Sunday morning, we allowed ourselves to sleep in, so of course, I woke up as early as I could. I mean, on my one long weekend away from work at which I wake up at 5:30 am every morning, I decided to wake up early on the one morning I can sleep in. Brilliant Laura. When I emerged from my room to enter the real world (which was after laying in bed for a while relaxing, and a shower, making my immersion close to noon), everyone was already out in the back, swimming and enjoying the sun. It was a lovely morning. The weather all weekend had been beautiful, but that morning, the sun was out and warmer than it had been all weekend (for some reason, the major Toronto heat wave decided to leave us alone for that one weekend we were visiting). I had my new bathing suit on, and my hair in braids, and the heat of the sun just felt so good walking onto the interlocking brick patio. The boys were swimming in the pool and Bill and Ro were laying on the deck chairs. Dan and I joined them for a while, as I put on some well needed sunscreen (45 SPF, would you believe it?) and had some of Mia's delicious Spring Rolls. Eventually, we got warmer and the kids were getting a little more hyper, and so we decided to jump into the pool. Or rather, Dan jumped - I walked into the pool via the stairs, although the temperature was lovely.
"Everyone attack DJ!" said a voice from somewhere in the pool. Like a flock of seagulls are to a tossed Wendy's take out bag, all five boys ranging from two seven year old red heads to the fourteen year old, who almost equals Dan's size, swarmed towards him, grabbing onto whatever they could.
I stood back and laughed. Every time they needed reinforcement, I would cry "attack DJ!" or would render services by myself latching onto some part of Dan which was otherwise available. Kids were being thrown around the pool, everyone, except possibly Dan, was laughing.
That was until I head Dan say....
"Everyone attack Laura!!!" The twins and Blayne come rushing over as fast as running in water would let them. Luckily for me, the older boys were a little more awkward at latching on as tightly as they had to Dan, so they stood back offering what moral support they could muster. Working with a number of kids for a good part of the summers previous, and having a younger hyper-active sibling of my own, my kid muscles were pumped and ready! The children attached to my arms and back was no match for PYROPHYTAWOO-MAN! (That's right, the super hero of highschools past has been revived once more to battle, none other than the evil-water-dwellers).*
Soon, everyone was tired, and some were bloody, and the kids were ordered out of the pool and told to go inside and get dressed. This allowed Dan and I some quality pool time. As we got out, Dan insisted that he get the very pink towel. This may be because Dan has some sort of affinity to the colour pink, or perhaps that it was bigger than all the rest of the towels (I don't know, I'm leaning towards reason number one), but Jesse was appalled! He could not believe that lack-of-gentlemanliness he was seeing in his older brother! And so, Jesse handed the pink towel to me as I got out. I dried and warmed myself off with it, and handed it to Dan as he was getting out, stating "I was just drying it off for you". For some reason, he preferred a different coloured towel. I think he was just embarrassed that I found out his fondness for fuschia.
As we walked into the house, we saw bodies littered across the couches in the house. Not only were the four younger brothers sleeping in front of the TV, on the floor, or on the couch in the room next to the TV room, but so was Mia. This was such a cute sight, and I kind of wish we had a camera at the time, or at least bothered to take a few pictures.
As I cleaned up and got dressed for the day, Ro did Dan a huge favour and cut his hair, something that desperately needed to be done. Once he was finished, they joked about doing mine. This got me thinking, and I figured I did need a summer chop. Well, Dan did not like this idea. He did not think I would look good with short hair, and he liked my hair long and that was the only way I'd be pretty. This was his stubborn side coming through. So Ro did not cut it overly short, but I got rid of about four inches. It was a lovely cut. Of course, it looked better that day than it ever will again - I cannot style my own hair - but it is nice to have it a little shorter for summer.
With our hair freshly cut, we headed into the car to The Promenade Shopping Center. Seeing as I had not managed to buy much in the way of clothes on our trip to Vaughn Mills Mall the day before, it was nice to get one more shopping excursion before the end of the trip. I am not an avid shopper, nor do I even claim to like the whole experience much. In fact, I tend to avoid shopping at all costs. This trip, however quick it was - as we were trying to make it home in time for supper, was one of the best shopping experiences ever. Instead of having to pick out what may or may not look good on me, or stress about what does or does not fit, I let Dan play dress-up. I chose the outfits, I went into the dressing room and tried them on. A good percentage of the stress of shopping was alleviated through that. All that was left was feeling absolutely disgusting when something did not look good on, but there were few of those scenarios, especially at our first stop - The Gap. I bought about 200 dollars worth of clothes between the Gap and Old Navy (I had a gift certificate), and we left Old Navy just as the store was closing and just on time to make it home before supper.
Supper that night was steak. When Dan's father handed me the plate of barbecued steak, I was taken aback. This piece of steak could have fed my entire family plus fourteen starving Africans. I tried my best to eat as much as a could of it, but no matter how hard I tried, I just could not manage to eat very much. I honestly had the second biggest piece of steak, with Dan having the largest. We sat around on patio furniture out back by the pool as the kids ate inside. It was a lovely supper. As the sky began to get darker, and the kids started to get a little more rambunctious (that is how the trend tends to go), Bill and Ro and Laura went for a walk, and the twins, after their bath, started running around the pool. Clearly this is a 'what not to do' scenario, and so finally, catching both of them and convincing them to go inside, I led them up to their room to try to wind them down. Dan stayed outside, and got a chance to hang out one-on-one with Jesse, who was in the pool at the time, which I think was nice for both of them.When Dan came inside, he found me, the twins, and Blayne (I think?) reading from a book of fairy tales. This was unlike any reading I was accustomed to. The twins were up and down, sometimes paying attention, sometimes watching the video game that Blayne was playing. Despite the constant buzz around me, I really enjoyed this time to sit and read to them. I fell in love with all five of Dan's brothers while I was visiting, and it was great that I could interact with them on a personal level.
The boys brushed their teeth, and Ro came up to make sure they were in bed. Dan and I went online to get the directions to the place we had to be the next morning. We had a hard time getting the internet to work on the three different computers that we tried, and we finally got into one, without too much stress involved. For some reason, I remember this part of the night quite fondly. Maybe it was because of the atmosphere. The computer was right outside the boys' room, and so the hall lights were out, with exception of a little coloured light casting pretty little blue designs all over the wall. It could have been the silence, after a long day of hanging out with five kids, whispers were a pleasant addition. It could have been talking to Sean, who seemed to be a tad quiet and reserved for most of the weekend. Or maybe, it was the fact that I was sitting on the lap of someone who I love, finally a time when we could sit and relax without a lot of action happening around us.
We just hung out together for the rest of the night, sitting on a couch and talking. Right before the quietness of the night lulled me to sleep, we decided to finally do our midnight swim, a concept we had been talking about for the entire weekend there. So we put our swim suits back on, and shimmied into the chilly pool. With the sun on the other side of the earth, the night was cool, but not cold. The water was not too uncomfortable if moving around, but we only stayed in the water for about five minutes before it became barely bearable.
I wasn't even able to have a quick shower before hopping into bed, I was too exhausted.
*I am the only one who finds this funny, with the exception of possibly Bryn, and even that I doubt. Just let me have my fun! :-D
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