Family: February 2005 Archives

Some kid blog-bragging for a Sunday afternoon:

While we waited for our lunch at Delta Cafe, this is what my four-year old daughter drew, unprompted and unassisted:

Everyone had the day off, so Grandma picked up the kids early, and Mikki and I had some time on our own. We had lunch at the Bangkok Restaurant, a very good Thai buffet near 31st and Harvard -- only $8 each, not including beverage, and plenty of spicy dishes, which we both enjoy. They had a lot of variety for a relatively small restaurant.

The weather was lovely. We drove up to Cherry Street, parked the van, and walked along, window-shopping. There's a specialty food store, LaDonna's Fancy Foods, at the northwest corner of 15th and St. Louis that had an amazing variety of pastas and cheeses. Have you ever seen sombrerini pasta? Me neither. Can you guess what they look like from the name? We walked from Troost to Peoria on the north side of 15th, back to St. Louis on the south side, then down to Swan Lake and back.

Katherine spotted our first two daffodils in bloom on Sunday, and a bunch more are close to popping. The pear trees have already put out their fuzzy buds, and the phlox is starting to bloom.

We'll have a few more cold nights, and probably in a couple of weeks, we'll get a freak 12-inch snow storm which will all melt the next day. But spring is really here.

UPDATE: A reader mailed in the name of the specialty food shop, LaDonna's Fancy Foods, which I've added above, and linked it to LaDonna's very fine website.

The kids have been listening to a CD from the library: "Yes, M'am: Respect for the Elders" by storyteller Diane Ferlatte. It's a collection of fables and tall tales, all with some sort of moral about showing respect in word and deed, but told memorably with vivid and humorous detail. In one story, "The Talking Eggs," two sisters were confronted with bizarre situations and nonsensical commands -- an old woman who took her head off to braid her own hair, talking eggs, a two-headed cow that needed milking. The sister who complied with respect was rewarded; the sister who insisted on her own way was left empty-handed. Last night at dinner, the kids wanted to listen to the story with me, but instead my wife had them tell as much of the story as they could remember. This evening at dinner we actually listened to it, and I remember thinking, "We listened to this last night," because the children had hardly forgotten a single detail. That's a mark of great storytelling. Time will tell if the stories' lessons will make their mark as well.