The weekend

After being postponed for two weeks due to illness, Aragorn's samurai-themed birthday party actually took place on Saturday.

Even though we had an extra two weeks, surprisingly little got done until "the last minute" (which started on Thursday). Apparently, we completely forgot that there was a party coming up. So, despite serendipitous circumstances, we were still rushed at the end. In our dining-room, we have a dry-erase marker board that is about 10 x 5 feet. It holds a large calendar in one corner, and various amounts of the rest of it are used daily for notes and lists. When we wrote all the things that had to be done before the party on it, it was nearly completely covered. But in a family of nine, a large list is dealt with. We worked, we erased what we finished, and we were ready for the guests at 2:00 on Saturday.

Everyone's costume turned out near-perfect, and many of the other guests came in costume as well. There were Japanese activities such as calligraphy (everyone's name in Japanese), chopstick races, sushi-rolling, martial arts instruction (in the rain), and a treasure hunt based off of a Japanese legend. After dinner, some of the guests stayed to watch The Last Samurai from 8:00pm to 11:00pm as a final touch. I like to complain that our parties are way overdone, but everyone enjoys them, and this one was more fun than I thought it would be. And I love my kimono.

But the busy weekend was not over. On Monday we went to a Memorial Day church barbecue, and played baseball. Because our church is small and has lots of children of various ages, each team had players ranging from 7 to 17 years old, which made it an interesting game. I usually avoid sports, but I decided to give baseball a try, and found that it was not too difficult, even for un-athletic me. The teams were pretty well matched, and while we were by no means skilled, it was a lot of fun.

The best part of the evening, in my opinion, though, was the conversation in the evening. The adults and a couple of the teenagers (of whom I was one) had some interesting discussions on parenting and maturity. One of the dads posed a question: how does a parent give advice to their adult children, knowing that they need it, but also realizing their comparative independence and maturity? Should they give advice in every situation, or let the children learn from their own mistakes in some circumstances? The question provoked some interesting discussion, which was unfortunately cut off by the approach of night.