On Swingsets, trees, NKOTB, and Lump's 1st and hopefully last car accident

Today wasn't as busy or productive as Saturday. Lisa had switched hours and worked 1st shift, forcing me to take Smiley and YaYa into work with me while I did some morning paperwork in lieu of the manager that quit.

Smiley insisted on wearing his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles slippers.

Then we dropped YaYa off at her religious ed classes - yes, she attends Catholic school, but they farm them out to their home parishes for First Communion classes. That's a lame requirement, but I'm proud of her, especially since she seems to know much more than the other kids in the Sunday School class (duh - they don't take religion class daily).

Smiley and I then returned to work for an hour, then picked her up and attended mass. At heart I'm a very religious person, and very happily Catholic, and it does my soul good to devote a Sunday morning to the church. It makes me feel closer to God, and not in a Nine Inch Nails way.

I picked up lunch then settled the kids in for a nap while I flipped between the Brewers and the Packers. You know how both those stories turned out.

* * * *

I was set to go on a bike ride when my mother-in-law called to say that she and Lump had been involved in an auto accident. No one was hurt, thank God. I drove out to the scene and picked up my baby.  My mother-in-law's car had been hit pretty hard by a teenage leaving Starbucks, that den of overpriced dirt water.

I'm kind of glad it happened the way it did, as far as Lump goes. One of my mild superstitions involves getting a 'first accident' out of the way with as little harm as possible. YaYa was on a school bus that hit a van on the freeway, LuLu was in our van when it was totaled in '06, and now Lump got hers out of the way. Smiley's is still out there . . ah, no! Come to think of it when I was moving my folks I backed our van into a stone wall attempting a Y-turn in a narrow dead-end. Smiley was in the car, and that counts, right?

Upon our return I hit the bike with the kids and wound up at the park where the kids played for about twenty minutes.

When Lisa got home and the Brewers clinched the Wildcard I took the family out to Ponderosa to celebrate (hey, I'm a big guy. How was I supposed to celebrate, with jazzercize and celery?).

Before we went we picked up LuLu from yet another park, where my Dad had taken her to play with her cousin. Here YaYa chose to climb some trees while Lisa hit the swingset herself.

* * * 

After dinner, with the kids in bed, we watched a great VHI special the New Kids on the Block. A lot of rare footage coupled with some genuine insights. Most shocking:  Jon never 'left' the band, as has been reported for over a decade. (Hell, I remember Joe moaning about Jon's 'betrayal' in a VHI piece years ago.)

Nope, turns out he was doing so much whining and 'maybe I should go/maybe I should stay' that the guys got sick of it and put it up for a vote. By a count of 3-2 he was asked/told to leave the group. Huh.

The special was followed by a kick-ass three song set live from a concert in Boston. What a great taste of the concert we'll see next Saturday in Chicago.