As of Friday afternoon, I am officially on leave of absence from work for two months. However, between preparing to leave and doing a ton of stuff this past weekend, I have not had a chance to write about anything lately. I’m just going to list off some of this stuff without making the least attempt to be entertaining, so unless you’re a relative or a stalker, just go back and read Twas the Night Before Christmas, from back when I used to be funny.

What is it about September?

We had three birthday party invitations for Saturday, and attended two of them. For the first, our neighbors across the street rented a large bounce-house-style inflatable slide. It looked to be about 20 feet tall, and the kids absolutely loved it. They did laps on it for about 45 minutes, then went to the backyard for cake and presents, then did another round of sliding. Anna and I returned home with just enough time to make lunch to eat in the car on the way to another party. Anna took a while to warm up to the unfamiliar crowd, but was in fine form within about half an hour. Between the roller coaster, the water balloons, and the mai tais, we both had a great time and hardly notice how late it was getting to be until Jennifer called to remind me it was time for

Date Night

Grandma D. has been in town for the last week or so, and watched the girls Saturday night while Jen and I went out to the Del Mar Fair, which is basically a joint meeting of fried-food vendors and food-on-a-stick vendors. We sampled some of each, and also bridged the gap with fried-food-on-a-stick. We also checked out the photography exhibition, where one of my photos would have been displayed were it not for the unreliable non-efforts of White House Custom Color, who dropped my printing order. Maybe next year.

And there was a baseball game too

Sunday, we went to the Padres game vs. the Mariners. This was a playgroup outing with six families, or 24 people total, all getting park passes and camping out on the grass. We actually stayed for the entire game, but didn’t see much of it. Tara and I did go for a little walk and have a Mariners home run land about 20 feet from us, tying the game. The Padres got the lead later in the game, and Grandma D. even got to see Ichiro hit a weak fly to shallow center to end it.

I’m going to start relaxing RIGHT NOW. Really.

This week I have both girls at home because Anna is off of school. All that I need to do today is clean my car, take Grandma to the airport, and add some photos to this blog post. And buy some steaks for my birthday dinner. And cook them. And eat them. That’s it. Really.