The trip was certainly not without it’s obstacles though.

For one thing, the other day I broke my toe playing with our youngest, so I wasn’t really looking forward to stumping around all day on that.

To add to the fun, on the way out there, about 20 minutes from the park actually, we wound up with car trouble.    We stopped for a bathroom break for the little ones and the car didn’t want to start; not cool.    We ditched AAA long ago, but along with our car’s warranty service is roadside assistance.   Of course one number was missing from the sticker in the window.

We eventually got in touch with them and a tow truck was on the way.  I’d like to give a shout out to the nice gentleman who was travelling with his family and offered to have a look for us.   It’s rare these days, and I truly did appreciate it.   If the state police themselves hadn’t had to dispatch the truck for us, I would have taken him up on the offer.

Eventually the truck showed up (fairly quickly actually), and a simple jump was enough to get us on our way.    We’ll be in the market for a new battery soon.

Happily, we made it to the park and in the nick of time to pick up my line skipping Flash Pass (pre-paid mind you) before the cut off time of nooon.

We’d been watching the weather since there were scattered storms in the forecast.   Luckily the rain held off for most of the day and the kids had a blast.   The oldest got to go on half a dozen or so larger rides and spent time on the smaller ones with his brother as well.

Finally, when it started sprinkling, they started shutting down all the rides the Flash Pass is useful for, so we started heading out of the park.    We go out just in the nick of time, because as we started down the road the skies opened up.

Overall, it was a lovely, but very long day.

A few minutes later…

*tap tap*
“Dad?”
“Yeah, buddy?”
“It clogged.”
Crap.
“Ok, be there in a minute.”

Toilet dealt with, little one changed, I tell them to play quietly while I go lay down for a few more minutes.

*tap tap*
“Dad?”
*sigh*
“Yeah, buddy?”
“Can I go downstairs and get my ball?”

Why don’t they ever wake up their mother?

Have a great day!

Since it was a holiday week, I booked the lesson, his rental, and my lift ticket online.  Oddly enough, there appears to be no way to book an adult rental package online.  If someone from the ski area happens upon this, please fix that?

This morning, we quietly got out of bed at 7 am, dressed and slipped out of the house to stop for a sandwich and coffee (for me) on the way and traveled the 30 minutes or so away to the ski area.   It was then we discovered one of my son’s gloves were missing.  I wasn’t thrilled.

We got online at the ticket window, since the receipt said that this would be where to check in, and they of course…couldn’t find my reservation.  The reservation I’ve already paid for and had to search through 3 separate dates to find a spot for my son in ski school.   I really wasn’t thrilled.

Now here’s where Wachusett managed to stave off an angry, vitriol spewing blog post.   They have a couple of friendly individuals wandering about where the crowds are coming in from the parking lot.    I happened to encounter one of these kind souls and asked what happens if they can’t find your reservation, and he admitted he didn’t know.  But, told me I should follow him.   It turns out these folks official title is “Ambassador” and they are there to assist you in just these situations.    So John, and a heartfelt thanks to you, good sir, led me inside to the customer service desk, jumped me to the front of the line, and hooked me up with a kindly rep who also was unable to find my reservation by name.   By this time I had broken out my cell phone and pulled up the emailed receipt, so she was able to pull the order number from that, and finally got me on my way.

So thank you to John and the staff at Wachusett.    You turned around a really negative start to the day, and I appreciate that.  Particularly since I would have then had to sort out an expensive problem with the credit card company lately, which no one wants.

After an expensive visit to the gear shop, the minion was outfitted with a new pair of warm mittens, and we were on our way to get him into his class.

The folks in the kids ski school area had his paperwork all ready when we came in, and we got him outfitted with his rental equipment.    Once he was off to his class, I finally got my equipment and had a lovely time on the bunny slope.  It’s been about 8 years since I was last skiing, so I was quite rusty.

He had a blast in ski school, and had a great time with his instructor, Sam.  Unfortunately, this seems to been the limit of his energy and good will for the day, and the rest of our outing was one melt down after another.   Oh, and the other glove turned up safe at home.

I was looking around the room and there was an odd mix of vendors.   I’ll mention now, this event is billed as a holiday shopping bazaar, not a craft fair, so not everything has to be handmade.    Also, this is more for the kids to buy stuff for their families, not necessarily their parents buying for them.  There was a lady with imported winter wear and jewelry next to me on one side, and on the other side a table that was selling cheap mass produced ornaments they’d write the kid’s name on.   There were a LOT of jewelry vendors, a couple of franchise vendors (Cutco, Tastfuly Simple, etc), and a few other random bits of weirdness.   On the upside, I was the only glass vendor in the room.

But anyway, after surveying the mix, I had already jotted a note in my sales log to cut this show from next year.

But here’s the odd thing…off all the shows this season, I made more at tonight’s than any of them.  I’d have to look, but it’s quite possible I made more tonight than all the other ones combined (factoring in table fees).

The weirdest part of my night though, was in the form of a young boy of maybe 9 or 10.  I remember him from past years, and he’s bought from me in the past.   He seems to like my work and is genuinely interested in how it’s made.  He wanted to buy one of my marbles, no problem.    So he dug out his wallet and the kid had a 50 in there.  Don’t get me wrong, a customer’s a customer, I don’t mind, but the kid had a 50 dollar bill.  Then he bought a 25.00 marble, mostly so he’d have the change.    He’s amusing if nothing else.

Also, I did have one bit of a nice deed for the evening.   There was a set of kids and their mother, and the younger of the two boys spent a good 10 minutes looking over my marbles, trying to decide if he wanted to spend his money on one.   With the adults who might have more money at their disposal, that’s slightly annoying, though I never mind if folks want to browse.   It’s all good, but after 5 minutes it gets weird.

But this young boy kept going back and forth between two marbles, and knowing kids have far more limited incomes, I’d rather he make darn sure he wants it than try to push him into spending.   Finally he decided on a 8.00 marble and as I wrapped it, I told him that I had rarely seen anyone that young take such and interest, and I let him pick a marble for free from my tray of eyeball goofs.   These were mostly priced at 10.00 per marble, so he got a nice little treat.

A little while later, his older brother came by and bought a marble, and I asked if that was his brother before (knowing what it’s like for the parent when one kid gets something and the other doesn’t), and I gave him the same deal.

That’s one of the nice benefits of making things yourself, you have the freedom to hand it over at your discretion, and I don’t do that often.

It was certainly nice to have a profitable night for a change, and I made two kid’s day in the bargain.

One show left for the season, then I’ll likely put the rest online in my ArtFire shop.

********************

Need a gift? Love handmade?  Have a look in my ArtFire shop and see if something there tickles your fancy.

If you dropped by tonight looking for Part 3 of the chess set redo, I’m sorry, you’ll have to come back tomorrow night.    I did go out putting together one of the sides tonight, but I’m going to have to finish up the other side tomorrow along with the post.

I ran into two little problems.   One, I’m tired, but I’ve got to be up dealing with some day job stuff.   Two, and far worse, I think I’m going to run out of propane soon.  Of course this is happening on a holiday week where my welding shop is closed for two days like a lot of other places.    So, I get to call tomorrow and try to set up a delivery for Monday.

I do have a trailer, but I don’t have a lot of experience driving with it.   Perhaps I’ll try to get some practice this weekend.    Plus, I haven’t taken it out in a while, I have to make sure the lights still work.  I would just jump in and try tomorrow, but….I’ll have my minions here with me through some odd circumstances.

I had fun though.   I’m father to two boys, so I like to take them to games when possible.   It lets them make their own decisions if they want to show an interest, and it’s family time to boot.

Tonight was opening night for the season and the entrance of the players was a lot of fun, involving a blow up shark head and pyrotechnics.  We were 6 rows off the boards, so they were fantastic seats, and the pyrotech was right down in front of us.

The game was pretty good, and I even found myself hollering when the Worcester Sharks tied up the score with 44 seconds left in the third period.   One of my favorite bits was when two players came out of the penalty box after a fight, threw down gloves, both went hands up and there was a good 5 second pause before they started raining down blows on each other.  How fun is that?

Great seats

Ultimately, we lost in overtime, and the oldest was crying because he didn’t want to go home, but it was a lovely evening out with the family, and that’s what mattered most.

Why? You might ask?

Well, because it’s an unacceptable security risk.

Where some parents might be worried about broken ankles, wrists, bruises, and scrapes, we were more shocked by a policy that the folks running Little League have as a requirement that puts our kids in far worse danger.

They wanted to keep his original birth certificate on file.

“Oh no!” You might say mockingly.   “Get over it!”  You might follow up with.   Yes, go ahead and laugh, your children might already be victims of identity theft and you might not realize it.

Consider for a moment, children don’t have issued identification.  They have their birth certificate, a social security card, and their parents to vouch for them.   What information is on a birth certificate?  Pretty much the same information you fill in for getting a loan or credit card: mother’s maiden name, place and date of birth, full name.   So when the Auburn Little League said they were required to keep the birth certificate with the raised seal on file, we balked.  Frankly we were surprised so many parents didn’t have a problem with this.  This policy puts your child at greater risk for identity theft.

It would have still been a minor risk to leave a copy, but without the official seal it’s a bit harder to use the document in any capacity at all.

Don’t get me wrong, we understand why they want a copy.   Some teams take this sports nonsense so seriously they put older ringers on the teams.  I don’t have the foggiest why they feel a need to have a kid’s team win that badly, but that’s another rant.   But to keep an original copy on hand?  What if we needed it for him to sign up for some other activity in the mean time?  We’re supposed to go get another official copy and hand them out like business cards?  No.  That’s not going to happen.

So I’m sorry to my son, you won’t be playing tee ball this spring.  But I assure you, I have your best interests at heart.

But it occurred to me, if you’re well behaved and a good little boy or girl, Santa shows up with high end merchandise, according to legend and market conditions in the fall.   But what if you’re bad?

I think we need to start the story of Phil, from accounting.    Phil being the fairly unpleasant bean counter actually tasked with keeping your deeds ledger, and as such, the real force of knowledge in the Claus organization.   Phil’s watching more than jovial top level manager, St. Nick, so it only makes sense that such an overworked employee would snap and go on a rampage against those who made him and his staff work overtime doing data entry on the naughty database.   Heck, some kids cause such a bottleneck that they crash the server, for the umpteenth time that day.  Phil’s got to be steaming.

So do you think we can get Hallmark on board?

“He knew when you were scheming, he knew when you were awake
You’re entered in his ledger, so be fearful and begin to quake”

Who’s with me?

I’m using my little soap box today to solicit some ideas.    My 4 year old is in daycare during the day with his younger brother and a bunch of younger kids.   He’s also been acting up.

Our suspicion is that he’s bored.

I can see that, he’s out of his age group, so he pretty much acts like he’s in theirs.

So here’s my plea for ideas….

Does anyone have any ideas for a multi-day project that a 4 year old can work on with minimal supervision?  I don’t know that he’d be much of a gardener, he’s a bit young to muck about with construction tools (though a hammer and nails might be doable).  Welding’s out (though on the list for when he’s older…yee ha!).

I’m in uncharted territory here, but I need to find something to engage him before he drives us nuts.

For those of you who’ve been there…any ideas?

The letters were shaky, the N looked more like an M, but full of confidence and pride, my son leaned back and beamed, “Now I can write my name in the concrete!”

About a month ago or so when we got his end of the year status report from pre-school it said that he was still tracing his name, but not yet doing it on his own.

I have to replace some concrete on the corner of the house where I installed a short apron, so I told him, if he can learn to write his name, he can scratch it into the concrete when I’m done.   I barely thought he was listening let alone paying attention, but it stuck with him.

This morning he wrote his own name, and he remembered.

And I am proud of him.

I guess now I have to get cracking on that concrete project.