I think that D definitely passed down his silliness to both k and n. Here is some evidence:
D ran the Surf City Marathon last Sunday. He was looking through his medals this morning and found his gaudy Disneyland 1/2 Marathon medals. The kids had fun playing with the bling.
Yesterday we went to IHOP for a free short stack of buttermilk pancakes. The day before we went to Yogurtland for National Frozen Yogurt Day. I have a renewed interest in celebrating national food holidays, which I pretty much only did in February of last year. We’ll see if I can keep it up longer this year.
How does IHOP make these beautifully uniform golden brown pancakes? Is this possible to do at home? Do I need to invest in a flat top griddle?
We took the leftovers home + I made eggs=breakfast for dinner!
You may be wondering what one has to do with the other. Specially marked boxes of General Mills cereal are now offering free movie tickets with purchase of two boxes. That is a pretty good deal considering the cost of movies these days. D and I rarely see movies in the theater. The last movie we saw in the theater was The Lorax, through Mazda, and the one before that was Moneyball, I believe. When I was provided with movie tickets through MyBlogSpark by General Mills, I knew I wanted to use them to see Les Miserables. D wasn’t as keen on the idea, (mostly because it is so long, and he doesn’t do long movies in the theater) but he ended up enjoying it too. It is such a haunting, epic movie…I still think about it sometimes. It definitely left an impression on me, even more than the stage production.
But, back to the cereal. Cheerios has been a staple in our house since before k and n were babies. It is the perfect easy go-to breakfast and take along snack. Sometimes I mix them up with other flavors, such as Honey Nut, so there is just a touch of sweetness.
Disclosure: The information, products and General Mills gift pack were provided by General Mills through MyBlogSpark.
Sunday was the official start of Girl Scout cookie season. I was not sure how enthusiastic k would be about the whole thing. Turns out that n is a natural born salesperson! He actually enjoys asking people if they would like to buy Girl Scout cookies. k is still working on her sales pitch, but she loves handling the money, giving the boxes to people, and re-stocking inventory. The play cash register that my parents gave to k for her birthday is perfect for the little store that we have been setting up on our driveway. D has also done his part in hawking boxes at work. It truly is a family effort and actually kind of fun!
Last week, seemingly out of the blue, k asked, “Did you know that before I was born, life was unfair?” Puzzled, I asked her what she meant. She said that in school she learned that some kids could not go to the schools that they wanted to go to. I put two and two together, and asked if she also learned about certain people having to sit in the back of the bus and using separate drinking fountains. She said “yes”, so I guess Kindergarten is when lessons about social injustice are first introduced. I don’t think we had really talked about it as a family before, so it was a good jumping off point. I chose not to go into how, in many ways, life still is not fair. She will learn soon enough, I am sure. On Monday, D showed k the “I have a dream” speech on the internet. How nice to have such resources at our fingertips.
On Saturday k went to a Girl Scout Cookie Rally at UCI. (She will officially begin selling cookies on Sunday. We are supposed to sell 135 boxes!) On Sunday we went to Huntington State beach after church. We made a picnic out of food we picked up from a Super Mex Groupon. The fish tacos were surprisingly good—a nice sized piece of grilled fish. D thought they were better than Wahoo’s.
These seagulls were exceptionally smart. They, along with a huge flock of friends, waited patiently while we ate and followed D to the trashcan.
Both D and k had Monday off so we went to Knott’s or “KBF” as we have started calling it. 
We stood in a long line for the stage coach. Unfortunately, we were assigned the inside of the coach, so a lot of the “thrill” was lost. One of our fellow passengers, a young girl, spent 90% of the time looking at her dad’s iphone, which I thought was sad.
It is hard to believe this was a major mode of transportation back in the day. I guess we take our cars for granted.
Last weekend we went to a joint brother-sister party for a 3 year old and 6 year old. There were certainly a lot of activities to keep the kids occupied. k really liked the star wand that she received. There was also a pinata, which I guess the kids don’t remember ever doing before.
They took turns hitting the pinata by age group. Since n was one of the youngest, he was one of the first kids to take a whack.
Free-for-all!
