midnight or so.

Next morning I had to rouse them all early, feed them (McDonalds) and get them out to my folks so I could go to my Saturday tax class. That done, the next event was dinner back at my folks combined with a quadruple birthday celebration - my son, my mother, and two of his cousins. That was a lot of fun as well and ended up with 'most everyone playing football until dark. We then headed back to casa Southern Man (with a brief detour at Wal-Mart so my son could blow his birthday money on Atreyu and Silverstein CDs) for baths and showers and lots more Lost. The girls faded early but my son lasted until nearly two a.m. and only quit then because I couldn't stay awake any longer and sent him to bed.

Next morning I had to rouse them all early, feed them (waffles and bacon and cereal and toast) and get them to church in time for Sunday School. That done, I went to my own Sunday School class but then skipped out of our regular service early to attend the noon service at a local megachurch. This is an outfit whose music and video production staff probably outnumbers my little church's entire congretation. The opening "praise and worship" music was pretty spectacular and quite professionally done (and I believe is streamed live on their website); the message was prerecorded on video. I'm still deciding whether I like it or not. Then I ended up having a nice long lunch out with some new friends (who will probably give me a hard time when they read such an ambivalent review about their beloved church) so I didn't even get home until mid-afternoon.

And tomorrow and Tuesday are Fall Break! Whoo hoo! I'm sleepin' in tomorrow morning!