VALENTINE BINGO

During the party I saw Ms Greenfield lay out some cards so I asked if I could help her with anything and she said I could help her out with leading the kids in playing Valentine Bingo. "OK" I said and things were going fine until the boys found out that there were no prizes to give out and started to eat the stale candy hearts that were supposed to be the markers. Grant's mom (the one who got upset that I did not remember her daughter) thought that Grant was being such a good boy by not eating any of the stale candy. However truth be told, along with Dixon, Grant DID eat the old stale candy. I just let sleeping dogs lie. Next thing I knew Mimi had a Bingo game going on for herself even though there still no prizes to give out. The girls did not care one bit.

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

This afternoon there was a party goin' on in Rm.306! Tried to upload all of the commotion but it's not working out for me. It was a lot of candy eating and chattering and laughing going on everywhere. There was a "thank you Dixon, thank you Chloe, thank you Hayden" so on and so forth. Besides me there was a couple of other moms there too. One of them (Grant's mom) I think was upset with me because I did not remember that Grant has a baby sister "well (with a slight huff), you saw her at the Open House!" The Open House was way back in the beginning of the school year and I'm supposed to remember that far back? I'm doing darn good to remember my name, address and phone number let alone what kid has a sibling or not. Oh well que sera sera as I always say.

FIRST OFFICIAL COMPETITION

The last time Mimi had a gymnastic competition it was a in-house competition and did not really count as it was only a "practice" one. Tomorrow however will be different. It will be a "real" one with the judges and everything. We are excited and nervous at the same time. Mimi and I practiced her routine last night and it was more than anything like a comedy act. "Mom, you're the judge and you're supposed to go like this (hand raised) and I go like this (Mimi's hands raised to look somewhat like a Y). " Then the girl proceeds with her routine only to forget what comes next and she is asking me "what's next???" "I dunno" I say. It went on and on that way. I'm sure she will be fine. I may be a wreck though. We'll see.

The competition will be up in Woodinville which is about a little over an hour's drive from our house tomorrow afternoon. Elsie and Emma will be competing tomorrow too. Rhonda says that usually after the meet everyone goes out to dinner together. However since the girls meet times will be staggered throughout the day we may not do the dinner. Dad says that we could go to the Japanese restaurant out in Kirkland. I forgot the name of it but I think that it is Rikki's which is the same name as their salad dressing.

Any hoo, stayed tuned for the results.

SPRING IS ALMOST HERE

We have been here a little over two years and my backyard is still a bit bare but it is slowly coming together. Since going from two paychecks to one, I have only been able to buy plants that are real small or plant the bulbs myself. This year I had purchased a cherry tree (top left pic) from Costco and had dad plant it in the ground for me. It is already starting to show their buds. Maybe we will get some cherries this summer/fall. The rest of the plants are as follows: tulips/daffodils (top right pic), apple buds from our apple tree (bottom left), buds from the Japanese cherry tree. Last year we planted the apple tree and by fall apples started to show up. However the tree was rather small and just the right height for Butch to pull them off the tree and eat them. Which is what the boy did.

SATURDAY........AKA THE DAY FROM HELL

Actually the day started off quite nice then at 1;30 p.m. it went on a one way trip down to hell. Mimi had made plans to play with her friend Alex. That was fine. I dropped her off at his house behind our neighborhood park then proceeded to go to four corners to fill up the gas tank and then get my SUV cleanned at the Elephant Carwash. Everything went fine till I got to the carwash. DO NOT EVER GO THERE! YOU WILL GET ROBBED! They charge $18.00 to do a crappy job of cleanning your car. I still had to clean my car after they were "finished". There was still dog hair and dried mud all over the back part of the car from where we go skiing every weekend and take Butch along with us. The people at the carwash was not happy with the fact that I was taking my time cleanning out my own car. They told me "I have a $80,000.00 Mercedes behind you that I do not want to get into an accident!" I said "Not my problem. Had you done your job correctly we would not be in this situation!" The people who were sitting and just watching me taking the kids trash and dumping it, all of a sudden were standing and rubber necking. It takes a lot for me to get this upset and they were pushing every last one of my buttons. The M to the A to the damn DEA came out in me. The stinky part about this whole situation they are just about the only full serve carwash in the whole darn state of Washington. If someone wants to make it rich, just open a California carwash where they charge $7.00 plus tip and do a whole lot better job. There just isn't any competition up here.

Next thing I knew it was time to pick up Mimi and dad and head over to South Center Mall for movies and dinner. Dad went to see Avatar which he said was fantastic. Super great. He saw in 3D. I was still fuming about the carwash however ice cream always makes you feel better until Ben & Jerry's charged me $8.00 for 2 small dishes plus a small bottle of water. Mimi then pulled a fast one on me. When I was not looking she stole my ice cream. The little thief! I did not really need it anyway. Dad was still at the movies so we went to buy a few items for the father/daughter ball coming up in March. Then at 6:00 we found out that the movie was 3 hours long! One more hour to go before it let out! That's it! We are going to get dinner without dad. Mimi wanted to go to the Rainforest Cafe so that's what we did. We then found out that it would be another hour wait but that is what the girl wanted, so ok, that's what we did. Dad came down and met up with us and we had dinner. The unfortunate part about dinner is that unlike Red Robins, they don't give free refills on the mac 'n' cheese. I think they should.

I think that I am done with the Elephant Carwash, Ben and Jerry's and the Rainforest Cafe for a long time to come.

MAPLEWOOD PARK

When lunch was over and playing in the playset was done, we had a little more time to kill before gymnastic practice and then going to Sara's house in the evening. So over to Maplewood Park we went. Ever since Mari took Mimi rock climbing and when she was here visiting, she showed Blake how to do it, they both now love it. Blake was quite proud of himself in regards to how well he can climb and Mimi is quite proud of herself on the fact that she now can cross the monkey rings all by herself. They are growing up way too fast for me. Mimi exclaimed "Mom! Did you know that the school year is already half way over?!" It seems that it was just like yesterday when I first brought her to the UCLA pre-school/daycare.

SOOS CREEK

It seems that every month Mimi's school has a three day weekend because of staff development day. Last Friday was the day. Although we did not get any snow here it is plenty cold for most out of towners. I think that we have already acclimated to the weather here. As you can see the kids are not wearing any jackets and it was about 46 degrees outside that day with very little light rain. They did most of the running and I did most of the fast walking. We walked/ran about 2 miles that morning before heading over to the McDonald's playset where Mimi saw a couple of her classmates Luke and Sarah.