Weekend Update

Our household had a pretty good weekend.

Friday night was Halloween, and the A-man opted to stay home and hand out candy to those that came to our house. (We had 11 kids come by – not quite our record of 15, but pretty close!) S went trick-or-treating with Bear’s son. They had a fun time, and were loaded up with more candy than I like to even consider… When they called to say they were on the other side of town and wanted us to come and get them, my friend and I laughed. When we got there, we saw why they had made their way over to this one area. The people that lived there had created a Haunted Corn maze-type thing in their front lawn that I even went through! It was complete with crazy man chasing us with a chain saw, weird things that flew out at us and people that came out of nowhere to give a startling scream. I can understand why they get more than 500 kids each year.

Hubby was up before me on Saturday – I love getting up to the smell of freshly brewed coffee – and was doing about 15 different things in order to get ready for his week away at the hunt camp. He actually got away quite a bit later than normal this year, but I know he had a number of computer jobs he wanted to complete before he left for so long.

I spent the day doing a major cleaning overhaul in the main bedroom. I cleaned out bed side table drawers that probably haven’t been cleaned out in years. I found dust bunnies that had actually started to form an army; they were not victorious. Every now and then I would ask the boys to do a chore or two, and both were very good to do whatever I asked, as soon as I asked.
Saturday night S stood the A-man and I up from our annual ‘date’ he opted to attend a Halloween party he had been invited to. The A-man and I kept up with our annual “dad’s gone to the hunt camp” Saturday ritual; we went out for dinner then went to a movie. We saw “Nick and Nora’s Infinite Playlist.” It was a pretty good movie. Not one that I would want to watch over and over again, but it was an entertaining hour and a half. After the movie, we headed back over to where S was. The A-man went in to party head quarters to gather S, and after a while, I was afraid that I was going to have to enter the teenage zone, but they did make it back out before I had to send a search party.

Sunday was a bit of a lazy morning for me; did some reading, wrote a few letters… made sure both boys were working diligently on their homework assignments, that sort of thing.
I did become very upset with S, though, as the homework detail panned out. Yet again, he did not bring home his laptop for doing his work. On Wednesday (and Thursday) he told me that he couldn’t finish the Geography homework because it required a lot of reading and it needed to be scanned into the laptop. Friday he comes home from school – no laptop. Geography is due on Monday. Do you see where I am going with this?

Fine, he doesn’t have the laptop, but he has the question sheets, so I tell him that he will have to do it the hard way – by hand. I also inform him that this needs to be done BEFORE he can go over to hang out with his friend for the day. Oh, the tears and carrying on that I had to cope with. What really ticked me off the most, though, was when I realized he hadn’t brought home all of the information sheets. He was trying to answer the questions based on his memory of what the sheet had said! Yeah – the kid with the short working memory is going to complete his homework based on what he remembers! Good thinking, child.

I will admit, S did put in a good effort. He was required to type the answers, whereas had he brought home the laptop he could have simply spoken his answers and the computer would have done the work. Yes, I did point this out to him on more than one occasion. I am hoping that he finally GETS it. I want that laptop home every-single-night-even-if-there-is-no-homework. I have tried to explain that he can work on the system and continue to train it. Maybe someday I will get through to him…

After a while, I told S that he would be able to go over to his friend’s house and he could do the final parts of the homework assignment after supper. I dropped him at his friend’s house – turns out this boy also has Aspergers! – and then went grocery shopping.

My mom came over and then she and I took the A-man off to the city to meet with my niece and her boyfriend for lunch. We haven’t seen this niece for over a year, and she will be moving to the area as her mother and step father are going to be posted to the military base near us. Had a nice afternoon and I actually made a date to see them again on Tuesday.

Picked S up a little later than I had planned, then we had a pretty quiet night. Both boys finished their homework then were very happy to go down and watch some television before bed.
We have also implemented a “no TV/video games” rule for school nights based on S’s lack of homework completion the other night.
This will be an interesting experiment.