Pizza Planet Truck

She's getting better and better with some of those carpentry skills!  Today after church, we went to Lowe's to make a Pizza Planet truck.  There's one of these trucks in nearly every Pixar movie, and now there's one in this blog - Madison did very well hammering the nails in, and getting the axles inserted and wheels aligned.  Now it's official:  she knows more about cars than Daddy does.

This was a trip after church that we made with some friends, who brought their little boy, Matthew.  Madison loves Matthew, and the two did very well together, despite the fact that both were armed with hammers and nails.  Obviously, there was a whole lot of parental guidance going on.  Still, we couldn't stop them from running over to the other side of the store for some lawnmower racing!

Yep, despite the downpour of rain outside (yes, that's every day this month so far), we found something fun and dry to do inside.  And now we all have a commemorative Pizza Planet Truck as a souvenir.  Madison doesn't even recognize this vehicle - it's somewhat of an obscure running joke and Easter egg for Pixar movies.  Tonight, we might just watch the first "Toy Story" so she can get a better idea of just what it was she's made.

This morning, it was time to cowboy up, whatever that means.  We did a fun skit using all the cow costumes that were still out.  This time we got volunteers from the audience to participate in the skit - they didn't know ahead of time what they'd be doing.  When the skit started out, all of them were a bunch of cows.

DUSTY:  "Not a bunch of cows.  A herd."

NARRATOR:  "Heard of what?"

DUSTY:  "Herd of cows."

NARRATOR:  "Of course I've heard of cows, what do you think I am?"

DUSTY: "No, a cow herd."

NARRATOR: "What does it matter what a cow heard?  I'm the narrator here!"

And so on.  It was a fun skit about peer pressure, which worked out with the "herd" theme.  Plus, Daddy got to bring back one of his favorite personas, a character named Dusty.  Here he is below.

Dusty has a lot of common sense, but is a bit rash and like Alice, very seldom follows his own very good advice.  He's a great character that Daddy has enjoyed being ever since the beginning of KidPak, way back in 2002 or so.  Wow, the memories are flooding back now to that time, where we were in another church building and had such a smaller number of kids.  Yet here we are in the future, and Daddy is still writing these new skits and messages.  Not a bad run!

One wonderful thing about this morning:  Madison was singing really well for worship.  Chris, our worship leader for the kids this morning, has been impressed - and telling us that we'd be blown away.  He said he gave the microphone to Madison during worship for one part, and she was singing loud and proud!  This made Daddy so happy to hear - I wish I could have been there to hear it.  Right now, and maybe for the next year, Madison will be with KPJR, where she's been pretty happy.  Daddy is with the older kids right now, so he only gets to peek in on Madison from time to time on Sunday mornings - although sometimes we march down there and do skits for their classes too.

Anyway, after church was the thing at Lowe's.  And after that we went home, where we stayed the rest of the day.  First off, Daddy and Mommy were needed to do a bit of restin'.  That's why we popped in the next "Night at the Museum" movie, for "research."  Actually, Daddy is looking for thoughts and ideas from the movies for our next series, and watching this was a bit helpful.  One thing that has always bothered Daddy about this movie was Amelia Earhart flying off in the end.  It wasn't necessarily a puzzler as far as plot goes, but it has been a puzzler as far as why the director did things that way.  Still, beyond that decision (and the decision to cut out Dick Van Dyke's and Mickey Rooney's scene), the movie is a fun one to watch.  The three of us sat on the couch with some popcorn and enjoyed the flick together.

Afterwards, it was getting late, believe it or not.  But Daddy promised to spend about an hour with Madison doing something fun:  playing with her My Little Pony collection.  Yes, Daddy is nearly a "Brony" now.  Mommy was very wise to collect all of the "My Little Pony" costumes and accessories at the Disney Store some time ago, because now, that toy station no longer exists.  I'm assuming all of the stuff we have now may be pretty hard to get, because a lot of it is customized to make your pony dress up like a Disney princess.

Which is what we did.  It's funny trying to dress a HORSE up as a Disney Princess, but there you go.  One pony had a tail, and the next was wearing Jasmine's shoes, while still another had Snow White's fashionable fluffy shoulder thingies, around the horse's ankles.  Trust me, it turned out looking okay.  Somehow over time, Madison has wound up with about twenty ponies of varying sizes.  Some are tiny and one is about the size of a barn.  There are about seven or eight of average enough size to dress up, which is what we did for some time.  Daddy marked time by announcing a "My Little Pony Fashion Show" at 8:00 pm.  It was surely the highlight of the evening!  Here's a picture of Madison walking one pony down the "runway," showing Mommy the latest styles and trends in pony-wear.  All the while, Daddy had upbeat music playing in the background.  It was all very chic!

But soon it was time for bed.  In fact, it's time for Daddy to go to bed himself.  It's been a full day, and yes, it rained hard today.  Tomorrow there is only a 30% chance of rain, which makes it entirely possible that it will not rain tomorrow. We'll see what happens though.  Regardless, tomorrow is halfway into the month, which means that by this point, it has actually rained for half the month so far.  Amazing!