Sunday, December 07, 2008

A Relaxing Weekend Cooking, Packing & Surfing




Saturday found Ethan working the concessions booth at a local model train show. Ethan has always loved the model train, but he has not spent much time around them. He was lucky enough to be able to spend time with the people who set up their trains, interview Stan who had been a train conductor for 40 years and others. Through the course of the day he earned his Railroading badge. The train sets are so different. Some are very basic. Other men put up a whole town. The father of one of our former scouts, Tim, set up an entire Christmas village for his train to circle. It made me wish we could set up our village, but that will not happen this year. The kids and I all agree that the kitties would be so curious that parts would get broken. This year we will have to enjoy the villages of other people. It is a reasonable trade off for having young, silly kitties again.

Ellie went on an urban bike ride with Arianna and Carrie, her mother. They had a grand time going around downtown on the bike paths and eating lunch at The Market Place. They had bagels that were heaped with a mountain of cream cheese. They enjoy Mango Smoothies and shared a giant cinnamon roll. It was a perfect day for the ride. Larr and I mostly puttered around home. We waited for the Qwest man to come and hook up high speed internet. Up to this point we had been lost in dial up land. We celebrated by looking at sites that we previously could not load. It sounds dorky, I know, to be excited by such small things, but we celebrate what makes up happy. I spent much of the time cooking and baking.

Our coach,Bill, has tuned up Ethan's and Ellie's bikes so that they will be fully ready for Nationals. We will be caravaning to Kansas City, MO on Wednesday. When we went to pick up the bikes we talked about getting ready for the races. During the conversation we talked about the post race snacks. The coaches and the kids look forward to any goodies I bring with us. I reassured them that we had already made two batches of Toll House chocolate chip cookies. This batch was better than the rest since I reduced the salt by half and used butter as well as Crisco. This resulted in a nice, crunchy cookie. Ellie and I decided that we needed a bit of variety. On Sunday we made Snickerdoodles and Peanut Butter cookies.

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