Running back from Saskatoon...

I don't know why we bother going to Saskatoon any more - lately it seems that every time we do, it ends in disaster. Friday night was another case in point.

Kristen picked me up after work on Friday, stating that she didn't want to make supper tonight. I innocently suggested that we should go to Saskatoon for supper, and it wound up snowballing into a planned overnight trip with shopping and taking the kids to see the new Pooh movie.

Things starting going wrong right away. We ended up not leaving Outlook in time to make it to the movie Friday night, so we went to Jerry's for supper. Towards the end of the meal, Kolbjorn threw up at the table - he hadn't eaten much aside from a few fries and a glass of fruit juice. It was the revenge of the technicolor puke. And that was the end of supper for us.

We had one change of clothes packed for Kol, so we got him into fresh togs, piled into the van, and drove to Mom and Dad's place, where we had planned to crash overnight. What we hadn't counted on was the fact that Mom and Dad had house sitters while they were in Arizona, something I hadn't realized until we pulled up in front of the house and noticed people moving around. I called the house from my cell, and realized that I had no idea who the house sitters were, and I'm pretty sure they didn't know who I was. That was a very confusing conversation.

So, deprived of our planned base of operations for the weekend, we did what came naturally - we went to Wal-Mart. There was method to our madness - we still weren't sure if Kol would be sick again, we didn't have another change of clothes for him, and we were out of a few essentials (diapers, etc.). A quick run through Wal-Mart yielded two pairs of pajamas for Kol, diapers, wipes, etc. We then proceeded to Petland to check out some aquarium stuff.

As we walked through the door at Petland, an employee mentioned that it was only 10 minutes to closing, so we got what we needed (aquarium backdrop) and headed out the mall doors back towards Wal-Mart. A voice over the PA system announced that the mall was closing, and the staff at Wal-Mart began closing their mall doors. Mari began panicking, thinking that we would be locked in the mall and unable to get back to the van at all. Fortunately, the staff saw us coming and kept the mall door open for us, but Mari was in tears as we got inside.

We stayed in Wal-Mart for a while - Kol seemed like himself again, we looked at fish in the pet department, browsed through the DVDs in the electronics department, and generally had a good time until Wal-Mart's PA system announced that they would be closing in 15 minutes. That set off Mari again, and she didn't calm down until we were out the door.

We all loaded into the van, and made it back to Outlook without incident. Just as we were pulling into the driveway at 11:15 PM, Kristen suddenly realized that there was a relatively important playschool board meeting scheduled that evening that she had completely forgotten about. Sure enough, we got through the door to find a message on our answering machine about the meeting, wondering if Kristen was going to come or not.

Next time Kristen says she doesn't want to cook supper, I think we'll just order pizza.