Family Life

Last Saturday was an epic fail in our household.  

It started out like any other Saturday...get up, have coffee and some quiet time, get children fed and clothed, and then decide what to do. Before the morning routine was completed, however, I found Chris out in the garage, already dressed, with a long skinny rope in his hands, looking intensely at his tools.  

Oh, no, I thought.  He's gonna start a project.

Chris is very focused, driven, and determined.  When he sets his mind on something he will accomplish it...or die trying.  So, when he decided to run an ethernet cord from the garage, up through the attic, and down the wall behind our media center, I knew it was going to be a long day. I knew I should probably get out of dodge.  I knew it meant I would be on my own with the girls. I didn't want to be the possessive, overbearing wife, so I tried to leave Chris be and let him do this thing.  

Chris doesn't do home projects very often...maybe only one or two a year, if that.  Still, D, I, and Y are perhaps my most dreaded letters of the alphabet. My dad was never the most "handy" guy growing up, so I tend to equate D.I.Y with disaster.

As the morning wore on, I saw Chris unraveling wire coat hangers and stringing them together into a long pole.  He also took a rake and some flashlights up the attic.  I had no idea what he was up to, and to be honest, I didn't want to know.  Ignorance is bliss.

Maybe it's just this way with men in general, or maybe this characteristic is specific to surgeons, but when Chris starts a project, the man I know and love disappears and is suddenly replaced with a man that I don't want to know.  As the day wore on, it became apparent that this project had consumed Chris along with any plans for fun, quality, family time.  I was disappointed, to say the least, and Chris was extremely disappointed, because despite all of his tactics, he was not able to accomplish that which he'd set out to do.  

We sat in bed on Saturday night recounting all that had gone wrong about the day.  Chris had multiple, deep scratches up and down his forearms--battle wounds acquired from nails in the roof of the attic.  I was feeling my own battle wounds...of course, mine were all emotional because I'm a woman and took Chris's preoccupation to mean that the ethernet cord was more important than me.  Chris apologized.  We talked and listened to one another and thought of ways that home projects need to operate differently in the future.  On the requirement list: no anger, strict time limits, taking a break to eat, and no surprise starts on a weekend morning!   

On Sunday morning we sat drinking coffee together, talking about the day. Ordinarily, we would have been getting ready for church, but in the aftermath of Saturday, I felt like we needed to do something together as a family.  We wanted to somehow redeem the disaster of the previous day.  I wanted to get the heck out of our house.  So on a whim, we went into the city.

I decided to do it up big and take a shower, shave my legs, blow dry my hair, and put make up on for the city excursion.  As I went to get some underwear out of my dresser drawer, I saw sweet Tess in my bedroom doorway looking like this.

Apparently, Tess and Lu highjacked my purse while I was in the shower.  Tess went for the lipstick.  Lu went for the car keys.  I was instantly reminded of why my razor blade and blow dryer gather dust on most days.  Good hygiene comes at a cost.  I asked Tess to pose for this photo and then I asked her to go to her room.  It was hard to keep a straight face.

We miraculously made it in the car and pulled out of the driveway by 10am.  It was a beautiful spring day, and as we drove down I-80, I was reminded that when you are a stay-home-mom raising young children, getting out of the house is synonymous with maintaining your mental sanity (even if the process of actually getting out of the house can make you crazy).  

As we drove over the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, I whipped out my iPhone (yep, I got a new one...Chris generously gave me his free upgrade...third time's a charm, let's hope).  My friend Carly got me hooked on the best photo app EVER...Instagram.  So, here are some fun photos I captured of our big city adventure with my fancy new app.

The Bay Bridge.  Whenever I drive across it, I pray there's not an earthquake.  This bridge scares me to death.

View of SF from the Bay Bridge.  It was clearest day I've ever seen.

The obligatory posed family photo at Pier 39.  You can see the Golden Gate behind us to my left...barely.

Tess and Toph at the Wharf.

Sea Lions.  They are shamelessly lazy.  This was our view from the restaurant where we ate lunch.

lunch.

16 oz. Stella Artois + crusty sourdough = match made in heaven

Toph and Lu at lunch.  Lu was diggin' the sourdough.

Pier food!  These babies tasted like little funnel cakes.

After lunch we walked down the wharf to Ghiradelli Square.  One thing I love about San Fran, or any large city for that matter, is the strange people. Whenever I venture out of my usual mommy-circles, I'm always amazed to find that there's a big, wide world out there with all sorts of people doing all sorts of things.  Here's Tess playing with a random dude's pet iguana named "Lightening McQueen." See? Not everyone spends their days changing diapers and making PB&Js. Some people sit on park benches in Fisherman's Wharf and show off their pet iguanas.

Or how about these guys?  Two Hispanic dudes in a lowrider with a pit bull in the back seat!

Anyhow, all of this is to say that this weekend felt like a pretty accurate biopsy of family life.  I would never want to re-live Saturday, yet Sunday was really special. Life and relationships have some low, hard places, and then there are a lot of really sweet, fun times too.  I guess it's all part of the package!