Weekend with the Rooneys

We had a pretty good weekend.

We spent Saturday morning cleaning up my mom’s yard. She now has mountains of leaves and pine needles in front of her house, waiting for the town to take them away. I’m really impressed with how much we raked up in a short amount of time. Kris is a fast leaf raker!

In the afternoon, Kris and Nolan went and volunteered at the Regional Food Bank. While they were packing up donated cleaning supplies for the needy, Thomas napped and I worked out in the driveway tuning up the old snowblower (!) for the season. Yes, it’s that time. Better to be safe than sorry.

Saturday night, we actually got out of the house without the kids. We determined that we haven’t been on a date since early September. So we figured we were due. My 13-year-old nephew came over to babysit for the first time and that worked out great. He came over and hung out at the house while we went out to dinner with our friends Scott & Carmella. We ate at Garcia’s – you know who much I love Mexican food – and then stopped at Starbuck’s for coffee afterward. It was a really nice evening. Hopefully we won’t wait more than two months before doing it again.

Sunday morning was the Stockadeathon – a 15K race through Schenectady. Normally, Kris probably would have run in this race, but she skipped it this year since it’s still a little soon after her marathon. Instead, we volunteered at it. With the kids as our assistants, we worked one of the parking lots – making sure no one pulled out in front of the runners (one jerk went right past me and cut a runner off).

Lunch was served for the volunteers at a nearby restaurant, owned by an old high school classmate of my brother’s.

Nolan was supposed to go to a birthday party in the afternoon, but he seemed to be coming down with a bit of a cold. So we kept him home. While he veged out on the couch in front “Shrek,” I tinkered with the snowblower some more. After his movie was done we played Chutes & Ladders and Don’t Spill the Beans until Thomas woke up from his nap.

That evening, Kris built a roaring fire in the fireplace. We ate dinner in the living room and watched the flames. We also made paper pirate hats from what was left of the Sunday paper and watched the kids run around in them. Then I read them "The Polar Express" (this was the third night in a row Nolan got this story before bed).

After the kids went to bed, Kris and I watched a movie. I rented “Shrek 2,” but purposely didn’t tell Nolan about it. Kris hadn’t seen it yet and wanted to watch it in peace. Nolan would get to see it on Monday.

So we had a very nice weekend. Too bad Monday got off to a rough start…