The glory of Chuck E. Cheese

People, people, people... let me try to better explain why I love our Chuck E. Cheese. This is one of our two CEC's here in Spokane. Trinity is posing with the actual Chuck E. who comes out about every hour on the hour and sings and dances with the kids and then tosses out some tickets and disappears again for another hour.

My mom even loves Chuck E. Cheese and as you can see here, they have some amazing adult games as well. On this one you are playing for the number of tickets in the case. It plays just like the game show and it is a blast. If they ever put one of these in a casino... I am in trouble!

There are tons of little toddler age toys and rides in the center that keep even the busiest little ones running and squealing all day. The booths surround the "sections" and so you can munch on the amazing salad bar and unlimited soda fountains (even a glass of wine if you so desire) with a friend or a good book and still keep an eye on the kids!


They have several machines that take pictures or draw sketches of your kids and even a new one that prints their pics on a "credit or ID card" (see below). All the games, machines and rides are 1token! Since I belong to the online CEC club I get half price coupons in my email box every month! For less than 20 dollars I get a large pizza anyway I want it, 4 drinks, and 50 tokens! They 20 free tokens for their birthday month, tokens for good grades, tokens for hour of reading... the list goes on and on!

This is my favorite place for a play date! The kids have fun and I love challenging my friends to skeeball, basketball, baseball (or whatever) matches too! Plus everyone gets to pick prizes with their tickets before they go! They have "ticket muncher" machines that count your tickets up for you in a fun and easy manner... what's not to love! The kids cannot get out of the building without someone checking to make sure that their hand stamp exactly matches yours... so you know they are safe and can let them run free without counting heads every other second!

FIVE STARS!!!!!

Therapy.... Oh, I think so

Ok... so I went to my first "meeting" with my "group" and I got my "workbook" (sorry I seem to be loving the punctuation today!) and I knew right away I couldn't use it. It was one of those workbooks that are soft covered where you can only fill in the answers if you fold the cover back and wrinkle the spine to death. The book looks like garbage and your handwriting looks terrible because you can't lay it flat. So... I took it to Kinko's and had them cut the spine off and punch holes in the pages ( but not the covers... so I could slip them in the clear liner of the three ring binder). I had to ask if they had white binders because I don't care for the black ones. With a three ring binder I could add pages if I needed to.

Ready for the punchline? Here it comes.... After I explained all of this to the poor women behind the counter and sighed a huge sigh of relief when I had finished assembling my "new" workbook, I thanked her profusely and jaunted (yes, I use the word jaunted) out to my car...

I finally read the cover of the book (now resting comfortably in the clear sheath of the new, white, three ring binder) for the first time.

LOL!!!!!

I hope she got as big of a laugh out of this as I did! People, if you can't laugh at yourself...

Enter Chicken George...

The chicks are growing everyday... and yes, that scares me a little (maybe a lot) because we don't have the outside stuff done yet. As you can see they are getting their first feathers...

Chicken George (Ben named him) is our resident rooster. He is the dark one in the middle and we are 90% sure he is a he... I guess you don't really know until they get bigger...

This has been your update from the Kaeding farm... join us again tomorrow for the adventures of Chicken George...

Here a chick there a chick...

I am now living with my family of 6 and 16 baby chickens! Now we've really gone and done it! LOL We bought 12 layers to start and 4 for meat... we will go back for the rooster later this week. The children are so excited it is a little frightening.

They have to stay inside under a heat lamp for the first 2-3 weeks and then we will be able to move them out to the hen house. That also gives us a couple weekends to build a "coop" area next to the hen house for the feeders. YEE HAW!!!

Schweitzer with little Whitehouse on the side...

We went skiing up at Schweitzer with my brother Darin and his two kids and my oldest brother Danny's daughter. Our family skied the first two days with them and it was Trinity's first year up! We had a blast!

Of course we had to stop for dinner at the Whitehouse Grill after the first day and even with reservations we didn't get seated for over an hour and a half! Raci felt so bad he kept making us appetizers while we waited (we were almost full before we started LOL)!
Ben and BJ

My crazy California brother in a t-shirt... on the mountain... LOL
My parents always said it was like raising twins 10 years apart... we do everything the same way eat, sleep, talk, laugh... it's a little crazy! I adore him!

D.J. and B.J

Lacey, Raven and Alexys

Happy Birthday Jedidiah!

Jedidiah had a Blue's Clues party for his big #3 and I must say it was the funnest (and cheapest) one yet!

We decorated with streamers, balloons, confetti and his pet Blue dog. Then big sister Raven colored and cut out three paw prints and even made him a Handy Dandy Notebook. Then we played Blue's Clues by putting the paw prints on three things (she helped him draw them in his notebook) while we sang all of the songs that go with the different parts of the show.

He ended up figuring out that Blue wanted to celebrate Jedi's birthday and so we had paw print cookies and opened presents. It was so fun and he just loved it. My favorite part was watching my bigger kids plan out the game for him and help him through! Trinity even played the part of Mailbox and gave him a birthday card during the song!

Here he is just chillin' out in his "thinking chair" and enjoying the spoils!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY JEDIDIAH!

It's official...

Now I am a real cowgirl... and I have the boots to prove it! My gift from my hubby and kids for Christmas was a gift card to the Big R so that I could get boots and it took me forever to make up my bloody mind but this is the end result. I have been wearing them for a week and they are so comfortable and easy to walk in that I am kickin' myself for not pickin' sooner!