In which I make popsicles!

Rachel brought Maddy over tonight to play in the sprinkler. It's pretty funny to watch Maddy with the sprinkler, because she doesn't so much play in it as she skirts around it to avoid the water. The first time she played in it, she was more excited, and she happily ran over and put her head right up to the water, but she is more wary now.

I called a plumber to come and replace the missing faucet from the side of the house that has been gone since forever (actually since about the first year we moved in, but it's a long story involving freezing temperatures and elderly neighbors that I don't feel like getting into), and now we have a faucet! Then I bought a hose, and Rich found the old sprinkler in the garage, and now we are ready to entertain children! Except the ones who don't like to get wet.

Scott and Carolyn are coming to visit, and bringing Soren and Carl! The boys are going to stay with us for a couple of days while their parents go to get their nerd on at GenCon in Indianapolis, and that is why I'm making plans for children, the entertainment of. We're pretty excited!

Another brilliant idea that I had was to buy a popsicle maker. I read about it on one of the knitblogs, and it sounded very cool - it makes popsicles in just a few minutes, using Koolaid, or yogurt, or whatever. I immediately ordered one, and then the day before it arrived, I was in W@lmart and saw that they had a similar product, only theirs was much less expensive.

So anyway, my popsicle maker arrived, and I put it in the freezer overnight to get cold, like the directions said, and the next afternoon I made some Koolaid popsicles for Maddy! That was when Rich found out how much a popsicle maker costs and how steep the learning curve is for making them, and began to mock me for the whole briliant idea. He keeps asking me how many boxes of popsicles I could have bought for the price of my amazing popsicle maker. He needs to shut up.

So I am going to show him how fabulous my popsicle-making skills are! Diana told me that Jello makes better popsicles than Koolaid, so today I used Jello (and I also have instant pudding, for future pudding pops), and while Rich and Rachel got the sprinkler set up and dressed an angry, kicking baby in her Hello Kitty swimsuit, I was making popsicles! I made a bunch of them, and put them into freezer bags and stored them in the freezer, so next time Maddy comes over, we have popsicles!

She didn't actually get a popsicle today, though, because after she spent 5 minutes outside avoiding playing in the sprinkler, we brought her back inside and she was sitting on my lap eating a peach and watching a Youtube video of Elmo, when I saw the clock and realized I only had 10 minutes to get to my yoga class!

Rachel has been wanting to go to yoga, too, so we dropped Maddy off at the Y's daycare center (which Maddy is familiar with and she loves it!), and we went to yoga. Laura is out of town, but Shelley was there, and we put our mats down by her. It was a good class, and Rachel loved it! Yay! I'm so glad, because I love it, too, and I want to go more often! So we're going to see if they have two classes a week for the next session. We would like to go every day, but the Y doesn't offer that many classes, darn it!

What I'm knitting today:

I'm trying to finish two little tunic sweaters with hoods for Soren and Carl. Laura told me that this style - which is commonly seen on college students, more so a couple of years ago, but you still see them occasionally - is called a Drug Rug. So we refer to these sweaters as the Drug Rugs. Anyway they are cute and simple, and I'm making one with some blue/gray/brownish Noro that I bought from the sale table at the yarn shop, and the other one is made of a wool blend called Coffee Beenz, in olive green. The pattern can be seen here.