Birthday and Mountains

This week we have done two big things. The first is that we have celebrated Savannah's 6th birthday. The lucky girl is getting almost a full week of birthday fun. The celebrations began last Sunday when her cousins were still in town and we got to do presents and birthday cake with them.

The party began again on Friday when she got to have her friend birthday party. Savannah really wanted to go glow-in-the-dark miniature golfing. I figured this would be a fantastic activity that had the potential to take hours for five young girls. From start to finish the girls finished nine holes in 20 minutes.

The rules were all a bit fuzzy, you could slide the ball into the hole with your club, you could start it pretty much wherever you saw fit. In fact, if you didn't like where the ball ended up, you could move it to wherever you felt was a good location.

 The objective seemed a little unclear as well. Sometimes, some girls hit the ball into the hole. Sometimes they hit the ball and picked it up and moved on. The whims were constantly changing. As far as I could tell the main focus of the activity was seeing which things glowed in the black lights overhead. Teeth, no. Shirts, yes. Paper, yes.

So we headed over to the arcade for some valuable economics lessons in cost, budgeting, and value.

Lesson One: When you spend money, it is gone. This is true even if your friend just found the game you didn't know you always wanted to play.

Lesson Two: Just because something costs more, doesn't mean you will get more from it. Meaning just because you spent four tokens, doesn't mean you will get tickets from the game.

Lesson Three: Cheap is cheap. Meaning things that cost 20 tickets are going to break in less than 20 minutes.

After the arcade pizza, ice cream and movies filled in any emotional gaps left by the harsh financial realities that rule arcade purchases.

Savannah had such a wonderful time playing with her friends. She has such great friends that really get her and that she really loves. She is one lucky girl.



The second activity of our week was playing in the mountains. It has been hot around here so in order to escape the heat we have spent several days (or evenings)  increasing our altitude.

Thursday night after dinner we ran up the canyon to a lake just to walk around. At our house the temperature was near 100 degrees, but at the lake it was closer to 70 thanks to an incoming storm. Thankful we made it around the lake without incident. But whether due to the change in temperature, or the beautiful surroundings or just the time as a family, we all ended the evening in better moods than we began it.

Saturday we decided to try the same trick. Only this time we went hiking in a different canyon. The results were the same. Even when some members of the family start with bad attitudes they never seem to stick in the mountains.  The fresh air helps, the exercise, the view. We had a great time playing together.