especially weekends like this one. saturday we took mag the merciless to octoberfest at the afb ... yeah, that's right, i said octoberfest. and no, you're not insane, it is still september. i can't explain it. anyway, it was hotter than the blue blazes of hell, but children don't seem to notice that sort of thing. the minute get there, magnolia runs, full speed toward the steepest, longest bouncy-castle-slide contraption she can find. her mimi says, 'oh, no baby, that's too big, you can't go on that one' ... uh huh. as if. i may have already shared with you my predictions about magnolia's future possible career choices, but just to recap, she will likely either be in some sort of extreme sports ... or in the circus. take that for whatever it's worth. so she proved her mimi wrong about 17 times that day, climbing up the very steep ladder and hurtling herself down the slide on the other side. over and over again. she tried out the other bouncy-castle things a few times, but they mostly required just climbing through a bunch of fake bouncy-castle trees or through bouncy-castle tunnels ... in other words booooooring. she always came back to the big slide. i knew it was time to leave when on her 17th trip up the ladder, she sort of laid down and rested halfway up. eyes closed and everything. i think she could have fallen asleep right there if i could have gotten the polka band to shut the hell up.

anyway, that was an awfully big day, but sunday was not to be outdone. sunday evening we took her to see disney on ice, monsters, inc. now, why they have to be on ice, i have no idea. mine is not to wonder why. mine is just to front the outrageous ticket prices and ten bucks a pop for some cotton candy and a plastic blue hat. thanks, disney. i mean, don't get me wrong, she was toootally caught up in the whole disney-magic thing, and i'm so thankful for that. she had that glossy-advertising-cliche look of wonder on her little face the entire time. it's lucky that she was so distracted that she couldn't hear me biiiitching about the commerciality of the whole damned thing. i mean, COME ON disney, seven bucks for a tiny box of popcorn is HIGHWAY ROBBERY!

but she got to stay up a full hour-and-a-half past her bedtime, eating popcorn and chocolate and dancing and yelling "monsters!" until her throat got sore. okay, it did sound more like "mont-nose! mont-nose!", but she still had the time of her life.