respublica

City Garden

Last night we went with the 5 boys and Lizzie, Katie and Charlie to see the lights at the City Garden in St. Louis. I'm telling you, as soon as each one got out of the car and saw the myriad ground level lights they went bananas. Zipping in and out of the light balls, climbing on the huge white rabbits, just having a ball. Even 12 month old Jake who just recently began walking was running as fast as he could through the lights. What's nice about City Garden is that it isn't so huge that you walk forever. It's very compact, easy for kids and filled with Christmas lights that are interactive. 

Here's Pinocchio greeting everyone.

That's just about how all of the boys felt. Arms outstretched yelling for joy.

These balls change colors as you walk through

And then the wheel of lights

You just know this is fun

And the moms were happy because the kids just had so much fun.

The rabbits were made for climbing

Where's that Connor?

There he is

Showing Jake something 

And Drew wanted to remember this and got to taking pictures

But where's little Nick? He can't walk quite yet so he was relegated to watching with Opa.

Time to go guys

So much fun

 

And the emails from stores keep coming

All of a sudden my inbox is inundated with offers from retailers and anyone else who wants me to buy something. But, no thank you Sunroom people, we are not looking for a sunroom. Or anything from some place named, The League by Sports. Or Auto Insurance. Or Whole Foods. Or Fingerhut. Or Talbots and Abe's of Maine who each send me several emails a day. 

I do have to make a trip to Petco but alas, no offers from them.

What's Fingerhut anyway and why do they have my email address?

Watering his rainbow

We found Drew in the back living room very excited about something. When we went in there he showed us a rainbow on the carpet.

And that he was watering it to make it grow. Or something. Like a flower...or something.

How cool. We'd never noticed that the morning sunlight reflected off of something to make a rainbow on the rug. We'll remember Drew everytime we see this from now on.

 

 

Oh Black Friday you aren't what you used to be

Watching the morning news stories on the crowds in stores on this Black Friday, makes me more certain than ever of my opinion of this event. You have to be 18-25 to really get into it and have the energy to put up with the mayhem. 

But this year with so many stores jumping the gun and beginning their doorbuster sales on Thursday, today seems almost anti-climatic.

Arranging the Nativity stable

We have all 5 grandsons here for Thanksgiving and decided this would be fun to have them help set the figures in the seminary's Nativity stable. 

The two older boys, Christian and Connor, knew what to do since they've done this before. 

Here's Connor with a lamb while Drew watches.

Christian wrestles a Wise Man into place.

Jake rides the donkey while...

Nick watches.

And then a group picture...real life.

Lastly, Opa checks to make things are secure. 

 

 

Bizarre talking points coming from OFA

Organizing for America, OFA, the post election reincarnation of Obama for America, has been posting some of the strangest tweets to encourage people to drum up support for ObamaCare during Thanksgiving family dinners. 

The President's own Twitter account is doing this as well and competes for the strangeness award with OFA.

Here's one from OFA which uses the possibility of a food injury to push people to "get covered". 

And from @BarackObama, a partnering of Hanukkah and Thanksgiving with talking points for ObamaCare. I can't grab the picture from this one, but here's the link.

Here's the text: Celebrating Thanksgiving. Lighting the Hanukkah candles. Talking about health insurance. Gotta love dinners like these.

There are so many more of these.

Who won't be open today

While many major retailers decided to get ahead of Black Friday and open with special Thanksgiving Day deals, quite a few stores will not open. 

• Home Depot
• Lowe's
• Apple
• Barnes & Noble
• Costco
• Cabela's
• Dillards
• Menards
• Nordstrom/Nordstrom Rack
• Burlington Coat Factory
• TJ Maxx
• Verizon
• Marshall's
• BJ's Wholesale Club
• Sam's Club

Let's be honest about sweet potatoes

They must be well liked, they are in almost everything these days including french fries. The health benefits seem beyond dispute. But..how many of you have actually spent much time peeling and chopping raw sweet potatoes? They are as hard and dense as any vegetable and even a chef's knife can barely get through it. Today as I was preparing mashed sweet potatoes for tomorow's Thanksgiving dinner, I was tempted to go  down to the basement to get an electric saw made for cutting wood in order to cut the potatoes into chunks.

Short of peeling and cooking them first, I have no idea how to make this easier. I did see a mashed sweet potato recipe which tells you to bake them, then cut in half, scoop out the flesh into a bowl and then mash. I wish I'd done that because I spent two hours on this.

In the end, they are so good.

They are here

The Baileys fortunately had a very early flight from Baltimore today and thus missed the bad weather moving into the east coast. We got to the house and Drew went right for Dale's train...which has made Opa very happy.

It took five minutes before Drew was operating the controls

Why are kids today slow runners?

This article attempts to explain why kids are a minute and a half slower when running a mile than their parents were. And that is only true if kids can even run a mile these days.