Refrigerator Contest

Ryan came to me all distraught on Friday morning. "Mama, something terrible is happening."

I'm thinking his brother has stuck one of his Thomas Trains down his pants again, but he elaborates. "The My Refrigerator Contest on SproutOnline.com is over on October 15th!!!"

He is upset because he wants to enter this contest - he promptly spouts off all the rules and the possible prize of a computer being delivered to our house by a "special sprout friend" who he is convinced is Barney. Now I'm not sure Eric could handle it if Barney ever visited our house, as his dislike for this giant purple dinosaur is surpassed only his hatred of the Wiggles and Teletubbies/Boobah.

(I can't conceive that any of our friends or relations reading this would not know who these vital cultural icons of the toddler/preschool world are, but the "Sprout" television channel is PBS' kids channel that offers 24-7 kids TV. We only let the kids watch Sprout, Nick Jr. and Noggin and they watch WAY too much TV. We are trying to remedy this and to some degree, it is getting better.)

To continue the story, we brainstorm about ideas and I printed out a bunch of coloring pages from the website at work on Fri. am. Ryan spent all day coloring - with Katie and Alex's help.

Then I was up until late last night getting everything else cut out and assembled so that, this morning, we have created and submitted our masterpiece for the contest. I'm warning Ryan not to get too excited, that the chances of our winning are not too good. But, at least, disaster has been averted for now and he had a good time entering the contest.

Now if only I can get some sleep....