“Daddy, there’s no working today.”

They’d been talking about it all week, the coming Daddy Day as they called it. Friday was an optional work day at school, so I availed myself of the opportunity to be off work and spend the day with the kids. And the kids were ready for it, complete with a plan. First we had to have pizza for lunch. “It’s been so long since we’ve had pizza,” L begged. Then we were to go to the Denver Downs, a local farm that turns into an autumnal playground every September. That was the plan. The actual day fell out a little differently.

By Thursday, a little television time was in the morning mix: L has been getting disks of the old 80’s show Full House, and the latest DVD arrived Thursday. “Can we watch an episode or two in the morning?” So we did.

It was then that the no working comment came up, for during the second episode — I try not to let on, but I don’t find Full House fully engaging — I’d gotten the laptop and began fiddling with this site, trying to get rid of a graphical element that has annoyed me for ages. L thought I was grading papers, though. Showing the PHP and HTML that I was wading through to try to find where the element is inserted in the code so I can take it out didn’t convince her. “Looks like student work to me!”

Another change: everyone needed a library book refresh. The Girl scored exceptionally well on her fall MAP reading scores, which showed that she’s reading four or so grade-levels higher than her actual grade (as opposed to some of my students, but that’s a gripe for another post, one I’ve made several times). It was time to get her out of some of her favorites — Cam Jansen and the Magic Treehouse series — and into something a little more challenging. Since she’s developing an affinity to mysteries, we ended up walking out with a Nancy Drew book, a Hardy Boys adventure, and a couple of Encyclopedia Browns.

After pizza for lunch at a local establishment that has fantastic pizza but looks like it hasn’t had a renovation since its establishment just a few years before the debut of Full House, the Boy took his nap, and L and I played school. I got to be Frankie, the bad student. And having had plenty of experience from the teacher’s side of the desk, I knew just what to do. L, having no personal experience with such things other than watching her teacher deal with the one or two behavior issues in her class, struggled a bit. I tried to give her some classroom management tips, but it was hard switching roles, so I just let her struggle and tried to make it amusing for her. For example, when it was time for writing, I wrote my composition about — oh, let’s just change the topic.

The after-nap plan, by this time, had changed as well, after having already changed. Denver Downs got bumped the night before because of a little bit of hoarseness on the Boy’s part. “He’ll need to have a nap,” K explained, which meant no chance of going to Denver Downs. Too far, too tiring, too everything. So we settled on the zoo. But by the time we got to the zoo, there was only a bit of time remaining before they kicked everyone out for Boo in the Zoo, the annual waste of time and money, rather the trick-or-treating in the zoo after hours when all the animals are stashed away for the night and great herds of children rush through the zoo collecting small portions of sugary treats from various stations in the zoo, all for a ridiculously expensive price. I guess it’s fundraising for the zoo, but K and I decided long ago it’s not worth our time or money.

Instead, we played at the playground across from zoo, hiding, climbing, running, and being just generally silly.

After dinner, a little trampoline time before I packed both the kids off to bed as K was at choir practice.