Where are the kids?

It was a busy weekend in the Henry Hut. A Friday night at the beach included some swimming, kayaking and something new to us, cooking out on the grill. It's not as easy as it looks, as you have to make sure you grab everything from the house that you could possibly need for a meal. Hot dogs, buns, catsup, relish, knives, forks, and the kitchen sink all need to be brought down to the beach.

Saturday was another busy day with trips to the dump, the library and our favorite bread store which (ingeniously) gives out free samples. I say ingeniously as this is expensive (but really good!) bread and there is no way in the world I'd ever buy any loaf of bread for over five dollars but now, thanks to free samples, I do.

We finish our errands, and get home. Kate starts to pack her clothes. Thomas starts to pack his clothes.

She is headed off to a birthday party sleepover at her friend which includes many things, not one of which is sleep. Movies, cupcakes, tons of whipped cream, more movies, games and if they can, some sleep.

Thomas is off to Lake Sunrise for a week of camping out with his fellow scouts. He'll be gone all week and has been looking forward to this for months. We're excited for him and hope he loves it. I know he will. It's his parents who are really concerned. Okay, I am, Paula knows he'll be fine. I know he'll be fine but I just so want him to have an adventure and trust the weather holds off. They are camping right on a lake and as the temperatures are soaring, I trust they will be spending much of the week in the water.

I realize that this weekend is just the beginning of the kids pulling away from us, slowly but surely. It's a natural process. Maybe I'm just not ready for it. I know it is what's supposed to happen. You raise your kids the best you can, trying to prepare them for when they leave you, hopefully off to college and an extraordinarily high paid job so they can take good care of me when I'm old and drooling in a cup. (I think that happened just last week for a few minutes.)

So, here's to a weekend of being without the kids. I know it's good and what is supposed to happen, I just hope I'm ready for it.

And now for something completely different...

Walking through the local Hannaford’s the other day, we went down the aisle that just happens to have Spam in it. It sparked me to have Thomas remind me that when we got home, we just had to look up when of my favorite skits from Monty Python: Spam.

Once I was younger, Monty Python was on this foreign station called Public Television. I only turned on this channel when Bugs Bunny wasn't on but once I did, I made some cool discoveries. Monty Python was one of the bests.

The Ministry of Silly Walks... The Twit Olympics... The Marathon for Incontinents...

I showed all of them to Thomas and Kate. They loved them! I was happy, as you never know, not only with British television possibly losing humor in the translation but also, as this was years ago, was it still funny. It was still very funny.

Like most male type of humor, perhaps women don't think it's that funny, like the Three Stooges or The Hangover; it's just silly, stupid stuff but we men love it. And I'm glad to know my kids love it.

A father can hand down a lot of these to his kids, how to say please and thank you, how to act appropriately in church and how to laugh at the silliest type of humor. I was happy that my kids appreciated how funny bad comedy can be.

Now I'm off to eat a big breakfast of eggs, spam, spam, bacon, spam and spam.