Mother's Day, Easter

Stu-Jack has been feeling very inferior lately. For example, Saturday before Easter, I was cooking breakfast for the kiddos, and here he comes, all dejected, head down and shoulders slumped. I asked him what was wrong. He replied: "I not very smart at Easter, I didn't even know we get baskets and hide eggs. I just not very smart at Easter." Poor little guy...

So for Mother's Day, Brynn asked for me to build another level onto the tree fort. Awesome of her, huh? Now that's a gift I can get into; she even helped me on Sunday. It took me longer than I thought, probably because everything is getting higher up now. Here is a picture of the improved fort:

I built the solid fence around it with a ladder on the inside with a trap door in the floor, because it has been increasingly obvious that Stu is a little psycho that has no fear at all. He could hardly be contained from getting on the top deck when I had just 3 boards screwed on. Finally I consented to allow him coming up, as long as he was on his bottom. He promptly scooted (on his bottom) over to the edge and dangled his legs over. Then, when I had the floor completed, and one 2x4 around the edge, he came up and hung his little body over the edge, just hanging on to the board I had just screwed on. I grabbed him and dragged him back inside the railing and asked him if that was scary, he just looked puzzled and told me not really. Should have named him Sean, I guess...
Then as a side note, Stu wanted to make Wifey a Mother's Day card. I wrote while he dictated: "Dear Momma, I love you very much; thank you for all that you do, like make food. I love you. And chicken, yeah, I love chicken, too! Yum" Which sums him up pretty well; Momma and food, not necessarily in that order.

Then, unrelated to Mother's day, we had some good friends over for supper on Saturday that were gracious enough to be our guinea pigs and let us try out Beef Wellington on them. It went OK, but I overcooked the tenderloin, so it wasn't nearly as pink as it should have been...

Wifey also got a necklace from our girls with lots of pretty beads with some that spelled "Momo" in the middle, "because they didn't have any A's." Heh, I love having kids!

one more reason to hate possums

Here is the last picture taken of the Valdois car. Arianna rolled it last Thursday night around 10:30 on her way home from work when she swerved to miss a possum driving on 96 highway at 70 plus MPH. I know, I know! To quote the Highway Patrolman, he said: "You swerved to MISS a possum? Don't you know you are supposed to run those buggers over?!" Luckily, she was unhurt, (wearing her seat belt), but the car was of course in pretty bad shape; the other side was a lot worse. The worst thing is, however, now there is a possum running around out there with an inflated sense of its own toughness. I can hear the stupid thing now, bragging to all its friends. "Did you see that? One look at me and that car just rolled over and played dead!"

Arianna: 0

Possums: 1

Our little secret...

We have been recently quite irritated by Stu waking up Wifey in the early hours of the morning to : "Mama! Cover me up!" He insists that he can't do it himself, and frankly it is easier sometimes just to do it, than listening to him squawk about it, waking everybody else up. So, last Wednesday night, home late from bible study, I was helping a Very Sleepy Stu get into P.J.'s. He remarks several times during this process that he is very tired and he wants to get into bed. We finish getting him "pajamma-fied" and he crawls into bed and pulls his covers up neatly over him. Seeing this, I can't help but bust his chops a little. I said "how come you can pull your covers up over yourself so well, but at 2:00 in the morning you have to come and wake up your mama to do it?!?!?" He smiles sleepily, and with half closed eyes tells me conspiratorially, "It'll just be our little secret, Daddy." Turkey!!!