In Heaven, They Serve Pancakes With Icecream and Strawberries…

…and Heaven is The Pancake Parlour as far as Caitlin is concerned.

I took her there for dinner tonight – not exactly the most nutritional dinner, but I at least _tried_ to get her to have a salad or a savoury pancake first, but no – she wanted pancakes with strawberries…

She spent most of her meal making sounds that have no right to be coming from the mouth of a seven year old.
She then announced that the Pancake Parlour was Heaven, and then decided that she wanted to live there. Then her inner capitalist came out and she decided that she was going to buy it…or at least would do if she happened to actually have any money.
And wasn’t seven.
Whether or not you can follow the chain of thinking and come to the conclusion that she was considering purchasing the Christian Afterlife is an exercise for the reader. Personally I think the answer is “Yes, but only if there’s pancakes and strawberries’.
She was also rather impressed with the Alice in Wonderland artwork that appears on the kids section of the menu, and on the walls in one section of the restaurant, as she has just finished reading Alice in Wonderland, and is nearly finished with Through the Looking Glass (a feat which is rather remarkable, especially considering the speed at which she read it, and the fact that she was able to tell us exactly what was happening at each point in the story. She was even able to recognise the scenes painted on the walls at the Pancake Parlour, and tell me exactly what was happening at that point. I’m seriously considering giving her The Hobbit to try very soon).

I stuck to my usual (though “usual” is relative – I haven’t been to the Pancake Parlour for nearly a year now – though Tessa and I used to go far more often than we should have) of a Crepe Escape (crepes with melted cheese and ham, and a slice of pineapple), followed by a Hotball (a scoop of vanilla ice cream with a wafer and almonds, and a little jug of hot chocolate sauce) and a Cappuccino.

By the time we got home, it was technically half an hour after her bedtime, but I’d promised her that we could go through my Nightwish and Within Temptation collection and put togther a compilation CD she could take home.
I really hadn’t expected Monday’s efforts to pay off so soon ;). Before we left for dinner, I asked her what we should listen to in the car – to which she exclaimed “Nightwish!” and jumped around a bit…hehe.
So we started going through the CDs and picking tracks, and one compilation CD turned in to two, and half an hour past her bedtime turned in to two hours past her bedtime, after which she started losing the battle to keep her eyes open, and agreed that it was probably time she headed to bed.
She ended up selecting pretty much all of Century Child (except Slaying the Dreamer), and likewise with Once (all except The Siren), along with the tracks Over The Hills and Far Away, Beauty and the Beast, Walking In the Air, and Wishmaster. Of Within Temptation she picked Mother Earth, Restless, Ice Queen, Our Farewell (a song which incidentally accompanies a video eulogy to a kitten on on their Mother Earth DVD that completely destroyed me each of the first few times I watched it), Never Ending Story and Running Up That Hill.

I had Caitlin today, and have her tonight because Emma is at SCA events – I spent the night round at their place last night since I visit on Friday nights anyway, and needed to be round early in the morning to pick Caitlin up.

Emma spent the night attempting to finish a dress she’d been working on all week in time for today. She tried it on in order to get the hem right and it was rather impressive
I sat up with her watching videos until 1am while she finished it….urk.

This morning after dropping Emma off at her destination, I headed back to my place with Caitlin so I could have a quick shower before taking her to her swimming lesson.
To my delight I discovered that the prints I had ordered through Big Photo had arrived – I’d ordered a few copies of the picture of Caitlin with myGuitar that I had constructed with the aid of Paintshop Pro a while ago, along with a few random photos from my October trip back to New Zealand. I’d done so mostly to test out the service, and also because I wanted a good quality print of that picture.

So after the swimming lesson and lunch, Caitlin and I went in search of picture frames, and I now have a very nice 20cmx25cm print of that photo hanging on my wall – it looks rather impressive.

Anyway, it’s now way past _my_ bedtime, and if that’s more than enough random, disjointed rambling from me for now…..