American Girl Store: The Local Version

We were driving home from the gym and I decided to detour to check out a garage sale on the block next to ours.  I almost didn't turn because most people in our neighborhood have even worse stuff than us.  Sure enough, the garage sale was a bust.

But the house across the street had a little sign in the yard with a little balloon on it that said:

"American Girl Open House."

Again, I almost didn't stop.  I thought someone might be selling American Girl stuff out of their home, but I also thought maybe it was a little party someone was having and I was going to knock on the door in my sweaty gym clothes and embarrass myself.

I talked it over with PK1 and told her what I was thinking.  She put her hands over her eyes, kicked her legs and begged me not to go to the door, because she gets very embarrassed easily.  I told the PKs to sit tight, I would go to the door myself.   I just had to know.

Sure enough, a nice lady refurbishes AG dolls and makes AG clothes and sells them right in her living room!

It was a real wonderland.

I bought the PKs each a swimsuit for their doll.

Then we came back later in the day with Little Neighbor Girl. I did buy a couple more things secretly and stashed them away for Christmas.

Miss Judi was such a delight:

As always, click on photos if you want to see them bigger.  And if anyone wants to go to one of the open houses, let me know and I will let you know when she hosts one again.

Putt-Putt

Since it was too cold for the pool today, we decided to take the kids to play putt-putt.   Actually, where I am from, it is called mini-golf, but whatever.  The PKs think Putt-Putt is a VERY funny word and they had a game going in the backseat to see if they could say, "Putt-Putt" without laughing.  They were not very good at that game.  They were only a little better at playing Putt-Putt:

I think PD was hoping PK2 would be his little Tiger Woods:

And although she did get a hole in one:

PK1 was actually a little better:

We scored about what you would think:

We finished the evening off at our favorite chicken restaurant, Cane's, a Columbus original:

A Grown Up Fourth: Dorks on the Town

July 3rd PD and I were invited to a grown up party downtown to watch these:

From the top of this:

The PKs spent the night with the PGs because we planned to get home very late.  Although when we arranged it, we didn't know how very late we would end up being!  I guess when you let a dorky political couple out on the town, they lose track of time.

We ate outside at Barcelona before heading to the party:

We had a really great time.  The fireworks were fantastic:

I guess around one in the morning when we left the party, we really turned into super dorks because we started taking pictures of ourselves in the elevator.















At two in the morning we were eating cheeseburgers at a diner we used to go to before we had the PKs and we were home by three.  I think the last time I was up that late was the night I had PK1.  (PK2 had the courtesy to be born at 11 in the morning)

The next morning, PD had to go help out at a parade and I drank a bunch of coffee and went over to the PGs.  We had a great BBQ with burgers and sausages and beans and grilled veggies and corn on the cob and apple pie and homemade ice cream.  Then we met some other families for the fireworks.  I don't have pictures of any of that because I was too tired to do much but put one foot in front of the other for the rest of Saturday.  I did take this one shot of the PKs:

Happy Birthday PD!

We are most assuredly dorks: Members of the Holy Ghost Traveling Band

What do YOU do late Thursday Night when no one has to get up for work the next day?

Because WE get on youtube and try to one up each other finding the most obscure Christian music we grew up on.

Seriously, we can really dork it up around here.

Here are a couple throw backs if you can take it:


Imperials again:


and Larnell Harris:



If you missed our other posts on being dorks see here: dorks