While Mom's Away, The Boys Will Play

Last weekend Niki was out of town and left Dad to hold down the fort. I knew the only way we'd make it through the weekend would be to keep Lawson busy so he wouldn't get sad that mom was away. As a result, Saturday was planned as an all boys day, jam packed with fun. After whipping up a 'special breakfast' (as Lawson likes to call it) consisting of some gourmet omelette's, we headed out of the house....desination: Megaplex Theaters at the Gateway in Salt Lake. I gave Lawson a choice of flicks and he chose 'Underdog', the story of a Superman dog which turned out to be better than I'd expected.

Next stop, The Skybox Sports Grill. Sitting in a dark movie theater for two hours sure works up a large appetite, according to Mr. MonkeyPants that is. You should have seen how sorry this little boy was, and so dramatic. "Oh dad, my stomach is so hungry it hurts, I think I need a doctor". The Skybox is half Sports Grill, half action arcade, so keeping our priorities in focus, we did some gamin' before taking our table.

Lawson has an arm on him and throws a great spiral to boot. A future Packer in the making.



After about an hour or gamin' we managed to play every kind of action arcade game you can think of; from bowling to skiing, to basketball and horse racing. Lawson wore me out. Finally it was time for some food. Fortunately Dad didn't just pick the Skybox for the arcade games (don't tell Lawson). The big wall of TV's in the restaurant area featuring every sporting event that day had a bit to do with the selection as well. Lawson was pretty much glued to Motocross on the X Games and I had the PGA Championship. All in all it was a pretty memorable day with boy. We had some of that good quality father-son time. After returning from a long bike ride when we got home from the movies, Lawson and I finished off the night watching a classic David Bowie movie "The Labyrinth". Although being "kinda' weird", as Lawson put it, the movie got a thumbs up from the little critic. He did make it a point, however, to let me know that "the Underdog movie was better". I guess I can see how a talking, flying, superhero dog could be more like able to a 7 year old than little goblin puppets serenaded by a wild haired freak straight out of the 80's.