Early

7:50 am car appointment. We have great babes, because this meant that we had to actually wake them up. I have moved us to a garage that is downtown in the nice area because it is owned by a woman and is right across the street from a fabulous coffee shop and also the baby consignment store. Games and caffeine - win/win.

We arrived at Gimme Coffee so early that we scored the horseshoe-shaped bench in the front window. People kept arriving dressed in clothing so inappropriate for winter it must be cutting
edge hip. They clutched their laptops as they scoped the cafe for a place in which to hunker down with a big mug of French roast to pretend to work on their thesis while really procrastinating and reading blogs. They actually glared and scowled at us ensconced in the prime real estate, our table covered by child-friendly lukewarm hot chocolate, wet Play Doh molded in the shape of Elmo, and the kids busy quietly (relatively) applying stickers to the vinyl booth and singing
their version of the ABCs. Bugger 'em. We stayed a full 10 minutes longer than we needed to just to wait for a venomous and pinched woman to fully unpack all her accoutrements so she wouldn't want to bother to move to our table when we left. We got to offer our table to a lovely woman swathed in hand knits and wool clutching a year's worth of receipts and statements looking for a place to do her taxes. She told the kids how cute they were, and how her dog shared Pequita's
name.

We dashed into the consignment store for a quick scan of toys and scored a Playmobil pirate ship for my nephew and some super bamboo stacking shapes for us. I'm always trying to replace our plastic stuff with natural materials, I just won't do it for full Haba or Plan price. Later this weekend I'll drop off some of our lesser quality blocks at the donation center in an attempt to keep clutter down.

We then met up with our friends at the science museum and played HARD for a couple hours until Monito was so beligerent and defiant I couldn't ignore how tired the kids were. We're now parked outside the nursery that we'll go but a big ficus in once they awake from their nap. We still have our Christmas tree up, and as much as I'd like to say it is because we don't have time to take it down, it is just that we so love the twinkle lit tree in the corner of the living room at night. Our new ficus will fill the void, since the pine needles are starting to really pile up.

A really good morning, all around. The only dark spot is the $300 part we'll need for the car next week.