Last week my dad and I took my daughter the coolest house ever. One room is a party room with a big, butterfly-shaped table. Across the hall is a miniature Italian restaurant, stocked with cheese, pasta, vegetables, and every kitchen appliance imaginable (including an espresso machine).
Next door is the veterinarian's office, where exotic animals like owls, toucans, seals, and even a dinosaur fill the cages next to cats, dogs, birds and lizards. Across the hall from that is the grocery store, complete with pint-sized shopping carts and functioning produce scales. Shelves and baskets host mounds of plastic pears, tomatoes, loaves of French bread, cans of tomato sauce, jars of pickles, and boxes of crackers.
In two large rooms nearby is a large artificial tree you can get inside and peer out through a knot-hole, musical instruments, a dress-up stage where you can be on TV, a plethora of puppets, miniature tool benches, a painting corner, water tables where you can shovel sediment into islands to divert the "river," a "fishing" hole, miniature dams, and more.
And I haven't even told you about the backyard yet. (It features playground equipment, an old fire truck, a huge wooden boat, and a place to build your own miniature log cabin.)
The Scene: Standing in line behind a 30-something couple...
In the 1920's when Ernest Hemingway penned out his observations of the cafes, bars, and hotels of Paris in his memoirs of A Moveable Feast, he certainly didn't have Walla Walla in mind. However, since 2008, the second Saturday of April, Walla Walla has been bringing their own celebration of fine food, wine, art and even live music to downtown. Residents and visitors gather at Main Street in a very large and moveable white tent that spans from the First Avenue crosswalk to almost the Alder Street crosswalk.