Stormpoopers
Among other amusing phrases, “Stormpoopers” is just one of the things you’re likely to hear around our house thanks to our very amusing three-year-old.
Aside from that little quip, the title in no way describes the rest of this post. The past few weeks have been quite busy for us; I’ll try to recap below.
Clown Caper
The Saturday before Mother’s Day was the Counterpane Clown Caper Carnival at Will’s School. My parents came down on Friday and accompanied us to the carnival the next day.
It was a fun parade. Many of the children arrived in costumes – mostly clowns. There was the obligatory Panda Bear, too.
The entertainment consisted of numerous carnival games and the like, all suited for the kids – ranging from Will’s age and into the early tweens.
Will had several favorites: fishing (for blocks of wood shaped like fish), golf (putting to be precise), darts (Will has no skills here yet which made for a nerve wracking 5 minutes), and the bean-bag toss. The objectives of the games have nothing to do with being competitive, so every child plays the game until they “succeed”. Their reward for so doing is a bead necklace – not unlike those traded at the reputedly debaucherous Mardi Gras of New Orleans:
Apparently my dad and I were both amused – by what I can’t recall:
Will’s favorite part, above all of the carnie games, was the horse riding. Will met two horses, Carrot and Jake. He has asked about them almost everyday since the Clown Caper…
Mother’s Day
The next day was Mother’s Day. The plan was to take Malin out to breakfast at The Original Pancake House and then to let her go pick out flowers and other plants (she has a green thumb and likes to make the yard pretty in this fashion).
The first wrinkle is that The Original Pancake House in Peachtree City closed. Say it isn’t say! How could they close!??! Where else can I get Bacon Pancakes (no, that isn’t a joke… and, yes, they’re awesome). We had to eat at J. Christopher’s instead, which was okay but quite a disappointment comparatively (no Bacon Pancakes after all).
After eating, we scrambled all over Newnan in search of the Andy’s Nursery there. We had been before but couldn’t remember exactly how to get there. To insure we found our way, we printed directions from Google Maps. The directions, as it would turn out, were completely wrong! I’m not sure what about the address so thoroughly confused Google, but thoroughly confused it was. The address we entered included the City and State, and Newnan isn’t really big, so that luckily put a limit on just how far away it could take us. But it did take us to the complete opposite side of Newnan from where the place really is. To make matters worse, the woman at the store who answered the phone and tried to give us directions gave pretty bad directions. Eventually we found it, and all was right.
The Fifth Earl
The weekend after that, Malin and I attended a really cool private dinner at a gourmet market and restaurant in Decatur named 5th Earl Market. You’ll find more details of that evening over at Hump’s Brewing (at least you will after I get around to posting about it – still collecting photos from the evening…)
Water Grenade Mischief
The day after that dinner was Sunday. On Sunday I showed Will how to play with water balloons. We found a slew of balloons at the “Dollar Spot” in Target. They even came with a little plastic filler that is meant to screw onto a faucet. Unfortunately, the threads of this piece of plastic fit nothing – not any of the faucets in the house and not the house outside, either. It looks like its meant to fit the threads on the faucet of a utility sink (which have the same coarseness as a garden hose but a little smaller in diameter).
In any event, we improvised. By simply unscrewing the cap on the kitchen sink faucet, we had a nice spout onto which to wrap the mouths of balloons. Install balloon, turn on water, wait for three seconds, turn off water, tie the balloon, repeat… We filled up around six or seven and then headed outdoors to assault mommy (just kidding – no humans or animals were intentionally struck with water balloons)
Some of the balloons were quite full. Will accidentally squeezed one of them a little too hard in his hands, and – oops! like pulling the pin and then dropping the grenade – the balloon exploded, thoroughly soaking Will in the process:
Grandma Frannie’s Birthday
The following Wednesday, May 21st, was my mom’s birthday (Will calls her Grandma Frannie). The following day, Malin, Will, and I packed a ton of stuff into the car and drove to Greenville to visit her. We were also attending a wedding in NC that weekend and were breaking the drive up by stopping for a night in Greenville, both on the way there and on the way back.
Will found a great birthday card at the Publix. It was an amusing, oversized card that played music when you opened it. Knowing Will you might be able to guess the theme of the card. Upon opening it, one was treated to the theme from Star Wars (the intro music that begins each film and is heard during the opening text crawl of all six films).
We also got her the recently released Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD. Unfortunately, we didn’t get a chance to watch any of those movies while we were there.
The Wedding of Audra and Jon
The morning of Friday the 23rd, we packed the car back up for a five-hour drive to Oak Island, NC. Our good friend Audra was getting married. The weekend was fun and quite eventful – so eventful, in fact, that it will be covered in more detail in a post all of its own. Be on the look out for that very soon…
Summer Break
Today (Friday the 30th) was Will’s final day of school. He is now officially on Summer break and won’t go back to school for seven weeks. This should be an interesting couple of months… Luckily we bought memberships to the Fernbank Museum, so I see that in our future – at least once anyway.
Tomorrow we are off to Lilburn. Malin and another friend of hers have been preparing a Jack and Jill Baby Shower for our friends, Scott and Karyn (Jack and Jill meaning husbands and children are invited – not just the Jills).
The week after that we are traveling to Boston to visit my brother and to see the sights. Malin and I have never been to that city before, so we are pretty stoked – especially since we love seafood and shellfish, which is supposed to be a specialty there (and pretty much every city so close to coastal fishing waters…).
Speaking of Fernbank, I'm not sure if the Fernbank Planetarium is at the same place as the museum, but I highly recommend it. They have children's programs and regular programs (which seem like they would be fun for children too, but maybe they are longer and less interactive.)And by the way, that was some good timing on the water balloon pics!
I'm glad he was already using the word Stormpoopers before he met me. I was worried for a second there…