Feels Like Summer

My Mom threw a little "Meet Sadie" party today for the ladies. Here are the girls getting ready to go:Meanwhile, the boys (Jake, Poppi, Grandpa and me) got to do guy things. You know, like eating éclairs:

Later on, we went outside to wash the car and somehow Jake talked me into putting him in charge of the hose:

Project

When we first moved in to this house, we had ideas about decorating, and furniture that we'd eventually purchase to go here or there. One of the things on the list was some kind of buffet or sideboard to go in the dining room. But that original list didn't have any cribs on it, so priorities have changed a little.

About six months ago we were at Ikea and saw a sideboard that we liked, and that was about 1/10 the cost of others we were looking at. We did a little dance in the Ikea showroom and leisurely walked over to the warehouse to pick it up. Apparently everyone on the Eastern Seaboard also thought it was a good deal, and picked one up the previous weekend. They were sold out from New York to North Carolina, but said they'd call when more came in; and that it could be a while until they called, or probably never.

Well, when we got a call last week that a few were in the warehouse, we did our little dance again, and made plans to trek down early Saturday morning and eat some Swedish breakfast pancakes with lingonberry sauce in the Ikea cafeteria and then pick up our new sideboard.

Jake LOVES it at Ikea. They have all these little stations set up throughout the store where kids can play and pretend to be in little houses using Ikea products. It's probably a sneaky, subversive marketing ploy, but they can't be as evil as Disney, right? They're Swedes! Sadie wasn't that impressed with the trip. We got the same expression we get when we go to the grocery store. But wait until she can eat and drink lingonberry stuff in the Ikea cafe!

Of course, when you buy something from Ikea, you become the final step in the manufacturing process. 214 screws, 44 fasteners and 94 dowels later, we had ourselves a piece of furniture that should last until both kids' graduations (from elementary school, that is).

Here are a few shots of Jake "helping" in the assembly process, and the finished product:

Comparison

We keep trying to compare Sadie to how Jake looked at her age. Last night Ali was holding Sadie up to the computer monitor while we scrolled through pictures of Jake, but that was a bit awkward. So here they are, both at about two months:

Of course with different lighting, and different expressions, they can look like totally different people from picture to picture. It's also worth noting that Jake looks pretty different today than he did back in the fall of 2005. Sadie's got a lot of catching up to do!

Field Trip

Ali and I, and our good friend Heidi (minus Jamie), went out tonight to see the Pipettes at the Black Cat. It was like turning the clock back about four years to when we lived right down the street from the Black Cat and used to see lots of shows there. Except this time we had a babysitter - and not just any babysitter, but a real non-grandparent, non-friend, teenage girl babysitter who lives in the neighborhood. She's an older sister of one of the kids Jake plays with and she did great. We told her this was our first real babysitter and we weren't sure what we needed to tell her. She kind of shrugged her shoulders and said the cell phone number we left her was fine. Jake was already asleep when the babysitter came over, and I know he'll be disappointed about two things: 1) he missed an opportunity to entertain someone new, and 2) he missed one of his favorite bands. Well, Jake, they put on a great show but you probably wouldn't have been able to see much anyway from your perspective.