This weekend we made a valiant attempt to celebrate Father’s Day with as much success as we did back on Mother’s Day. In some ways we succeeded and in some ways we were foiled.

On Saturday we had to get up and get ready at a decent time anyway because Hayley was having her official soccer photos taken, both the team photo and her individual photo. It was a bit chaotic because it was in a huge park and it didn’t seem to be well organized – the guy who is our coach and friend said that no one really seemed to be telling the coaches anything. There were also four kids missing but after 45 minutes they went ahead and did the photo without them. Too bad, really. Five minutes late is not unreasonable but if you can’t be there 45 minutes later, I don’t know what to tell you.

Since we were already out, George dropped me off with Hayley so she could change out of her uniform while he went with Breanna to get a new pair of shorts, then he picked us up and we headed out to start our busy day. First we hit up the same used book store as last time. I love that place. I would be very happy to be dropped off and left there for an hour or so. They didn’t have the book I was hoping for, but I ended up with Jennifer Weiner’s In Her Shoes so that was okay (so far it’s not bad), George picked up two for himself, Hayley got a box of tiny books, and Breanna chose a non-fiction dinosaur book.

We were starving so we headed to La Belle Province which is not quality food by any means, but it’s a Quebec staple. The kids love going out to eat and it’s fast food so no one cares if they’re a little too loud. After that, we went back down to the waterfront where George fell asleep on a bench (hee!) and I took the kids down to throw rocks in the water. Well, they threw rocks. I took a buttload of pictures. Like that’s unusual.

There was a blues music festival not too far away and George really wanted to check it out so we hopped back in the car and headed over. That’s when things started getting a little hairy. I had not been drinking enough water to balance the high heat and humidity so when we got to the festival I was a little on the dehydrated side. I got a bottle of water but before I could even open it, things started spinning just a little. I mentioned that I thought I might pass out so George said we would leave instead. I knew he was disappointed and I really wanted him to hear the music, so I said I’d see how I did. I chose to sit on the grass instead of the bleachers (no shade at all, what a brilliant idea to have a music festival on a hot day in the one section of the park that was tree-less) and started forcing myself to drink the water. Within a few minutes I felt better but then the music started and it sucked. The band itself was great but the sound guy wasn’t doing a very good job and it just came out sounding very distorted.

George is a musician and a producer and an audio engineer. His ears just about bleed if he tries to listen to music that isn’t set up properly. After three songs he opted to leave. It wasn’t going to get any better with the next band because the sound guy was the same, so everyone would have pretty much sucked. It was too bad.

One good thing happened though. Hayley had gotten a bag of popcorn, one of her favorite things on earth, and she put the first handful into her mouth and started to chew. Suddenly she clapped a hand over her mouth and hunched over, and with it being so hot I immediately thought she was about to puke. It ended up that the first piece of popcorn had knocked out the loose top front tooth that had been hanging crookedly by a thread for an entire week. Despite her full mouth, she managed to locate the tooth with her tongue and she spat it out into her hand. She was so happy and proud. And now I don’t have to look at a dangling tooth anymore, thank God because it was SO HARD to resist the urge to yank it out.

We had a quiet Saturday evening at home, with George finishing up the book he was reading so he could start one of the new ones and me fiddling with my photos and uploading them to Flickr.

Then came Sunday. Ah, Sunday. The best laid plans of mice and men – and families. George’s parents always attend church and then the follow-up tea/lunch thing they have on special occasions so we figured we’d go get George’s gifts, (he chose them himself, not much of a surprise but he knew what he wanted), go visit my parents to see my dad for a few hours, then go see his parents when they came home.

Unfortunately, George was not well at all. We did manage to go to the store to get his stuff and a quick stop at the dollar store for some necessities, but that was about it. I called my parents and let them know. It was too bad, I knew my dad was looking forward to seeing us and my mom had made a nice lunch for us, but there was no way I was going to get George to drive half an hour to get there, even though he would have tried. We’ll see them on Friday instead for a couple of hours.

He slept for awhile and after supper he felt a bit better so he took a Father’s Day card over to his dad but it was getting late so I stayed home and put the kids into a bath instead of going too.

So in the end, it was a pretty decent weekend but between near-fainting spells, craptacular music, and illness, it wasn’t quite what we had planned.

Still, he said it was a good Father’s Day just because of these two little monkeys.

Yeah, they do grow on you after awhile.