Last week Kyle’s upper manager, Dave, invited our family over to his house for dinner on Thursday. Thursday afternoon, I started getting nervous about our dinner engagement, and I kept asking Kyle questions just to double check the answers. I verified the time with him, and asked him if Dave knows that we are bringing our children, then I asked if he is aware that we have SEVEN of them. I asked how many kids Dave has and found out that he is a grandpa, so there wouldn’t be other kids there for our kids to meet and play with. Kyle assured me that yes Dave knew we were bringing the kids, and that he knows we have seven of them and that he had invited our whole family, so I tried not to stress out too much.
Kyle came home from work and I had been getting the kids ready, so we could leave as soon after he got home as possible. On the way, Kyle mentioned to the kids that we were going to his upper manager’s house for dinner. One of the kids interpreted that to mean “Daddy’s boss”, and we had to explain that Dave is actually “Daddy’s boss’s boss”, and from there they decided to just call him “Daddy’s boss boss”.
We arrived at Dave’s house and his wife answered the door, and Dave and another coworker came over to greet us. Dave looked right at me and said “I didn’t know you would be bringing the kids.” My first thought was “WHO could I have left them with?” as I said “Well….” and then I thought “But I double checked with Kyle, and Kyle said….” I had way too many things going on in my mind at that one moment. Then Dave told me he was just kidding and that Kyle told him to say that.
Dave offered to take us out back and let the kids give their horses some apples, and the kids were really excited about that, especially Dinah. Lydia LOVED seeing the “horseys” but she would not touch them. On the way back through the garage to go back into the house, Dave showed us a door to the pantry from the garage (so that you can unload groceries directly from your car to the pantry). Then we got a tour of the rest of the house. There was a tv in nearly every room, the living room, the family room, the bedroom, over the bath tub…Downstairs there was also a game room with air hockey, ping pong, pool, and some other things. Then we got to see the workout room. It was filled with various workout machines and things, a big workout ball and there was, of course, a tv in here as well. Dave let some of the kids get on the treadmill and walk a bit, while we stood right there talking, and as we left he bent over to switch off the power to it so the kids couldn’t just go in there and play with it while we weren’t looking. Before going back upstairs for dinner we got to see his theater room, which was really awesome. There were no windows, and there was a huge screen and nice reclining chairs with cup holders. There were also some bean bags for sitting down in front of the chairs. There were dim movie theater lights so that you could see the steps and not trip on them in the dark too. As the guys were drooling over this room, Dave’s wife was standing next to me and told me that when Dave was putting this room together it didn’t bother her how much he spent doing it because she had told him that she was going to match it when doing her barn.
We went back upstairs to have dinner, which consisted of macaroni and cheese, some spicy penne pasta dish, canned green beans, and applesauce. I was glad that nothing was overly scary, although I was cautious of the penne pasta dish. I think the kids were also glad that they were being given food that they were more than willing to eat. The kids finished their dinners quickly, and went off to play downstairs.
We got to watch Dave’s friend park a Ford Model A in his garage (Dave was going to store it for him for awhile). After a while Tyra came upstairs to tell Kyle that Dinah needed him. He didn’t go down right away, and I fed Adam, and then as Dave was showing Kyle the view from the door in the dining room, they found that Lydia was in the backyard.
Their backyard isn’t fenced in and so we quickly went out and brought her back in. She actually tried to escape a few times. I ended up going downstairs before Kyle ever did, and I found Dinah crying. I asked her what was wrong and she said that she got hurt on the treadmill. I asked her where she got hurt, and she showed me. I did not look good, but it could have been worse. I went into the workout room to check to make sure the treadmill was off, and it was. Then I yelled at the kids for messing with it. Dinah wasn’t the only one that had messed with the treadmill. Tyra had been the first one on the treadmill, which doesn’t surprise me. I should have expected something like this. I noticed when Dave bent over to turn off the power to the treadmill before dinner, that Tyra was watching him. So SHE was the one that knew how to turn it on. Also she was the one that turned the treadmill on to 8mph while Dinah was on it, and so the treadmill took Dinah backwards, she fell and hit the wall and the belt rubbed the side of her abdomen. I went and told Kyle about what happened and he got Dinah all bandaged up. Then us big people went downstairs with the kids and we finished up the evening by some people playing Guitar Hero on the Wii, Dinah found a coloring book and worked on that, the little ones played with toys, and some of us played air hockey and ping pong. For the record, Jeremy CAN hit the ping pong, but he CAN’T aim, and he hits it hard, so most every time he hit it, it hit me and it hurt. đ
A few days later the kids start talking about a “hole in the wall”. Upon further questioning we find out that when Dinah flew off the treadmill at Dave’s house, she put a hole in the wall. Today Kyle asked Dave about the hole in the wall and Dave said “Don’t worry about it, she didn’t go through both walls”, which makes me wonder just how big this hole really is. And even though Dave told Kyle not to worry about it, I am worrying about it, and I am bothered that my kids would do something like that, and damage property, and not say anything about it. But also I am telling myself that it really can’t have been that bad, because I did go in there to check to make sure the treadmill was off and I didn’t notice the wall at all. If there was a huge hole in the wall, I probably would have noticed it.