Saturday was Matthew's birthday party. We celebrated at home with Nana and Papa; Nicole and Jason, Janina and her friend Janine, Jen, Matthew and Catherine (Ken had a test review session for his CPA exam); and Brett, Michele, Zander, and Sierra. The theme was the movie Cars, and Matthew loved his Lightning McQueen cake. Happy Birthday, Matthew!
Several weeks ago I read a blog entry on Slog, the very liberal Seattle-area blog that I follow, about the idea of protesting a Mormon family's house on Family Night in response to the Church of Latter Day Saint's financial support for the ballot measure that outlawed gay marriage in California. The blog entry was critical of the protest, explaining that Mormon folks set aside one night a week to spend as a family with no TV, etc., and the idea of protesting a family during family night was not such a good one. So that night I said to Beth, "Do you know what my takeaway was?" And she replied, "You want to protest outside a Mormon family's house?" !!
We had our first successful "Mormon" Family Night on January 19. The Monday before we had planned on having a family night, but dinner that night took a while to cook and clean up. So this week we had pizza from Noli's New York Style pizza for dinner, which left us with plenty of time. We combined Family Night with Fold a Huge Pile of Clothes night. For the most part, Beth and I folded clothes and took photos and video while Annika and Matthew played trains, danced, and jumped around to music that sounds more appropriate to a speakeasy rather than an event inspired by a religious practice. However, a definite success and the start, one hopes, of a long series of Family Nights that will begin always with pizza for dinner.
We decided to get out the sled and get some lunch out today. First Beth took some photos of me with Matthew in a cover for her Web site. Then, after much ado, we took the kids out to Jimmy John subs on Foster.
This Sunday morning after New Year's, we lounged in bed before getting up and making whole wheat airplane and train pancakes. Matthew and Annika were ghosts for a while.
X-mas trip to Kentucky and Cincinnati Train Museum
Monday morning after Christmas we headed down to visit the Kentucky Leistensniders. We met at Brooklyn Pizza for lunch, where we continued to pass onto our children that, as Paul said, you know you are eating real pizza when you can fold it and when oil drips off it. The Chicago Leistensniders need to find a real pizza place in Chicago, where we have not enjoyed real pizza since the unfortunate closure of New York Style Pizza on Lawrence and Damen.
Soon after we got to the house we headed over to the park with the dogs. Clay made more progress in three minutes teaching Annika how to pump her legs on the swing than I have made in three or four years of effort. Matthew loved the dogs.
Matthew, as usual, loved the swing and held onto his car the whole time.
At night the kids and dogs played around for a while before our steak dinner. We played Wii bowling and golf late into the night.
R (Kentucky Beth) joined us in the evening after work and would be unable to go to the museum the next day because of work. Next year we'll arrange the trip over a weekend day so that we can get more photos of R.
The next morning we got up, had breakfast, packed the car, and headed up to Cincy. We got a bit of a later start than we had planned, and we hit some traffic caused by pothole filling on the way. After we got through the traffic, we stopped at Penn Station, a great sandwich place in a town south of Cincy. Turns out there is a Penn Station just five minutes away from Dan and Norma's house in Springboro! I expect to be eating some more of their toasty and tasty baked subs in 2009.
After we got up to the Train Station museum in Cincy, our first stop was Holiday Junction, where Clay got some ideas for his model trains,...
... Matthew and Annika played with some toy trains, ...
And Annika took a ride on the kid train.
Next stop was the hands-on exhibits at the Duke museum. Annika spent a lot of time in the Water Works area, where she got quite wet.
Matthew would still be in the toddler area if it were up to him.
He particularly liked rolling a ball down a ramp.
Paul and Clay had gone straight from Holiday Junction to the Natural History Museum. After a while, we joined them at the wonderful ice age exhibit. Annika rode a wolf and everyone had a great time. We stopped for a quick bite of ice cream at the museum's beautiful ice cream parlor, and then parted ways, with Paul and Clay running to see some of the History museum before it closed. We headed to the car and both Annika and Matthew were asleep within ten minutes. We had planned on getting to the museum earlier to spend more time there, but the Chicago Leistensniders were plenty exhausted and happy by the end. Perhaps next year we'll try to work in an Omnimax movie. -David
