Before I Forget

I didn’t post anything about last weekend and now I have no idea what we did.

Not going to let that happen this time.

The plan was to decorate Lauren’s room with all the stuff we bought for it a month ago.

Suffice it to say, none of that happened.

Instead Abigail and I started Saturday morning with a trip to the dump (recycling) while Jen went to an overgrown childrens clothing sale at a local school. Once done with the dump, Abigail and I stopped at Wimpy and Dee’s for breakfast.

Mmmmm diner food. Hot and lots of it for cheap!

Since my chores were done, I asked Abigail what she wanted to do. While driving through town we had noticed A LOT of yard sales. Her choice was to hit the sales, and hit the sales we did.

The entire town was a yard sale. Didn’t like one, nothing at that one, walk a block and find five more. It was so good, Jen left the overgrown sale and headed to the yard sales from the opposite side of town.

Overall we made out pretty well. Jen found a woman selling all her little girl clothes for $.50 a piece. Some of it was even new. She bought a lot. We’ve got enough 18 month through 4T sleepers to clothe a Brady Bunch sized family. All for $10 or something. Somehow I made out with the best buy (and the worst $3 for a 30 year old Tonka truck I shouldn’t have paid more than $1) of the day. I bought this couch for $1 and Abigail hasn’t gotten out of it since.

Yeah, yeah it’s got the Bratz on it, but she doesn’t know what that is and I’m certainly not going to tell her. Maybe we’ll ask her Aunt if she can make us a new cover.

The coolest thing about it is that because it folds out into a little toddler bed, it can also be folded into a fort!

Look close – inside. You’ll see a Peanut.

Today I thought we were going to meet a friend at the Birdsboro Quarry for some outdoor climbing (mostly him climbing. Abigail and I just watch). Unfortunately I got our days wrong and it was yesterday when we were supposed to meet. After having packed everything up for Abigail and myself, she still wanted to go. I figured what the heck. We’d check it out anyway.

I’m glad we did.

The entire area is really cool. From the closed and abandoned road to the old rail road grade cutting through county park land, there’s a lot to do outdoors up there. I had been many years ago, but considering I could barely remember the right day I was supposed to meet a friend, there was no way I was remembering anything important from my previous trip to the area. Luckily there was an event of some kind taking place, so there were people everywhere. Some quick scouting and observation of the others gave me a pretty good idea of what to expect and where to go, and it didn’t take Abigail long to try and do what they were doing (climb!).

So we found a nice little crag with some chunky holds and I setup a little top-rope route for her.

I have to admit, I was pretty nervous getting the stuff together.

Would I get the knot right? Would I get the harness inside out? Did I clip everything?

It was stupid nerves, but this was the first time my little girl tried something like this. Having a guy next to us with three young daughter of his own only kind of helped.

I got it all together (just fine) and away she went.

She didn’t have far to go (maybe 12′), but she didn’t get far either. The rock and methods by which she had to climb were much different than what’s she’s used to at home. It was more of a scramble for her and at the height she was getting to (6′ or so) it was getting kind of sketchy. She hopped down and we set about looking for other places to climb – something slab like, something more like home. After not really finding anything we decided to pack it up and head home.

Overall a very good trip. We were outdoors the entire time and she got a taste for outdoor climbing.

I got a taste too, though my hunger is probably a bit more pronounced. We’ll see what I can do about that in the near future if anything at all.

So that was it for the weekend or at least what I’ll want to remember by next weekend.

And not to forget Lauren, here’s a video of her standing from last week.

– b