The Cats Will Play While Dad’s Away

We did a lot to keep ourselves busy and occupied after dad left.

We took swim lessons.

We cleaned out cupboards and literally went through every. single. item. in the entire house to determine whether it was worth keeping and if it was, should we ship it or store it.

Tessie and I went to the mother/daughter campout.

Bode would wander from our garage to our neighbors garage. If I couldn’t find him in ours, I’d walk next door and usually find him in our dear neighbors convertible, making himself right at home. Note: The same neighbor who is Iranian and lived there until his 20’s. We had a great conversation one day about Middle Eastern politics and when he expressed his distaste and frustration with the level of corruptness and restriction in his motherland I asked him what he thought about Saudi Arabia, he replied, “Oh it’s worse, much worse. But you’ll be fine.” Rrright.

The kids would eat snacks and watch a show on Sunday mornings while I got ready for church,

Tessa sang in the Father’s Day at church and I went ahead and took a photo. Her dad wasn’t there people.

Tessa would pick flowers from our garden to keep our house beautiful despite being in the throws of moving.

We took Tessa to her last day dance of dance and then helped her get ready for her big show. Poor Bode.

Bode dragged his blankie and/or his sister’s suitcase up and down Son Bon.

Nightly baths took place in mom’s big tub while Bode drank bath water.

We went to the LA Zoo. We practiced for real camel rides, ate an ICEE (probably the highlight of the day) and Bode indulged me for a photo.

We went to the beach, Bode can chillax with the best of them.

We met up with friends for fun pool days.

We played in the back yard. Naked. Thankfully he didn’t wander over to the neighbors like that.

And before you think it was all fun and games…the police came one night. It happened about 20 minutes after I told Tessa that if she was going to throw an epic tantrum and scream bloody murder that she needed to go outside to do it because I didn’t want to listen to it and if she woke up her brother we’d have a whole new set of problems. So, she did. She went outside, screamed a scream that would pierce your eardrum then came back inside. We resolved the issue peacefully and put her to bed. No sooner did I get to the bottom of the stairs than did I hear a rap, tap, tap on the door. I opened it to find my friendly Orange Country Sheriff standing on my front porch asking if everything was ok. A neighbor had called after they heard a blood curdling scream and then silence (well, ok, I can see how that might be alarming). I explained the situation and fortunately he couldn’t have been nicer. He filed a report, congratulations T, first police report at 3 1/2, and went on his way. Can you imagine Wade calling the next morning, “Well, things took a turn for the worse last night. Child Protective Services came and took the children and I am incarcerated.”

We spent all the moments in between cleaning out, making runs to Goodwill and trying to keep our wits about us. Being re-united can’t come soon enough. While we had a lot of fun, everything is more fun with our dad.