In surround sound

When Don and I bought our house about 5 years ago, one of the things we knew we wanted was the built in surround sound. Nicer cabinets, granite counter tops and other upgrades were bypassed to be sure that we had our surround sound. Dreams were about nice evenings with the two of us and a loud action packed movie like Terminator where it would surely feel like we were in the middle of the scene.

Then we became pregnant with the boys and they were born not even a year after we moved in. I don't think we watched more than one movie with our dream surround system in place before they made an entrance, and because of their bedroom being directly above our built in to the ceiling surround sound, we never took a chance of playing a movie with them on. There is no chance we wanted to wake the three of them up after a hard day of parenting them!

In the past two weeks, the weather in Vegas has been beautiful. Like open the windows and let the breeze blow beautiful. We have turned the radio on, turned the television off, and let the weather blow some peacefulness and happiness into our souls. This is what I assume it feels for the rest of the United States when Spring comes along. Open windows, clean air, kids playing and so much laughing outside.

The boys have begun to really enjoy our music. Jaxon belts out different parts of "Halo", and all three are huge fans of "I got a feeling". When those songs come on, we turn the radio up and everyone just forgets about what they were doing and jams a bit.

This weekend has been the kind of weekend I knew it would be like with children. Forget all the weekends we changed diapers, did laundry, handled a colicky Jaxon or gave breathing treatment after breathing treatment to Lucas and Wyatt. This weekend was full of all of us playing together, reading the kids books, lying on our bed together (or wrestling with the kids in the bed), cooking good food and getting the house ready for Halloween. And the surround sound blasting music from the radio.

The kids have had disgustingly dirty knees every night -so bad they need a shower before they got a bath and another shower to finish them off. We have been exhausted and everyone falls asleep way earlier than intended. Our bellies are full when we go to sleep, either from home made manicotti or fruit salad. The backyard has echos of all the laughter and giggles made in it all day and evening long.

Right now there are three nay-nay boys fresh out of the bath running around. Their new favorite phrase seems to be "totally cool". Their hair is a bit askew from the haircuts I gave them earlier. Better than last time, but still so far from perfect. Before they start to wrestle and the overtired tears start to flow, I better go and help Don get them ready for bed.

So the surround sound never got to be used for what we intended it for. Before today, the circular speakers in the ceiling seemed to mock us a bit. Show us a bit of what life used to be and what used to be "cool" to us. This weekend was so much better than all those dreams of action packed movies or the THX opening of a movie. I can't wait for more weekends like this one.