Sunday, November 15, 2009

Cupcake celebration


Fountain at SoHo, originally uploaded by MCuthbert.

I am loving my new cell phone (which, by the way, is also my first cell phone)! I took this picture with my phone yesterday afternoon at the fountain in front of the courthouse in Homewood. Within seconds, I was able to e-mail it to have it automatically post to my Flickr page. How nifty!

We hung around the fountain waiting for our friends Kiki and Joe to show up with their daughter. Then, after the kids ran around chasing each other and screaming for a few minutes, we all headed over to SoHo Sweets for their ice cream cupcakes, which were part of the "Sweet on a Cure" fundraiser.

The desserts were huge. They had ice cream sandwiched between two layers of cupcake with a generous portion of frosting on top. The girls didn't come close to finishing theirs, and Misty didn't much care for them (she's insane), so I ended up eating my own plus about half of two more. It was a little more than I needed, but they were awesome.

After eating (and some more running around screaming), we took the kids over to Homewood Park where they could run around and scream in a more appropriate environment. Emily ran into a boy from her kindergarten class and proudly showed off her missing tooth. We let the kids play until it got dark, then headed home for dinner. You'd think that after all their activity on the playground that they'd have collapsed into bed, but no such luck. It was a great day, though.

Saturday, November 14, 2009

The Tooth Fairy is coming tonight!

It's been a busy morning already. The girls woke up around 6:30 and almost immediately had to alert me to the presence of a bug in their bathroom. As scary as they claimed it was, they both kept going in to sneak peeks at it. I went downstairs to kill it, and found that it was indeed a centipede (this kind), just as Emily had guessed.

When Misty got up, she decided to see if she could get Emily's loose tooth out. It's been wiggling ever since we made our trip to Disney World in early September. Misty got out some dental floss (or, as Kendall calls it, "foff") and proceeded to wrap it around Emily's tooth. After only a few seconds of pulling the floss back and forth, the tooth popped right out.

Knowing blood would follow, we immediately made a big show of celebration, cheering, "Hooray! The Tooth Fairy is coming tonight!" It worked, and Emily wasn't too concerned about the blood. She's really proud of her milestone.

Later today, I'm planning to take the girls out for ice cream cupcakes at SoHo Sweets to celebrate. They're participating in the "Sweet on a Cure" program this week, with 100% of proceeds going to benefit the UAB Comprehensive Cancer Center.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Geek crowd out in full force at Bottletree (and I fit right in)

My friend Hubie drove down from Huntsville last night to meet me for a concert at Bottletree. I'd had no plans to attend the show at all until he asked me if I wanted to go, but it sounded like fun.

Hubie was initially only interested in seeing the opening act, an 8-bit "Nintendo rock" act called I Fight Dragons. However, it seemed kind of silly to drive all that way for only about 30 minutes of music, so we both stayed to the end and enjoyed the entirety of the concert, which also included the hardcore punk-rap act Whole Wheat Bread, and "nerdcore" hip hop artist mc chris.

I'd seen videos from the last time mc chris was in Birmingham, but being there in person really drove home the level of enthusiasm from the crowd. I'd wager that most of my blog's readers have never heard of him, but let me tell you: the kids love them some mc chris.

A review with photos and videos from the show is posted over in my Get On With Your Nightlife blog, but here are a couple videos I didn't include there.

I Fight Dragons - "Zelda" theme, live at Bottletree


mc chris - "IG-88's '57 Chevy" and "Fett's Vette" (unedited versions)

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Trick-or-treating through our neighborhood


Halloween night
Originally uploaded by MCuthbert
Last night was Halloween. In years past, Misty's mom has come over and handed out candy so that we could go out trick-or-treating with our own kids. However, now that she's at the house every weekday watching Kendall, we're trying not to burden her with requests for even more of her time.

Instead, Misty took the girls trick-or-treating through half the neighborhood while I stayed home to answer the door. Then we swapped roles, and I took the girls out to hit the other "half" of the neighborhood (which was much less than half, because by this time, it was getting pretty cold outside, and their candy buckets were getting heavy). When the girls got home, they sorted their candy into piles of what they wanted to keep and what they wanted to offer up as a sacrifice to the Candy Witch (a.k.a. al.com employees). Don't worry though -- they've still got enough to last them until Christmas.

Usually, we don't get too many trick-or-treaters at our house. I've always assumed that this is because our section of the neighborhood does not have sidewalks, so most parents prefer to stick with the areas where walking around at night is safer. Plus, it's not a very big neighborhood to begin with. Anyway, not anticipating a large number of costumed kids at the door, I initially just let them grab a handful of whatever they wanted from our giant bowl of candy. Then a couple of kids took advantage of my "take what you want" suggestion, reaching in numerous times, and I realized we were going to run of treats if these tricksters kept it up, so I began handing out only a couple peices to each kid.

A little while later, while the girls were back at home changing shoes (Cinderella's glass slippers kept falling off -- just like in the story) and putting on jackets, we had a repeat customer. Misty happened to answer the door that time, and though she didn't realize he'd been to the house already, he told her (after his double dip), "I done been by this house before."

We were running low on candy as it was, and now we had kids coming back a second time? Since I'm a stingy old curmudgeon, I set out to put a stop to it. I made sure to answer the next couple doorbell rings myself, and when I saw that the faces on the porch were the same as those who'd initially instigated the Great Candy Conservation Act of 2009, I told them, "You've already been here," and withheld the prized candy bowl. One kid (who was a bit past the typical trick-or-treating age anyway) tried to play it off with, "Oh yeah... I forgot."

Yeah right. You didn't realize that you hadn't already been to the house with four jack-o-lanterns, orange lights twisted up the columns, and flashing purple bats hanging down from above. It's easy to forget.