Phone calls

Dennis and I celebrated our 13th wedding anniversary on Saturday. We had a busy day, not technically how I would have chosen to spend my anniversary, but it worked. We first had Ryan's baseball practice from 9-10:30. From there we went back to the house only to split up to take the kids to separate activities, Dennis took Ryan to his basketball game while I took Autumn to rehearsal and dance. By the time we got home it was 4:30....
From there Dennis and I had planned a nice dinner and movie out, while the kids stayed home. Ryan is almost 12 and with Autumn being 10 we thought we were ok, we couldn't have been more wrong. By the time we waited for 45 minutes to get a table, we were starving. So, we ordered appetizers. We were enjoying a nice kid-free conversation when the first phone call occured. "Mom, Autumn isn't behaving." "What is she doing?" "Annoying me!" Now, for those of you that have kids; being annoyed is when you are trying to have a nice dinner with your husband and your kids call....not when your sister takes the tv controller and won't give it back.
I settled that little dispute, while I was enjoying calamari and Dennis was just sitting there (he is a picky eater, doesn't like anything) the phone rings again...this time it was Autumn. "Mom, Ryan is bothering me." "What is he doing?" "He took my Nintendo DS game and I would like it back." "Were you playing that game?" "No, but I want to now." You know as well as I do that the only reason she wanted that game was because he had it..... My final words to the kids were: "Unless someone is bleeding, dying or throwing up everywhere please don't call me. I love you guys greatly and I will give you a call once we are done with dinner. Talk with you soon." I guess I just wasn't clear on the whole, "I would call them". About 5 minutes later when our dinner was being served, my phone rang again. It was Autumn again. "What is wrong?" "Oh nothing, I was just wondering if you could go to Limited Too and buy me a Nick Jonas shirt while you were out." Now, I don't know about you, but this doesn't constitute an emergency to me. Maybe to a 10 year old, but not to me.
So, needless to say; once dinner was over we ran to a sports store and then we went home. We had a full 3 hours without the kids for our "anniversary date". When we got home, the kids had the nerve to ask us why we didn't go to the movies while we were out. I know you are probably thinking that they are only 11 and 10, but you must realize that my children are incredibly mature so I typically don't worry about leaving them home especially since we live on base. This time though I wish I would have hired a sitter.
This morning on my way to work I got another phone call: "Mom, I just want you to know that we broke something, but we weren't playing with a ball or anything. We were just fouling around." Now, my first thought of course was that they were playing ball in the house only because that was Ryan's first defense. Then he proceeded to explain to me that it wasn't him it was Autumn's fault. He made her mad and she broke my clock. I am not a crazy person, but I wonder how my clock happen to get broken as it is hanging on the wall. They both decided to try to stick with the same "no ball involved" story with: "we know what we did was wrong and we won't do it again, we are very sorry for breaking your clock." They wouldn't tell me how they broke it though, finally I made them put me on speaker and they both got to tell their story. Come to find out, Ryan made Autumn mad so she threw my exercise ball at him, missed and it knocked my clock off the wall breaking it.
I am very blessed with having kids who at least know the difference between right and wrong and will admit when they have done something that they weren't supposed to without us even asking. Kids are great!!!!!!!!