My New Ride

Every guy ought to have one of these. In fact, I would call it the ultimate gardening or just messing around in the yard machine. Any guy who likes digging in the dirt - this is your toy.




Truth be told, it's a neighbors. He graciously let me use it. We had a play area in our back yard we are converting to a garden. However, the spot was covered with about 9 yards of pea gravel. But then, there's Craigslist! I got rid of all 9 yard of gravel instead of dumping it into the river bed. I could have done that, but what a waste! It was about $150 of good material, and I pretty much gave it away. I think only Jacob was having more fun.

Studlier by the day ...

I mean, just look at this kid. Sure, some admitted bias. It's amazing how kids inadvertently exude confidence in their own cuteness.

The Worth of Mothers

I've always felt that women are one of God's greater gifts to the world. My own mom helped me develop that conviction, and Suzanne continues that for me in her role as both wife and mother. She has a lucky husband, and lucky kids. For my birthday, she made this lovely jello for me.



The rage these days is to put something inside the jello - I'm not a big jello fan, but this was the best ever. She had the receipt for a book I'd begged her for - Michael Yon's new Moment of Truth in Iraq. More on this book in a later post - fascinating. I recommend it.

Have you ever wondered what it would take to replace your mother? or if she were compensated, what would your wife or mother make as an hourly wage? That's the business of the folks at Salary.com, they've done such studies. You would be astounded at how much they figured your stay-at-home wife/mother should be compensated. Don't tell Suzanne! I'll try to keep her happy with my grouchy self and yelling kids, late nights and early mornings. Maybe an occasional 'thank you', and half-hearted gratitude on one day a year.

Mothers - how do you do it? We are grateful. Some could put a dollar sign to it; my personal experience has always been - priceless.

Warning - Gross Content

Kudos to Callie! She won third place in some school-wide writing contest. Something about tree-worship, or other such nonsense. Callie is a very good writer, which, I believe, comes from her very good reading habits, as well as a flair for the dramatic. There's so much drama in our house - I swear we never need to watch TV. In fact, I don't think I have watched ANYTHING on the tele (regular programming) in three weeks. We just don't turn it on - there's nothing really worth our time. So, like a lack of knowledge inspires a mind to create a new reality - does a lack of drama from the TV source force the spice of life in other ways?




Here's one bit of drama we could do without. But it makes for a great (if not disturbing) story for ancestry and progeny that will live through the ages. Jacob is still wearing underwear. We've had some exciting moments, like last Sunday when he used a whole roll of toilet paper and flushed it all down the toilet. Only it didn't flush and it flooded instead, all over the floor. Or when he was sneaking Oreos in the pantry and mom found him standing in there, amidst a puddle, just as our friends showed up for a visit. The best one was yesterday, when we were all inside and Jacob was entertaining himself in the backyard. I went outside to find Jacob without any pants on. Where are your pants? "Dad, I went poop!" The immediate thought was that the pants were now beyond recognition, and Jacob had rightly ejected himself from them. "No Dad, my pants are clean!" Well where are they? "Come here, I'll show you!" Sure enough, his pants were clean. But that could only mean one thing ... the poop was in the grass. Where's the poop? "Over here!" He proudly pointed to the spot. Lovely. See - it's okay if it's not on the carpet, or in his pants. Apparently he knows that going outside is part of getting back to Nature. So I put the wheelbarrow over the "area" so as to block any unsuspecting would-be pooper stepper-inners, until I could shovel away the offending pile. I'm not sure what's worse, the poop disappeared about 5 minutes later. We avoided Daisy for the rest of the evening, and several days and hands-full of dog biscuits later. Yuck.