The first and, if you ask the BIL and his family, the most obvious thing that happened this weekend was that Sophia had what was easily her most difficult days of her young life. We think the oatmeal wasn't agreeing with her, but she has given us two to three hours of truly angry screaming each evening between 6-7pm and anywhere from 9-11pm.

This is not the same as Lauren's stuff from before, but man is there some anger in her squalling. It's shocking how much noise something that chunky can make.

Friday was "BBQ with Dad" day at Lauren's school, and that was awesome. Oddly it was also the day that our company had one of those team-building exercises that are mandatory where everyone goes bowling and such.

Trouble was, Lauren had known about this lunch since Christmas. There was no possible way for me to miss it, nor would I have dared consider missing it either. There are times that your family doesn't have to come first, but I can't think of many off the top of my head.

I took a half day so I got home really early on Friday, and I took that opportunity to prep and start cooking our Irish dinner, Corned beef with veggies, and a side of cabbage and rice.

We found a way to do it on the egg so I seared the two chunks of meat on one egg at about 550 for around seven minutes a side, then moved it to the other egg which was set at 275 degrees with a layer of firebricks on the grid to hold my 12-quart dutch oven. The meat would simmer for 6 or so hours in a bath of half water and half Sam Adams and a variets of seasonings and spices.

Once that was going, I fit in a workout but my heart (sorry for the pun) was not in it. I did an hour and 3.5 miles which isn't bad, but it's not my usual either.

Once done, we started having an Irish Friday / St. Patrick's Day which means beers.

When the corned beef and stuff was done, we pulled it, to let it rest and while that happened, I took out a potato, cut it up, and popped a piece of it into my mouth.

Once in my mouth, my mouth realized that the potato was indeed hot after spending over six hours in nearly boiling water. My mouth began bouncing the hot potato chunk around and then, instead of just spitting it into the sink, my mouth passed responsibility for the spud lump on to my upper esophegus.

It was then that the tuberette stuck to the top front of my throat in what I can only describe as one of the more painful experiences of my life. I choked down a bunch of beer and water, and after a minute or so, the chunk (about 3/4 of an inch square) FINALLY went down to meet the stomach.

But by then, the damage was done.

(I won't belabor this, but I'll say that I only feel a bit better now, but that swallowing, eating and drinking anything this weekend has sucked ass). That said, it didn't stop me from eating or drinking, nor did it stop me from complaining about said pain.

Back to the weekend.

Saturday morning saw a pretty good sleep in by everybody (all things considered), and we didn't finally get started until around 9:15 or so. I sold some charcoal early, met with our accountant at 10am and made it home in time to leave for soccer at 10:50am.

Soccer ended at noon and, after a little chatter with the other cool parents (notice that I said "other"), it was a quick hit to Kroger for a prescription and a race home to be picked up by Cooley's Pizza for a trip to Frye's for an internal and external hard drive to replace the main drive in his home pc and impliment a backup plan with the external one.

We went with Emma in tow, and got back and started around 2pm after a nice lunch from Chik-fil-a.

I made a small mistake at the beginning that made the job last about three hours instead of one or even two, but in the end I finished about 5pm and got home in time to continue our irish themed weekend.

Before I left for Cooley's, UnkTodd asked if I was interested in having rack of lamb for dinner.

Um, hell yes dude. I shouldn't have to tell you that anymore.

I got home in time for a little prepping and pre-cooking and cold beers with the in-laws. Sophia did some quality squalling until around 9pm, but we finally got her to bed and returned to socializing and played some Yahtzee, which saw me victorious and saw UnkTodd tear his scoresheet up. Good times.

That night was ridiculous, however. Lauren has taken to removing her pull up and pj bottoms in the middle of the night, but this time she peed on her bed, and came into our room all sad about it.

Instead of fighting that again, I went and slept on the dry side of her bed and she slept in my spot.

That is until 5:18am when my alarm went off. Apparently I set it before bed (again) and woke up the house.

Turns out that Lauren's not too excited about my alarm, and since the wife can't turn it off, there was some mayhem.

I got it turned off, returned the urchin to her bed for the rest of the night / morning and we also went back to sleep. After feeding Sophia at around 5:30am that is.

we slept a bit longer and got started on our Sunday late (surprise), and that meant laundry laundry laundry. For a minute I thought our home had been invaded by some discount clothes retailer and they were filling our bedroom and bathroom with their seconds.

I took the somewhat uncooperative and very tired Lauren with me to the WalMarts for some weekly shopping in addition to some babyback ribs to be cooked just for fun on Sunday.

We watched hoops since NASCAR and Fox put off cancelling the obviously rain inhibited Golden Coral 500 from Atlanta Motor Speedway while Sophia took a two plus hour nap (YAY!!).

The highlight of yesterday was when I turned the corner and noticed that Sissy was staring at something on the floor.

It was a turd from Jake-sized pile of vomit on my carpet.

What to do? What to do?

I know. I'll call my nephew Nick.

He came over and, with the wife helping, they cleaned it up and threw away the spatula they used to scoop it up. Nick was SHOCKED that we'd "waste that spatula."

That's when I explained that I'd be happy to save it and only use it for his food in the future. He then agreed that we might have been right.

Nick and I went back to watching basketball and some taped coverage of last spring's Atlanta race and I got up to ask the wife something. When I returned, inches from my left footprint was yet another HUGE pile of dog vomit. And I could see Sissy outside.

I mean, was she sneaking in, puking on my floor and then racing outside?

I called unkTodd and asked for some assistance. Instead, young Nick came back for pukeclean round two.

It was then that UnkTodd (supervising the effort) noticed that "it" appeared to contain some carrot parts.

Uh oh.

"Hey," I said. "Do you guys know that I burned some veggies on the Egg Friday and I threw a half a dozen burned carrots and a dozen burned potatoes into the trees?"

It was just then that we looked outside and saw Sissy choking down yet another carrot.

Crap.

I apologized to the Thomas' and to Sissy.

The ribs finished about 6pm and they were about an 8.5 or a 9.0 to me, but they were right in the wife's wheelhouse. My nephew liked them too, or he at least liked swallowing them. I'm not sure he ever tasted them, and I finally had to banish him from the rib bin until everyone had gotten some.

Last night saw more blood curtling screaming from 6:30pm until around 9:30pm. She then slept until 5:20am, took a bottle and went back to bed until 8:30 this morning, and Lauren slept until 7am which was good too.

Hopefully getting 48 hours removed from the oatmeal will help the rest of the day today as the wife's being run ragged by me, work and the kids.

That's about it from the weekend kids. Hope you all have a great week.