Memorial Day Dance Party!

While I slept in yesterday, Matt and the kids had a little pajama dance party.  Notice that in the video, Ruby keeps saying "Cheese!" - anytime she sees a camera or anything that looks like a camera she elbows her way into the action and says "Cheese!" It's a good thing she likes to be in front of the camera though, because with these dance moves she's destined to be a star.  The boys, on the other hand, will probably die of embarrassment about five years from now if this video ever comes to light.  At the moment, though, I think they are pretty impressed with their own bad selves!



In other news, we're less than a week away from our first summer trip. Next weekend, the boys, Ruby and myself will being a long, long car ride down to Texas. We're spending a few weeks there visiting friends and family, so I thought it would be nice to have the car. And when I planned to drive down, it was still quite a ways in the future. (Incidentally, this is how I ended up running a marathon - the registration was like six months before the actual event, so it seemed really doable from that distance. As was the case with the marathon, each day closer to departure I get more nervous, and the actual drive will probably be almost as painful as the marathon!) The boys are seasoned road-trippers, as we drive to New Hampshire at least once a year and we take other 10+ hour trips with some frequency.  They get excited to watch movies in the car (they still believe that the DVD player only works on long trips), and they will sleep here and there. Of course, there will be some bad moments, as on a trip home from New Hampshire last Thanksgiving both boys were crying their eyes out when the McDonald's we pulled into was out of "boy toys" and could only offer us Strawberry Shortcake items with our Happy Meals.  I'm embarrassed to report that we drove away from that McDonald's and proceeded to the next highway exit to find a McDonald's that would make our kids stop crying.  And then last summer, as I drove the boys home from a lake trip by myself, our air conditioning broke about an hour into the trip, forcing us to either suffer the heat inside the car or keep the windows down as we rolled down the highway at 80 miles an hour.

So those were not some of our finest moments, but all in all, they have proven to be pretty good kids to go places with.  But, of course, this will be our first such adventure with Ruby.  I have to believe that even though it will be 18 hours, it cannot be worse than the 3 hour flight I took with her to Houston several months ago.  At least there will not be that element of public condemnation involved.  Whatever struggles we have, we will have them within the close confines of the car, not to be witnessed or judged by angry co-passengers.  It's going to be just fine, maybe even fun.  I'm almost convincing myself of this as I write it!  So anyway, that's what I'm going to be getting ready for this week.  We leave on Sunday and will hopefully get there on Monday.  Either that or we'll be back home later on Sunday.  I will certainly report on the adventure once I get to Houston.  (Internet capability at their house is only recently possible because my parents finally have a computer that was assembled in the 21st century.  Up until a few months ago, I would have had to say that the guest house we stayed in while we were in Ethiopia had much better computer and internet access than my parents' house in Houston.)

Bye' for now!