Frozen Nowhere

Immediately upon finishing her pizza G announced she was going to go start her car. I cleaned up after the kids, made sure everything was put in garbage cans and such, wiped up sticky children-types, and tidied up as much as I could, then I went out to start MY car (which hadn’t been plugged in since noon, and at that time the temperature was dropping) and RGG’s car as well, to keep them from freezing up. RGG’s car (SUV, really) started quickly with no protest… so whatever he and his father had done to his battery had done the trick. 

 

My car, on the other hand, was patently NOT IMPRESSED with me and refused to start, despite my frantic attempts to get it to turn over. Not quite knowing what else to do, I retreated back into the warmth of the hotel room, and figured I could try to start it again later. 

 

G made a few comments about how glad she was to be getting out of the room and away from the children. I was, frankly, glad to see her go. I mean, why does she attend these things, since she wants a child-free (as opposed to child-less, where child-free is taken to mean that she wants as little to do with children, in ALL areas of life, as is humanly possible; child-less I take to mean that she has taken it upon HERSELF not to reproduce but accepts that children are a natural part of the social order…) life. I mean, this is a woman who was PISSED when the malls around here started offering “Expecting/New Mother” parking, because how DARE they give preferential treatment to someone just because that person has been “irresponsible” (her word) enough to spawn? She’s the kind of person who will PURPOSELY park in one of those stalls, JUST to make a point that it is stupid and unfair, because she objects to the idea. 

 

Once everything was slightly cleaned up, we got the kids into (or back into, as in the case of BoyChild and GirlChild) their bathing suits, RGG and I suited up, and we wandered off to the deeper pool (right outside our window). There was running in the hallways (of course) and a bit of confusion when some kids went to one pool and one went to the OTHER pool, and the adults were left trying to figure out which pool to go to. BoyChild went to one pool, the others went to the other pool, I followed BoyChild, RGG went with the others… then BoyChild and I went to find the others, and they came to find us… 

Finally we settled on which of the 2 pools to go to, and got some towels, and settled everyone down to swim. The younger kids, GirlChild and RGG’s youngest, stayed in the shallow paddling pool, BoyChild and RGG’s Oldest played in the regular pool, and RGG and I sat in the lukewarm hottub (laugh). The kids jumped in and out, always watched by RGG and I. The little girls splashed us, and we splashed them… the older kids tended to stay in the pool and play by themselves, unhindered by their younger sisters.

We stayed in the pool until we were forcibly evicted (10pm) and then headed back to the room admid whining from the little girls that they were too cold and wanted to be carried, and the older kids running off in the wrong direction and yelling up and down the hallways. Between RGG and I we managed to collect all the kids into the room, dry them off, and get them out of their wet suits and into nice warm jammies. We all went down the hallway to get some ice from the machine (and learned that the machine needed the room key, who knew?) and RAN back to the room.

RGG went out to start the cars (because… hello… -40C!!) and managed to get the cars started, which was more than I was able to do with mine. We decided to get a movie, so the kids wanted popcorn and RGG agreed to run out and get popcorn. While he was out getting popcorn the kids found the Yule Log (which is one of my traditions) which was a sweet, caramel covered, chocolate roll cake. I gave each of the kids a small piece of Yule Log, and I *THINK* they were handing out Coke to each other, even though I was giving them ice water… but that is how RGG found us all (complete with 5 guilty looks) when he returned from getting popcorn.

That is about the time we decided that the kids likely had had ENOUGH of the coke (and cake) and cut them back to just water. Of course, seeing as they don’t generally get so much pop, they had already likely had too much, and they didn’t really WANT to stop drinking the forbidden drink. We turned off the lights and tried to settle down the kids by starting a movie (Journey to the Centre of the Earth). The 2 older kids wanted to sit on one bed together, and the little girls wanted to cuddle with their parent, so we divided the bed space up so the older kids were in one bed and the other 4 of us were crammed onto the other bed.

They lasted the ENTIRE movie without falling asleep, and so we got them all up to go to the bathroom, and then tossed them back in bed. We still couldn’t convince the older kids to cuddle up in family units, preferring to stay (giggling) in their bed pretending to be secret agents. That left one queen bed for RGG, I, and the 2 younger girls to sleep in.  We started off the night with  RGG on the outside of the bed,then his daughter, me, and GirlChild… but the girls didn’t seem to like things that way. 

The older kids were trying to stay up, and were giggling about something that no one could hear. We kept saying “be quiet now, its time to sleep” over and over… and eventually saying it over and over just struck me as really REALLY funny and I started laughing and laughing and laughing… which caused the little girls to start laughing, and made me laugh harder, which made the older kids start to laugh. Eventually RGG, totally confused by the laughing, asked, bewildered “what? did I miss something? What’s so funny?”… which just made me laugh all the harder.

After that the older kids settled down and were quiet, and soft snoring came from their side of the room… but the other bed was a hotbed of activity…