Hurricane, Hydes, Flowers

Today I'm sort of depressed. I realized that all the effort I've put in on putting together this stupid Employee Appreciation Day cookout are going to be for naught. Or for rescheduling. There's a stupid hurricane coming, and we should get the brunt of the crap weather all day on Friday. The day of the party. The day we rescheduled to from August 15th which was the original date I picked. The caterer (my catering man) called me yesterday to ask me if I'd been paying attention to the weather. Absolutely... and chewing my fingernails. I can't believe this. We get NO storms all summer, hardly, and then the one day I have something huge planned it's going to deluge like Genesis. At least it isn't my wedding or something IMPORTANT.
Anyway... we're thinking of pushing it back a week, which is going to require some crazy scrambling on my part, and some more pissing off of the populace, but hey. Remember ... I wanted to do this on August 15th, but a mess of people whined. This is what you get when you don't do what I want to do in the first place. Nyeah. Nyeah.
	The best part is I got to go spend a boatload of money. That was fun. I so enjoy going shopping when there's a task or a mission. And when I don't have to really worry about how much is being spent in the end. Sunday at the Hydes was awesome. They are excellent hosts and we had much fun watching football. I'm glad the Patriots eeked it out but am mad that the Steelers lost. It's usually one or the other all season long. My kids had a blast playing with the Hyde kids.

And Nathan baby is 9 months old and huge and bald and gorgeous. He looks like Moby. Geoff especially enjoyed Pete's "Hulk Hands," which he isn't allowed to have due to the heavy punching temptation that they carry.

He spent probably close to an hour total punching the brick wall on the back deck, over and over, like Rocky Balboa. He and Jessie each took one and went knuckle to knuckle the way only two siblings can. Peter watched with great interest. He's not allowed to punch anyone with them, nor are any of the Hyde kids allowed to punch one another. So for him, seeing my kids go at it a la Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots was quite fascinating.

I'm wondering if he walked up to Natalie and punched her in the face with them yet. Wayne theorizes he doesn't let them do a lot of "normal sibling" things like interacting with the punching hands in such a manner because he was an only child and sometimes isn't sure what's right and normal. He defers to Marcia on those instances. We had an interesting talk about what's right an normal. For Jessica and Geoffrey, if they're punching and laughing, it's good. I let them. But I always warn them, the second I hear someone crying that she did this or he hit me here... both of them are doomed.

That, my friends, is normal Sibling Interaction.

They've been playing incredibly well together lately, and she's been reading to him nightly, so I have no complaints. His behavior is improving it seems. I don't want to speak too soon, but I think he's starting to get a hang of all this new schedule/school regimented routine thing. And that's beautiful. Hopefully he'll continue to improve.
Anyway. That's about it. Here's my favorite picture from this past week, from the flower shop. I liked the way the one flower petal was bent over on the top, catching the light. Full sized it's pretty impressive. Small ... well. You can still like it and see it.