Perftic garlicks....

Yesterday I unexpectedly had the day off (the boys were sick - or Dawson was anyway). I loaded up my kids and a picnic lunch and took them to a park in a neighboring town. I'd always wanted to check that park out because a. it had woodchips instead of sand and b. it just looked neat. It was neat. It has a toddler area with slides and steps in mini size that was just right for Colby to play on without help. The bigger kid area had 3 slides (a tie with swings for Kailin's favorite) and a "ladder" (those convex metal bar things that function as a ladder but look a little different - hard to explain I guess). Kailin loves the ladder at our park, but it's only 3 feet tall. This one was 8 feet tall to connect with the platform near the tallest slides. I am proud to say that Kailin ran right over to it and climbed up without any trepidation! She proceeded to go down all the big girl slides without anyone to catch her, and also told me to go play with Colby while she played in the big kid area. Where is my baby?? She's getting to be such a little grown up.

After our lunch and some more playing (read - it was WELL into "heading rapidly toward the wall" time) we left the park and I was secretly planning to stop at McDonald's for ice cream for the kids. As we drove up, Kailin spied it and said, "Can we go McDonald's - get some ice cream?" and I said yes. She said (in disbelief), "Can we??" and I said yes and she yelled, "That would be PERFTIC, MAMA!!!!!!!!" The ice cream plan was indeed "perftic" til we left and Kailin caught her toe in the parking lot and did a full out Superwoman onto the pavement. She howled and howled her pathetic overtired, scared, I need my mom howl. I snatched her up and brushed her off and kissed her skinned up knee and promised a bandaid when we got home. Luckily she's a tough kid and that did the trick.

I've also been meaning to blog about the garlicks. We have a year round garland with white lights in it right at ceiling level in our living room. It used to be a Christmas thing, but we like it and it's homey and there you have it. It hasn't been lit regularly since we unplugged the carefully orchestrated symphony of plugs from our Christmas village. The garland gets plugged into it somewhere in the middle (can you tell I share no responsibility for it's setup?!). Anyway, Kailin thinks the name of it is "garlicks" even though she knows what garlic is in the kitchen as well. She's forever saying "Daddy, can you light up the garlicks?" and I always have a mental vision of some sort of garlic bomb or maybe a garlic candle... neither is appealing.