Ammunition

OK, everyone, now that the cross-country road trip is in view, I am picking everyone's brain for your best tricks for subduing those kids in the back seat...DVD player--check, Leapster--check, binoculars--check...

Holy Social Commentary, Batman!

We took the kids to the movies the other day. We let them choose between Wall-E and Kung Fu Panda. {The Professor and I were rooting for Kung Fu Panda, but Cuddles decided we needed to see the one about robots.} I am a huge Pixar fan, but I have to say it was not my favorite in their line-up so far. And it was actually kind of rough as a kids flick, maybe due to the lack of dialog. Cuddles was loaded with questions {not like that is unusual} and Easy lasted in her seat for about the length of the animated short {which I actually liked better than the feature in all honesty.} Plus the film spent most of its time throwing stinging jabs at our, shall we say, growing sedentary lifestyle. Not that I disagreed…
It also reminded me that I need to watch Hello, Dolly.

A Little of This, A Little of That

This one is partly to show off {since it seems to be fewer and farther between that those occasions arise…} and mostly to give a little helpful how-to:
It seems I still have a little bit of creative juices left in me. I made this fabulous birthday cake {a while ago, of course} for Cuddles. And I’ll even tell you the trick!!
After procuring the character you would like to portray on your cake, you smack down a piece of waxed paper on top of the picture. Next, you take a sharpie and trace over the important parts. Flip that baby over and pipe out a thin line of frosting to get the outline. Flip it over again, position onto the cake top and press down gently so that the frosting gets transferred onto said cake. Now you just fill it in with as much frosting as you can stand!!
Let’s just say I had a teensy sugar headache after finishing off the decorating on this one…
***
And on the girly side, I was recently tipped off by my pal A.B. about some fun hairdo blogs. {I’ll add one or two onto my sidebar--"she does hair"} However, Easy has granted me permission to do her hair “on Sundays only.” But that’s fine, mostly because of how quickly it changes from this…

To this…

Saturday I woke up at 9.

Here is a little run-down of our family's Freedom Celebration:
July 3rd:
4pm-- arrived at the Hatch Shell for the free concert with Boston Pops and Rascal Flats. Sat around and picnicked with friends and was introduced to everyone we didn't know in the vacinity by our three year old. {"Hey what kind of chips do you have? Mind if I try one?" "Oh, that's a nice statue of liberty hat, mind if I have it?" "Ah, you brought an umbrella, how about if I sit on your lap??"}
8:15--Severe weather arrives, but we hold down the fort so as not to lose our precious spot on the grass. All the wimps lost theirs.
8:30--Concert begins.
10:00--Confetti cannon next to us shoots off, startling the Professor and delighting the children. Can't find Easy...Luckily everyone in the crowd already knows who she is and she's quickly spotted.

July 4th:
2:00--Naptime!!
6:00--Dinner at the Barking Crab. Then we meander over to the Children's Museum because it is of course Target $1 Friday.
8:30--Leave Museum and zip over to the Esplanade for the fireworks show.
9:00--still inching through the crowd trying to find a spot. No chance of sitting tonight...
9:30--Inching along, inching along, and suddenly some preliminary fireworks go off. Everyone stops in their tracks. I guess this will be our spot...
10:30--Sigh of relief as the fireworks finally start. EXCELLENT!!!!
10:50--Easy falls asleep. She almost made it...
11:00--Inching along towards the nearest T stop to commence a subway ride I would rather forget...
12:48--Pull up into our driveway.

And now you know why I woke up at 9 on Saturday.

Lightbulbs

So, we’ve been “investing” in the new fancy compact fluorescent bulbs for several years now. Let me just say that I’m getting disgruntled. So they’re supposed to last for 6-7 years. Right?? Um…no. Ever read the box?? Down at the bottom on the back. Basically if you never use them they’ll last for a few years. Ok, so whatever that’s a bummer. But I could have gotten past that. Then I figure out that the things are laced with mercury. *Mer*cur*y*. Excuse me, HELLO!!! And I consider myself a decently informed individual. I listen to talk radio. But I did not know that these world-saving lightbulbs contain mercury. Not until one got shattered all over the floor did I notice the itsy bitsy teeny print in the smallest font imaginable. “Contains Mercury” {Is it just me, or shouldn’t that tidbit be a bit more prominently displayed??} Oh, that’s just fabulous!! Not to mention the past bulbs who obviously didn’t last the full seven years that made their way into the LANDFILL through my unsuspecting garbage bags!! I guess I’m just not seeing how that is better for the environment. It’s just a little bit frustrating when we keep hearing of these *magic* fixes to replace our awful energy guzzling whatevers, only to find out that whatever it is we’ve been told to switch to is just as bad, only in a different way. {I mean, don’t even get me started on ethanol…} And yet, my mantra seems to be: “Go Green, despite Al Gore.”

And since I’m on the subject of lightbulbs, here is an example of what can happen when you are lazy and don’t put the bulb back into the fixture:

It almost looks like a lightbulb in there, doesn't it??

He's good for something...

And just when we had removed that hornets nest,

Easy pointed up and said, "There's another one!" Good Grief!!

??

Can anyone tell me why we have commercials for
FOOD STAMPS!!!!?????

We are the Champions, my friend

Can I just say that we have had the year of all years when it comes to sports!! Red Sox won the world series, Patriots had their almost perfect season, KU won the National Championship, and now the Celtics have the NBA title. It just doesn’t get any better than this!! This is once in a lifetime stuff, here!!!
So in our attempts to soak it all in before we leave Boston, we headed downtown for the “Rolling Rally” on Thursday with the Celtics. It was kind of on a whim, because we had some passes to the Museum of Science from our neighbor that we needed to use, and so we thought we’d fill up the day with FUN.
Well, the day was full, and so was the SUBWAY!! We waited in line for a half hour just to get to the ticket machine at the train station. At this point I was wondering if we should just bag it. Then we played sardines all the way to downtown. It was an interesting ride.

When we got to Boston Common we walked for a little while til we found a spot that we could see through to the street and waited. I will say we had better luck with the waiting part than our last few parades {Plymouth at Thanksgiving was preceded by a fire and the Memorial Day “parade” was an hour and a half of waiting for five minutes of “parade”} And of course, since I am an idiot, my camera battery *died* --and I kid you not—seconds before the Duck Boats appeared {which is also the same moment that Easy remember she had to go potty} It was super noisy, which Cuddles enjoyed at first because he got to holler, then he decided it was too much. Easy was all about the confetti. She was picking it up off the ground the rest of the day. Nice.

We made a stop at BK for lunch and then hiked over toward the Museum of Science, passing by The Garden, where coincidentally, the Duck Boats were returning and we saw the players again with hardly anyone else around which was pretty cool. Except I could have done without all the cigars… seriously.
Spent the rest of the afternoon at the museum and then after we got home Cuddles saw the parade on the news and it just blew him away -- “Hey, that’s where we were!” “It’s on tv?!”
Oh, and here’s my quote of the day: MBTA General Manager Daniel A. Grabauskas "Our standard operating procedure is becoming pretty standard." Okay.
Easy fit right in with her {ahem} bottle from which to take a few swigs...And yes, I purposely dressed them to match in yellow so that I could find them easier if misplaced. {And another thing I need to do before we leave is buy some Celtics stuff...}