Little Flowers Wreath 3 First Meeting

 

Happy 8th Birthday, Philip!

 So today Philip turned 8.

We started the day with coffee and dippy eggs.  Then he watched Portal videos on YouTube while I baked his birthday cakes.   

He's been obsessed with Portal for about a month. 

 Let me back that up -   for   m o n t h s   he's been watching Portal videos.  I don't even know how he first discovered them, but he found some really dark cool videos with a lot of robots singing parodies of well-known songs - Making Christmas,  This Is Halloween, The Sound of Silence, etc.  Then he started asking me about Portal and how we could get it and how he could play it and if I thought he'd be old enough to do it.  My knowledge of Portal encompasses less than a half of a percent of all Portal knowledge, but you know who does know?  CJ.

Not only did CJ know, but he also owned both games, so about a month ago (maybe?) I installed Portal 1, and he was off and running.  Philip was able to beat the game in about a week, with the help of a few video walkthroughs.  Then we installed Portal 2 to a similar outcome.

We had the idea to make him a Portal birthday cake.  These were a few possibilities:

I thought the third was the way to go, but I hate fondant.  It would have to be iced.  

Luckily, I know somebody who is really good at such things.

She used her expertise to assemble and frost the cake to smooth perfection.

Then I freehanded the decoration.

After that, it was time to design and execute the treasure hunt.  Regina gets credit for this idea.  She came up with a list of hiding places, and together we  thought of clues, with help from the interwebs.

Our objective was a hunt that wouldn't be over in 4 minutes; one that had some satisfying problems to solve.  He had the most trouble with clue #2, since it involved an old-school push button phone with letters on the keypad.  I thought it would be fairly obvious.

To be fair, it also took Natalie several minutes and a few hints to figure it out.

I thought he'd have more trouble with the Morse code, but he was all over that one, especially since unbeknownst to me, Dad had given him an introduction to Morse a few days earlier.

He has the worst posture.

He wanted meat lover's pizza for birthday dinner, so that was no sweat for me.  Mam came up to eat with us, and we had cake and presents afterward.

Birthday presents were : a heat activated Pac-Man mug, some Minecraft Dungeons boxers, a light-up diamond sword from Tess, some really awesome Minecraft sneakers (Mam), and a Lego Minecraft set that has been on his wish list since Christmas (also Mam).  

After dinner, Philip and Natalie went off to make some progress on the Lego set.  Andy, Theresa, and I finished watching a movie (Knives Out), and then Philip watched Noelle play Portal until it was time for bed.  

Happy birthday to our funny, smart, silly, clever, twisted little boy!

Y tho?

A New Segment.

And now it's time for the part of the show I like to call, "Truly Idiotic Things My Kids Have Said."

This will be an ongoing feature, and I'd like to get the party started with these few gems:

~ What is Obama's last name?

~ According to my calculations, Easter Sunday is on a Friday this year.

~What was the name of the boat in Titanic?

~Natalie:  “I hate myself for not being able to draw straight lines!” as she does her math homework.  On graph paper.  :-/

Please comment with your own additions.

Thank you all for playing.  We have some lovely parting gifts for you.

2020: July

It's July.  2020.  The weirdest year I've seen so far.

The month started out very hot.  At the pool almost every day.  The garden is growing.  Tomatoes, bell peppers, jalapenos, asparagus.

During the first two weeks of July, I noticed that my left knee was swollen.  It felt like it was stuffed with cotton and I was walking with a limp.  I couldn't use my left leg to go up a step.  I had recently purchased a new pair of Chaco sandals, and I suspected that they had thrown off my gait.

The Pennsylvania governor has now mandated that masks are to be worn in public all the time (just in time to have his own daughter's wedding in June).

Knoebel's opened (and Tess started work again) on July 1.  We didn't wear masks along with about 40% of the other patrons.  Crowds were exceedingly light.

He's so strong (and cool) he can do the handcars single-handed now.

I had a pair of glasses dipped to make prescription sunglasses.  Best decision I ever made.

This is just sad.  They turned off the North Pole because you might catch Covid from touching it.  

The next day they (and everybody else) started cracking down hard on the mask regulation.  This was our first, last, and only visit to the Grove this year.

We celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary.  Andy made the decision to replace the cracked electric stove with a gas stove, and spent several weeks installing a new gas line.  I thought he was just replacing the electric stove in the same location.  Then, he told me he was going to switch places with the refrigerator so he could install a range hood.  

I was sitting in the living room one July afternoon - it COULD have been our actual anniversary - when all of a sudden he comes to the front door with an enormous stainless steel refrigerator on a dolly.  His secret plan had been not only to replace the stove but also to upgrade to a larger refrigerator with a water and ice dispenser as an anniversary surprise.

I don't think I have any pictures...the phone I had last year was traded in.  I'll have to check.  Anyway, fun story ... the new fridge has double doors on top and a two-tiered freezer drawer on the bottom.  For the first few weeks I was perplexed to regularly find ice cubes on top of the frozen food.  I wondered if the kids were doing it, or if there was an overflow problem with the ice maker.  I looked up the model number to look for an online manual or troubleshooter, but was pleasantly shocked to read the description.

"28 cu. ft. French Door Refrigerator 

with CoolSelect Pantry™, Dual Ice Maker"

WHAT?!?!

He inadvertently picked out a fridge with two ice makers, and I had been storing food in the lower ice bin.  Like a ninny.  I can't describe how nice it is to have a reserve of ice at all times, especially when we are taking a cooler somewhere or making pierogies.  Everybody has quickly become addicted to glasses of tinkling ice water.

Grandchild #4 at 5 months