Team Momma FTW!!!!

Hey kids,

Busy weekend. I'm dead on my feet here at the end of it. It seemed like too much fun at the time, but now that I sit down to organize all of it into a post, I'm thinking maybe I'm just too old and worn out for more than one activity a week. The gals at the old folks home will LOVE me: "Miss Kelly went straight for her lie-down after the middle school glee club came and sang a few songs for the poor ol' ladies too infirm to play canasta in the sunroom."

I had Friday off, so we spent the day getting the un-fun stuff out of the way: car stuff, grocery shopping, etc. (Did I mention the truck needed work again this week? $850 for a new rack-and-pinion steering thingamacallit. When I break down, I break down BIG. No $350 starters or $20 fan belts for me. Noooooo...) Friday afternoon was our regular backyard playdate:


"Momma, momma! Look at me! Look at me! Get your camera! Take a picture! Momma! Momma! Look at me! I'm hugging the baby! Momma!" ...Sigh...

Friday night we made patriotic red-white-blue cupcakes. Do you know how hard it is to find blue candies for cupcake toppers? We looked all over for blue sprinkles or blue candy buttons or blue anything, and wound up buying a shit-ton of Laffy Taffys just so we could cut up the blue ones with scissors to make little blue stripes and stars. Even then, they were a gawd-awful baby blue.

BTW, I think maybe Wavy is a shoo-in for the future Food Network show, "Topless Cuties Do Baked Goods." Either that, or this photo will be on the back of the jacket of her extremely well-researched exposé of a long-term, all-sugar diet.



Saturday morning, daddy decided to take Wavy for a Reno adventure by themselves, so it was just you and me, Jakob, for the rest of the weekend. I was determined to have a way more interesting weekend than your sister and daddy. Obsessed, really. We started out going to the train museum in Carson for a ride on a circa-1905 steam train.



Afterwards, lunch at ... Wendy's. I'm going to quit asking you where you want to go for lunch. I don't think I can take another Wendy's Southwest Taco salad. Which is basically just a salad with a cup of chili dumped over the top of it. But only 8 WW points! The only thing that we did this weekend that you weren't too fond of was a stop at Gottschalks for their 80 percent-off-everything, going-out-of-business sale. The transients that they hire to stand on the side of the highway to wave the sale signs also drew us in with signage that promised an extra 30 percent off on certain items. According to my calculations, that meant that Gottschalks would be paying US a nominal fee to haul away their crap. The offerings were pretty well picked over, but I managed to spend $30 on a handful of tops that were maybe fashionable back in 'ought seven.

After that, it was back home for some more backyard time and more cupcake decorating before heading out for fireworks at the big park in Carson. We found some red, white and blue choco-covered sunflower seeds at Cost Plus, so we finished off the rest of the cupcakes with generous sprinklings of those, I think they worked out pretty well. Gave the cupcakes a really ... interesting... flavor. Birds would love them, at any rate.



We stopped at AM-PM for fireworks snacks and sodas and then headed for our secret little fireworks hidey hole that we found years ago. Minimal crowding, room to move around, easy access to the hella crowded highway that takes us home afterwards. It's the back parking lot of a strip mall on Hwy 50, and it backs up to the high school playing field where they light the fireworks. If we were any closer, we'd get our eyebrows singed.



We waited around for about an hour and a half, reading the paper, playing soccer and calling grandma. I let you man the camera for the actual fireworks, and you got some pretty decent shots:



Last day of über-weekend: an early matinee of "Ice Age III, Revenge of the Dinosaurs" or whatever it's called. You're really getting the hang of this moviegoing thing. Except it really bugs you when you discern something in the darkness that you can't identify. "Momma, what's that? And that? And that? What does it do? What do you call it? Spell it!" I had to identify wall-mounted speakers for you, and exit signs, the fire alarm. Oh, and once you spied the projector in the back of the theater, there was no END to the questions. But, um... good for you for being so inquisitive.

The topper to the whole weekend: THE BEACH!!! We went to Incline for an afternoon at the beach and a BBQ with our friends F&C. How fortunate to have good friends who possess resident cards that provide access to the nicest locals-only beaches on the Lake. Kidding! We love F&C.



All weekend you were making up stories about what daddy and Waverly could possibly be doing by themselves. You kept saying, "Waverly is lost in the desert!" and it only became alarming after you repeated it about a dozen times. Have you ever SEEN the movie "Babel" with its little kids lost in the desert? A quick phone call disproved this, but stop being so morbid. You missed her terribly, and so did I. We got home pretty late, so everyone was already asleep when you and I snuck in the door. We'll hear all about their exploits in the morning, but I'm sure they can't come close to OUR adventures. Love you!