Grumpy weekend

It's been one of those weekends where nothing is so drastically wrong that I should be upset, but enough little things have pissed me off that it's just been a grumpy weekend in general. I keep wondering if there was a full moon out this weekend, but the lunar calendar says it's a waxing cresent moon right now.

Saturday, I was excited to get OUT of the house to do something. There was a model railroad and toy show going on at the Dulles Expo Center. Unfortunately, the boys have new toy syndrome and don't want to hear about anything that doesn't involve legos, video games, or both, much less getting dressed in REAL clothes instead of wearing their jammies all day.

I eventually convinced ES to go with me to the model railroad and toy show. Overall, I thought it was pretty cool and certainly worth the price of admission. I went there expecting to pay $7 for tickets for both me and ES, but I was pleasantly surprised to find out kids under 11 years old were free.

Passing steam engine at the Dulles Expo Center.

There were about six or seven regional model railroad clubs that had put up large displays of running model railroads. Each one of these displays was about the size of the main display at the Brunswick Model Railroad Museum, so there was a LOT to see.

One of several active displays at the Dulles Expo Center.

Most of those active displays were in the back of the expo center though, and the floor area was filled with aisle upon aisle of vendors selling model trains and toys.

ES pushes the button to catch the mail on the mail car.
(It's the third train that comes by in the video.)

We got to see a lot of unique displays like a cattle car that loaded little cows onto it and a mail car that picked up the bag of mail off the hook as the train drove by. Plus, there seemed to be a pretty popular military theme with some sort of Army train on each of the displays carrying tanks and artillery.

So please tell me... What's NOT to like about all that for a little boy???

I expected to be dealing with a lot of, "puh-leeeeeeeeease Daddy won't you buy me this and buy me that and I REALLY WANT THIS ONE!"

Nope.

ES didn't ask for a single thing. He complained most of the time we were in the expo center that he was bored and wanted to go home (interpretation: I'm obsessed with my Christmas Lego winfall and want to go bathe in my Legos). Thbbbbbt! :-P

After we got back from the model railroad show, ES was in a mood and a half and trying to convince us to lock him in his bedroom until he turned 21.

It started out with YB making some annoying noise that ES didn't like (shocking, I know). ES decided the proper thing to do was to pinch YB's lips shut. Much crying and wailing followed, first by YB due to his hurt lips, then by ES over the injustice of being put in time-out for something he said was "all YB's fault."

I tried explaining to ES that he was in time-out for HIS actions and that if he didn't pinch his brother's lips shut, then he wouldn't be in time out. If he didn't like the noise that his brother was making, then he should have LEFT the room, not physically harmed his brother.

He didn't buy it. In the angry temper tantrum that followed, he declared that it was all my wife's fault for ever giving birth to YB in the first place. My wife extended his logic a few steps further and told him, "Well, then it's all God's fault." ES's eyes got really big and he said, "Huh???" She told him if him being in time out was her fault for having YB, then it was God's fault because God gave us BOTH ES and YB to us as our children to care for and God gave ES and YB US as their Mommy and Daddy. That made him stop and think for a minute and he eventually calmed down.

Since Grammy, GG, and Papa were leaving Sunday morning, they offered to watch the boys Saturday night so my wife and I could go out for a dinner without kids. For a while there, I thought we weren't gonna be going anywhere because I wasn't going to inflict ES and his attitude on Grammy. He eventually calmed down to a point where we felt okay leaving, but I was in a pretty bad mood by that point and worried it wouldn't be a very enjoyable dinner.

On the contrary, my wife and I had a really very nice dinner together at American Flatbread. We did a half-and-half flatbread (pizza) of the two specials on the menu. One was a brie and cranberry concoction and the other was sausage, apples, and carmelized onions. Both were fantastically delicious, and neither of us had to cut up anybody else's food or tell anyone else at the table to wipe their face, chew with their mouth closed, not to talk with their mouth full, not to interupt, to sit down in their seat facing forward, and to not bang their utensils on the table. That being said, it was a downright AWESOME dinner with just me and my wonderful wife.

Sunday morning the boys enjoyed one last game of garbage with Grammy before we packed up her car and she and GG and Papa headed north.

We all went to church kind of grumpy and spent a lazy afternoon at home playing video games and/or legos.

I was pretty excited to have a family movie night tonight. We were going to watch Horton Hears a Who that the boys got for Christmas. Then ES was whining and being a pain insisting that he had already seen Horton Hears a Who. My wife, YB, and I all insisted NONE of us had seen it, and we all wanted to see it, so we outvoted ES.

I put the movie in the DVD player, and a message came up on the screen informing me that I have to upgrade the firmware on our Blu-ray DVD player in order to watch the movie. WHAT?!?!?!

It didn't look like that was going to be a quick or easy task to get done and get the boys to bed on time, so we went with ES's choise of movie - Elf. Elf is a funny movie, don't get me wrong, but I'd seen it before, and I hadn't seen Horton Hears a Who.

So that's about it for our weekend. Kind of anticlimatic.

I'm going back to work tomorrow, but the boys are still off of school. Please pray for my wife that the boys' attitudes improve and they don't drive her mad tomorrow while I'm at work. Oh, while you're at it, would you also pray that the boys will sleep peacefully through the night and NOT wake my wife (or me) up? That would be splendid, thanks!