Flattened Out

Providence got a package in the mail a couple days ago from Phoenix, who is...Providence's second or third cousin removed- once, twice?...since I don't know what I just typed, or if I made it up, and since it's a mouthful even if I were to get it right, let's just call him cousin...anyhow, cousin Phoenix sent a paper cutout of himself along with a letter explaining that in school they were learning about all of the states and he came to "visit" ours. We are suppose to take pictures of him visiting around town and then send him and the pictures back where they will be keeping track of all the travels. A very cute idea. The day he arrived Providence was very excited to see Phoenix whom she "misses so much." She gave him a tour of the house before deciding that they were tired and needed to rest a bit. I have been trying to find places that we can take our flattened Phoenix too, you know something exciting...but do people visit Idaho? I mean besides to visit people in Idaho? So my challenge is to find some things to do in this area to take our visitor. Our first outing was buying some fish for the tank we finally set up, we left our baby eating fish (another story) back in California and I told Providence we could get new ones. To me a fish is a fish and although I like looking at them the next one is as good as the last. So with the tank set up a few nights ago we were ready to fill it with fish. Providence was very excited to be including Phoenix on the trip, unfortunately his arms were ripped off in the wind on the way from the car to the store, but a nice lady gave us some tape and he was patched up in no time. We only got two GloFish since the Mickey Mouse Platies we wanted were under observation and unsellable. I can't believe I am getting more baby eaters, but Providence likes the mickey mouse face on the tail, so I will just hope to save the next batch of fry if we should get some again. The fish we got are safely swimming round in the tank now and "Lucifer" aka the kitten (can you tell Providence watched Cinderella recently?) is enjoying them very much. *Side note: and I think the name fits quite well since she has been attacking us every morning relentlessly, reminds me of wrestling, she climbs the pillows and leaps off onto our faces, and let me tell you, a flying kitten is scary when she's directed towards your face.* Although dangerous to Phoenix we love our snow here, Aaron and Kelsey said in the two other winters they've been here they haven't seen this much snow. I am so glad to be getting it our first winter, snow makes cold- oh, so worth it! For Christmas Providence got a snowman kit and has been asking to make one since. So since we got enough snow the other day, we went out to build a snowman, which if you must know is alot harder then it looks. Apparently my snowman making muscles were not developed as a child and ours ended up looking more like a snow blob. I would have gone on to try and make at least a second level but Providence was happy to put a face on the blob and who am I to deprive her happiness? She also wanted to put the large supposed-to-be-buttons on the snowman's face which I did try to deprive her of, suggesting that we make a bow tie with them or something but she insisted that they belonged where she put them, making our Snowblob also have alot of moles. We were very proud of our Snowblob child and fondly think of him when we look at his pictures, as sadly he passed on into nothingness the next day. We've gotten more snow since however and I arrived home yesterday to find my driveway cleared once again by the neighborly neighbor. I don't want to assume anything but it looks like I won't have to worry about shoveling snow all winter. Snow is forecast all week; maybe we'll make Snowblob a sibling.