Memorial weekend

We had a lovely weekend. D. took Friday off. In the morning a photographer came to our house to take A's 6 month picture, and I had arranged with her to do some of all the kids together, too. Since he was here, she did the entire family. The only bummer was that she had suggested something simple to wear, so I got the kids plain white t-shirts, but since I didn't know that D. would be here and we'd all be in the photos, he and I didn't have plain white shirts, so we each wore a shirt with a design on the front inside out. The photographer didn't seem to think it would be very noticeable. I guess we'll see. The photo shoot was outdoors under our favorite majestic 200 year old oak.

Later that evening, we went out to dinner downtown. Many of the restaurants had outdoor seating, and some people stared at us like we were a parade as we went by. We ate at the Parthenon, a casual Greek restaurant. The older kids wanted Gyros and since that is one of my favorites, and they serve the ubiquitous chicken strips favored by the under 10 set, we were all happy.

After dinner we walked to campus and all around town. I took L. into a store I've walked by many times and never gone in that has action figures of a style I've never seen in the window. Inside it was even better; there was tons of neat action figures that you won't find at Toys R Us or other traditional stores. Some were expensive collectables, but many were affordable. I had told him (and the 3 sisters that accompanied us) that we were only looking, NO asking for anything. He was so sweet, and never even hinted at anything, that I did buy him a set. Actually it was a loan--he paid me back at home. Unfortunately his younger sister broke the head off the really cool dragon within 2 days. But I will go back there--his birthday isn't until November but I'm dying to get him some more cool stuff. He is my only child that really likes that type of thing--he has always favored plastic "guys" of some sort to act out stories with--and since he is already 9, he won't like it forever. :-(

At the end of our walk, we got frozen custard, which I would walk MILES for, and went home. Everyone was so well-behaved that it was as much fun as a date with just D.!

Saturday afternoon I took the kids to the metropark and we walked/biked around the 3 mile loop. When we got there my MIL had arrived for a visit. We had dinner and a nice visit.

Later that evening things took a turn for the worse when L. told us his head itched. He had contracted lice a few weeks ago, and I combed them out once, finding 20 or so nits but no live lice, and then spot checked his head every day for about 10 days and found nothing. Apparently we were much too complacent. This was our first experience with head lice. When I checked his head on Saturday night, I immediately saw nits. Since the initial outbreak I'd ordered and received a Licemeister comb from the
National Pediculosis Association, a 25 year old nonprofit organization that are lice experts. One thing I learned is that they do NOT recommend using the shampoo type treatments. Apparently soaking your scalp in pesticides can be somewhat dangerous, and the most important element of treatment is the combing out, whether or not you use the shampoos, because they kill live lice but not all nits,so they must be manually removed. We combed L. out with the new comb, which worked MUCH better than what we'd been able to get at the local drugstore. Both that evening and again the next morning we found LOTS of nits and live lice. EWWW! We also combed everyone else out twice on different days and so far it appears that no one else has them. We have combed, not spot checked, L. twice a day. Now that several days have passed without finding anything, we are only doing it once a day but will continue doing it daily for 2 weeks.

Sunday morning I felt sort of depressed and overwhelmed by the lice discovery, and by the time we'd combed L. out thoroughly and everyone else, we'd missed mass. We'd been invited to an evening pool party, but the weather was cool and rainy, so we decided to stay home and watch movies.

Monday we had friends over for a pool party at our house. The pool was full, ice cold (we had the heater on but since we'd just filled it with water from the well it only got the temperature up to about 69), clear and a bluish-green color. The kids swam briefly and then played badminton and otherwise amused themselves. The food was scrumptious. I grilled salmon, since some of our guests don't eat meat, and hot dogs and Italian sausage. I made Middle Eastern rice pilaf, which is a combination of brown, white and wild rice cooked in chicken broth, slivered almonds toasted in butter, currants plumped in hot water, all combined and mixed with fresh chopped mint. Our guests brought a lovely green salad, upside down pineapple cake, chocolate chip bars and fruit salad. We sat outdoors and stuffed ourselves--YUMMM!