Pitchmen

GONZO: Annabelle, a/k/a Snaggletooth, has been driving me CrAzY with a super loose top front tooth. She has balked about anyone (namely ME) 'helping' it out. This morning, when it was basically SIDEWAYS in her head, I told her, "That's it. It's over!" And I (gently) coaxed/cajoled/tricked her into letting me take the thing out. It took a half a second.Though she hated the idea, she was glad when it was gone. Now she's got a hole the size of Rhode Island in her smile. ;)

SIGNED ON THE DOTTED LINE: The kids are now both officially registered with Seattle Public Libraries' Summer Reading Program. If they read 10 books by August 1, they get a free book, a pass to the Burke Museum and (new this year) their names are entered into a "Breakfast of Champions" event at the Space Needle. Groovy! There's even a reading program for we big kids. All we have to do is read three books, write a review and we're entered in a drawing for a Nook. Nice!

TO MARKET, TO MARKET: We've spent the last few days talking about jingles. Today, I thought it was time for the kids to take a crack at writing one of their own. I asked them each to go find one game, toy or device that they would like to tell the world about.

Annabelle chose her "X-Ray Yoshi" sculpture. CJ chose the Rectron-3 game console we bought at the Retro Game Expo last weekend. I told them to write a jingle or combo jingle/commercial for their chosen item. Annabelle spent a bunch of time monkeying around with instruments and playing with her Yoshi. Suddenly, she announced she was ready with her jingle. She did one and only one take and proclaimed herself done.

CJ wasn't impressed. "Your ad was a FAIL," he proclaimed. Ouch.

CJ was a bit more thorough. He wrote notes. He studied the box his product came in. He practiced his lines several times. He drafted Annabelle for a part in his ad (which she was happy to overact in) and there were several takes until he came out with this:

Of course, the outtakes from his ad were the best part!

FRIENDLY: After school, we met CJ's BFF from kindergarten at a park in Magnolia. The kids played at a park for a few minutes, but soon the rains came. They chased us a couple of blocks to Magnolia Village Pub, where the kids each enjoyed a side of fries. We tuned "Phineas and Ferb" into the booth's TV. It's a great cartoon - one of those both kids and adults can enjoy. Once the fries were gone and P&F was over, the skies had cleared and we went back to the park for a bit.

Needless to say, it was a very pleasant way to spend two hours this afternoon.

SPECIAL DELIVERY: When I checked the mail late today, I found an envelope from Antioch College from Kennedy. I called him and told him about it and he told me to open it for him. Inside were some long, explicit directions about how he should register for classes. I started to text him the info but several dozen characters into it I decided it was more than I wanted to text. I offered to deliver it to him a couple blocks south of his place in Fremont. More specifically, at Fremont Brewing - a place we've been wanting to check out for awhile.

The digs are no great shakes - wobbly tables and planks atop kegs for benches - and they don't serve food BUT who cares? ;) Their beer is excellent and the price is great and it's very family friendly. We brought our Super Mario Bros. chess board, which quickly attracted the attention of another young boy there. He joined our party and we had a rollicking, hour-long match. The boy (an over-sized four year old) had never played chess before, but he was a quick study. I was impressed.In the end, CJ's team lost to Annabelle's team, but there were no hard feelings. It was plenty of fun for everyone.