Last night we went to a Mark Lowry show in Wabash at the Honeywell Center with the Demskes and the McCoys. We left the kids with a sitter and drove down (fancy dinner at Bob Evans, dessert at Culver's afterward), and got back about as late as we ever have with a sitter. Anyway, the show was really good. We were up in the nosebleed section though, so from where we were sitting he kept reminding me of Drew Carey. Glasses and haircut, I guess. On Friday, Alex had an inventor presentation at school. He was supposed to select an inventor of something, then research the life of him/her and do a presentation in costume. Alex picked the hovercraft as his invention, why we don't know, but anyway it was invented by Sir Christopher Cockerell in England in the 50's. So he had to dress as an English engineer in the 50's, for which we had a difficult time finding an affordable "costume." We found some reasonable stuff at KMart, including a hat that we thought might work but really didn't (it was a ladies' hat, but we thought it looked sorta similar to the hat he had on in pictures). We also built a model hovercraft out of a foam plate, 2 batteries, a hobby motor, a homemade aluminum sheeting propeller, and a cork...which worked up to a point. It hovered, barely. Too heavy, really. Maybe a better prop would have helped. Thursday, Beth was supposed to take her Parapro test at the school. A BIG deal, they said. Gotta pass or you can't do this or that or the other. Study hard, study long. Weeks of preparation. However, at test time they couldn't get anyone logged in. Beth never got started, someone else lost an hour of work...and eventually they gave up and just said they would give everyone a pass and mark them as passing and just skip it this year. Yup, it was vitally important all right. Tuesday was the Cub Scout Blue &; Gold banquet. We provided the pizza, people brought desserts and side dishes, and we handed out awards and did the presentations for day camp and a pledge drive.

We didn't have anything else going on today, so I took the kids to the Tokens & Tickets in Fort Wayne while Beth stayed home and rested. She's been pretty puny lately, one of those lingering colds. Anyway, we drove there, I spent $20 on games and crap, and we drove home. It wasn't that expensive and made the kids happy, so what the heck. Beth and I had a date night last night, but there wasn't any movie playing we wanted to see, so we just went shopping and out to dinner. Friday, Beth called me right after work and told me that the kids had been practically pleading with her to take them kite flying; as soon as school was over she had taken them to KMart and got kites, and we went to the school to fly them until it got dark. They actually flew very well for being cheap kites, and the kids finally got them up themselves.

We've been trying to do the fire station visit with the Tigers and Wolves for a while, but missed it twice due to the firemen being out or too much snow. However, this time tonight, nothing got in the way. We had a good visit, I imagine they are quite used to doing tours for kids. Saw the safety movie, toured the facilities, saw the trucks and all the gear, et cetera. Practiced rolling on the floor. Really cool stuff for a first or second grader. Last Sunday was scout Sunday at PVBC as well, so it's been a Cub Scouts week.

Tonight was First Fridays downtown, the annual 'fire & ice' theme. We took the kids downtown for it, and just toured around looking at the sculptures, mostly. It surprises me how many downtown merchants are closed for it. Anyway, they had the sculptures and a fire-baton twirling sort of act going on, but that was about it, and it was awfully cold, so we just got dinner downtown and went home after a short while.