APB for the Springtime Bandit

I'm not the Springtime Bandit, but I imagine someone might send out an APB to find the author of this blog.  It's been crazy here at home and I don't find myself on the computer very often.  Our life has been filled with finishing cookies sales, science projects and the loss of a family member.

Our cookies sales were great.  Out troop sold 1200 cookies with a profit of about $780.  We are going to have a really fun field trip that the girls are going to vote on next Friday.

BG presented her first science fair this week.  She did a project on how the phases of the moon effected the number of stars visible from our house.

It was a great opportunity for all of us to work on something together.  The projects were judged during the day and then parents came in the evening to view the projects and take home our things.  The fair was cut a little short when someone decided it would be funny to turn off the lights in the auditorium and no one knew how to turn them back on.  BG said that whomever turned of the lights owes the principal a big I'm sorry.

As far as my beautiful Springtime Bandit, I haven't been able to find her.  I remember the last time I wore it was during Ski Week.  I was afraid it might of been at the zoo, in which case it may be done forever.  I finally accepted that it is lost somewhere with the Koolhaus (lost at Kindergarten) and BG's new blue fingerless mitts (somewhere at school, also).

Then I had to cut an onion.

I don't mind cutting a little bit of an onion quickly if it needs to go on a hot dog or some chili.  But I made this amazing Shepard's Pie for St Patrick's Day.  The recipe starts with bacon and ends with beer.  Yum!  The recipe calls for two medium onions.  I did not want to cut that much onion without eye protection.  I went upstairs to look for BG's swim goggles.  When I checked the ski bag I found the Springtime Bandit.  I was so happy!

I think it's funny how onions led to me finding my scarf.  BG's swim goggles were not in the ski bag.

I don't know when I'll post again, but know I've got some good stuff for you like the finished Citron.

Dramamine

I kept thinking that there was something else that I wanted to blog about last week.  Since I couldn't remember what it was I wasn't in a big rush to write about it.

Oh yeah, I remember now.  We went on vacation.

School districts tend to have a problem with student attendance around the President's holidays.  There is Lincoln's birthday and then two weeks late Washington's birthday.  Parents find that this is a great time to get out of town and do something fun like skiing since it is also snow season. 

When I was a kid we got two separate three day weekends.  My dad's school district does one single four day weekend.  Our school, and many more are adopting this, take a whole week off.  We figured that because my dad lives in an area that snows we would visit him for our vacation during his off time. 

Tehachapi, Ca isn't too exciting of a town.  When I lived there the town had only one stop light.   Now I couldn't tell you how many traffic lights there are, but there is still not much to do.  We always make sure we stay at the hotel with an indoor swimming pool.

There was snow! We got a couple of inches the first night there and it was all gone by noon.  It was enough to have a mini snowball fight and get out cold weather fix for the year.  I couldn't wait to wear my flip flops again.

That indoor pool was looking really good right about now. 

Most of our visit was spent with my dad.  My brother came by the first afternoon, we saw my sister and niece that night.  There was a total of two playdates at the hotel with the other cousins that BG thought was not enough.  I'm thinking that next year we need to coordinate with my older sister from Oregon.  It would of made the trip seem more worth it.  Especially since my dad comes down to visit us a few times a year.

I did cut the Tehachapi part of the trip short so that we could go to Fresno to visit DH's aunt and his cousins.  We haven't seen them for a couple of years and there were reasons to add them to our agenda.  And well, we were already halfway there.

A big highlight to Fresno was the goose park.  These birds were very nice and didn't try to attack us for our bag of bread.

We had a barbeque one night with DH's cousins and their kids.  The next night we went out to one of our favorite restaurants, Tahoe Joe's.  Most of our time was spend with DH's aunt at her house.

It doesn't sound like that much fun driving half way up the state of California to hang out with people in their 60's, but I'm certain they all enjoyed it.  There was a plus to all that driving time.  I got some knitting done.  I tend to get car sick after half an hour of being a passenger in a movie vehicle.  It's normally not a big deal.  I decided to take a Dramamine each time we got in the car and as a result I got half of the Citron Shawl knit.  I've been working to finish it up and hopefully by next week I'll be able to show it off.