Sweet Streets Re-Incarnated?!

This picture is over a year old - but the only difference between then and today is M's hair!  (no, it doesn't look much better today - but it's been cut... and maybe she looks a little older too)  Anyway this set of houses and stuff has long been a favorite at our house - the shelf in M's room is packed with the village and she sure loves them.  It was a mixed blessing when Fisher Price stopped manufacturing Sweet Streets over a year ago - luckily Santa and her Parents had foreseen this possibility and stocked up for the future... however this past Christmas was Sweet Street free - and it did not go un-noticed.  Finally I was beginning to believe that contentment had set in when lo and behold we are walking through the aisles of Wal-Mart looking for a good friend gift under my ridiculously low limit of $8 (found something cute even though we're cheap) and there right in front of my eyes - and more importantly the eyes of my daughter - are "Go Anywhere Girls" which are just Sweet Streets re-vamped... same houses, same people... same stuff - but...  of course they notice right away that we don't have the ice cream truck or the school bus!  Ugh - just in time for birthday wishes 'eh?  I know, I know...  but I've never been good at drawing lines, hopefully my girls will grow out of these before they release some mansion!

The Season For...

I wasn't sure whether to write about our insane Birthday Season or the beginning of Baseball Season...  but since the only photos I have are birthday ones, you get that treat today.  As many of you know - (and those that don't obviously found this page by some nefarious means) - 85.7% of our families' birthdays are crammed into the Feb-April stretch.  This makes for some interesting scheduling, especially this year when Easter comes in-between the birthdays which are normally separated by 11 days.  All the same - a birthday calls for a special cake and some sort of celebration.  So - once again W celebrates on the road (sorry - those spring break birthdays are a bummer sometimes) and he let mom pick the cake theme - it seemed appropriate since the Horton movie was released on his Birthday (but we still haven't found time to see it!). With apologies to those who have already seen the Horton cake - now H's cake was a more modest endeavor - but fit nicely with her "cooking party" that will take place tomorrow here at the house (while Weston parties with friends out in the desert under Dad's supervision).Perhaps my next entry will be a warning against that sort of party... we'll see how it goes!  So that's 3 down and 3 to go (my own birthday cakes aren't fancy - seems kind of a waste to go all fancy for my own day... the kids did once, but that was a long argument about who got to put on what frosting etc... - it was cute, but pretty was not a word I would have applied to the situation as a whole!

Stay tuned for updates on the ever so exciting bottom of the 5th comeback baseball game!

More about the Museum

I cannot believe I have not talked about this before to everyone!  Shortly after our visit to the children museum during a family reunion (2006?) I began researching what it would take to get something like that down in our neck of the woods.  Fast forward a few months - Q. met a lady through work who was doing much the same thing albeit more organized.  I met with her group of people and things have taken off from there... the steering committee and I got a chance to present to our local city council last month about the need for the museum and what it could provide the community and...  ta-dahhh...  something is now happening :)  big smiles  (:

Children's Museum... ?

we've had a location approved - some renovations will be necessary but the dream may become a reality soon... of course, dreaming about it happening was easier and more fun that doing the actual work - but here we go!

Our Weekend at the Cabin

well, even though nobody wanted to hang out with us we had a fine time at the family cabin...  the only rodent to be found had been LONG dead (probably years dead) - so if anyone notices that cute little magazine rack is now sideways upstairs...  there's a reason for that, it was a veritable death trap for any mousies who lacked a ladder.

the sledding was spectacular -  you wouldn't guess that the hill directly below the cabin becomes an awesome sledding spot when covered with sufficient powder...  we actually were trying to sled on the hill directly left of the cabin but then W. lost his snowboard and it went down... and down... and down - so he had to go after it!  A good thing that Q. was willing to retrieve us all on the sleds attached to the snowmobile because after the first walk back up dragging M. on the sled I was not excited about a second run!

The cabin stays nice and warm in the winter once a fire gets going - next year some more of y'all will have to join in the fun - even if nobody is up for a crazy overnight!  We will have to get up there as soon as it is vehicle accessible and replenish the water supplies as well as drop off some more simple kitchen items that are sadly lacking - however we found that it is possible to substitute a few plastic forks for a spatula in a pinch!