The last week in February, Chris had to fly to London for a couple days for work. He got to stay in this really nice hotel a half a block from the Tower of London, and spent the little bit of free time he had wandering around that area. England, bless its heart, is very open to foreign cuisine, including American processed tastiness. Nutritionally lacking, but what a treat for your tongue! So, we sent him off with a long wish list of items to bring back for us. He did his best, but apparently, downtown Londoners eat differently than those on the outskirts. Their grocery stores had almost none of the things we were told could be found on that wonderful little island.
He wasn't able to find any maple syrup or Peanut Butter Capt'n Crunch, but he did find brown sugar. It looked like he cleared off the entire shelf and somehow managed to cram it all into his suitcase. Better yet, he still had room for 2 dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts that he bought just before going to the airport. We had them for breakfast the morning he got back. They were so good! We only get them about once every 2 years or so, and the waiting makes them taste that much better. What Americans can do with lard and sugar is just spectacular. haha.
Anyway, while we looked forward to what he could bring back for us, we also missed Chris while he was gone. I know some Dads travel all the time, and it eventually becomes no big deal. But for us, since it happens so rarely, it is always a huge deal. No one sleeps very well, especially me, when he isn't here, and the kids are always harder to handle by myself. To make it seem more fun, I told the kids they could have a sleepover while he was gone, in the living room!
Usually, they take turns sleeping in each others rooms, but I told them they could try sleeping all together in the living room this night. They dragged some mattresses over from their beds for the kids who couldn't fit on the couch. Then they climbed into their "beds" and I turned on a movie for them. For some strange reason, I thought Jurassic Park would be a good choice. Bwahahahahaha!
They had never seen it, and it had been years since I had watched it. I figured they could watch the first part, and then we would turn it off before it got too scary. Yeah, totally forgot about that opening scene where the velociraptor sucks the worker man into his cage and eats him, well, half of him. Yuck! I fastforwarded it, but the kids were a tiny bit traumatized but what they had scene. They did enjoy the rest of what I let them watch, and they loved how cool the dinosaurs looked. So it ended alright, but man! talk about a lapse in judgment. They did get a kick out of the lawyer getting eaten after he abandoned the kids in the car, though. Smart children. 🙂
The novelty of sleeping in the living room wore off around 11:30, when Sarah kept getting woken up by all the different sounds in that part of the house. The clocks sounded different, the occasional car on the street outside made eery lights on the walls, the shadows were different. Basically, she worked herself up into a frenzy, started crying and woke everyone else up. I took Alexandra into bed with me, calmed everyone else down, and got them all back to sleep eventually. They did wake up much earlier than usual the next morning because there weren't any shutters to shut in there, and as soon as they see the sunlight, they are up. But at least, it gave them something cool to talk about back at school when the teacher asked what they did during vacation. 🙂