A cheap tour of the Magic City

Exploring Sloss Furnaces, originally uploaded by MCuthbert.

Misty's cousin Kristen and her son Traie visited us from Cullman this weekend, and we took them on a mini-tour of some of our favorite free family attractions in Birmingham.

We started off with a trip to the Birmingham Museum of Art where the kids got to do a spinning paint project at Bart's Art Cart. Next we headed over to Railroad Park for a picnic lunch and some much-needed rolling in the grass down a hill. Our outing finished up at Sloss Furnaces, where the girls freaked out about ghosts they were sure they heard.

Unfortunately, I forgot to bring along my camera, so I had to rely on my cell phone for pictures. Some of them turned out pretty well, though.

In the evening before going out for barbecue at Jim 'N Nick's, we stopped by the Bessemer airport so the kids could walk onto the runway and look at the planes. While we were out there, three men came up to us and one of them asked if the kids would like to see the inside of a plane. He unlocked his plane and let each of them sit in the cockpit and wear a headset. Emily got nervous really quickly, certain that the plane was going to take off with her in it. But Kendall and Traie loved it. They both told me they wanted to be "airporters" when they grow up.

Emily the tree-hugging hippie

Emily shared an idea with me last night on how we can save trees: "Why not cut down just one tree, make one big sheet of paper, and use the copy machine to make a million bajillion more?"

Xerox should hire her to be their spokesperson.

Dramatic reading of an angry game review

This is stupidity turned into brilliance. Epic music (Carl Orff's "O Fortuna") accompanies a Shakespearian-style reading of a badly spelled video game review.