Whew! Made It Through Saturday

I know that the persona so carefully crafted here on the Deliberately blog leads my readers to believe that I am a relentless crusader for all things local, a tireless advocate for food source education, a passionate environmentalist, and above all things a prolific and talented writer.  And while all those things may in moments be true, the fact is that before all else I am a husband and a daddy.  So this weekend was unique in that the rugrats were hanging out with daddy solo as most deliberate mommy raced away for a "girls weekend," during which she intended to drink (I'm sure local) wine and eat (probably local) gourmet food at a (sustainably developed and maintained) luxury hotel.  Maybe not the parenthetical parts, but certainly the details.

My goal was to make sure the little ones had no time whatsoever to recognize the clear error in our situation, that we were three men flying blind without our normally grounding and clear-headed momma at the lead.  Yesterday was no exception.  We started in the backyard where we made sure to adequately water the garden since we knew the day was going to be so hot.  Next, we proceeded to the Memphis Farmers Market where we absconded with a large spaghetti squash, a bunch of fresh green beans, a container of new red potatoes, and a basket of north Alabama baby peaches.  Next we proceeded over to the Magevney House, where Slow Food Memphis and Edible Memphis Magazine had a table set up at the open garden fund-raiser.  It was our first event as an official Memphis convivium, and I was happy to see the table and our new banner looking great.  The kids got a tour of the garden from one of the great volunteers there and received an education in heirloom variety herbs and vegetables to boot.  There was even a table set up to teach visitors how to create a seed-saver station!  Friends from Slow Food were in attendance, including the folks from the Squirrel Squad. 

Next we had to kill some time prior to the Memphis Italian Festival opening at eleven, so we swung by the Memphis Zoo where our membership brought us admission to visit the new butterfly pavilion as well as spend some much-earned rough-and-tumble time at the playground.  But the cornerstone of the day was definitely the Italian Festival, which includes Luigiland, an area specifically for kids.  As my oldest put it:  "We can visit the zoo any day, Daddy, but the Italian Festival is only once a year."  It was hot, and we were quickly in need of shade and some water as I wrestled an Italian Sausage hoagie into my stomach.  The kids area was great and we burned through a bunch of tickets (50 cents each) on games and rides.  Two particular favorites were the trains that were hand-controlled (wears 'em out while they have fun) and the bungie trampolines.  The duck pond resulted in flying prizes, which will last about a week but nonetheless provide hours of fun in the meantime.  Finally, the heat transpired to take us down, and we capped off the event with a magic show, with my oldest completely enraptured.

After the Italian Festival it was time to take the "getting dirty" thing up a notch and make sure the bath we all needed was justified.  So back at the homestead we fired up the Slip And Slide and proceeded to get wet and dirty.  It took all of ten minutes for the slide to be filled with mud and the boys to be likewise embellished.

My goal has been to make sure that when Mommy Deliberately returns from her retreat the house is in order.  So after the backyard mess and bath I asked the boys to take a "little rest," as my youngest calls it, and proceeded to make sure all the laundry was clean and folded.  The kitchen was in order too by the time we were ready to hit the road again.

The boys suggested early in the planning stages of the weekend that we should culminate our endless adventures with a trip to their favorite gastronomical destination, the phenomenon known in this country only as Chuck E. Cheese's.  And indeed this establishment lives up to its name as a place where "a kid can be a kid."  It is best described, for those of you not blessed with the opportunity to visit it firsthand, as a maelstrom of greasy-handed children racing with ticket-fists and token-gleaming eyes between germ-infested playgrounds and sugar-induced arcade machines.  All the while, pump-and-vibe music roars to compete with the screams and shrieks of joy that emit randomly from all the short people in the midst.  That and bad pizza pretty much sums it all up.  And despite my glowing description, the boys loved it.

But the day could not quite end yet, they pleaded.  There needed to be one more stop on our road-to-bedtime.  Which led us to a final layover at Barnes & Noble, partly because Daddy wasn't going to spend any more money and partly because what they really needed was to win the battle for one more place to go, and a bookstore is about as easy a victory a Daddy can provide.

Suffice it to say there was little challenge getting any of us to sleep last night.  One the final leg back to the house, I asked each what they liked best of the day.  My oldest answered something about not being able to choose, mostly out of fatigue.  But the answer provided by my youngest was enough to melt any part-time environmentalist locavore's heart:  "I liked the garden best, Daddy.  Because I got to learn about the plants."

Perhaps most importantly, my oldest later said, as he was falling asleep, that "Mommy missed all the fun this weekend."  That's the best.