Church Prank

As a family, we make it a point to regularly attend church.

My daughter looks sweet and cute, but she has a dark gift that I suffer from on those rare occasions I have to miss a Sunday service: she fills out a volunteer card in my name and signs me up for everything. She has volunteered me for nursery duty, softball, technology thingy, and men's Bible study. I just get a picture of the card with all the boxes checked.

I don't miss church often.

Oh Dear.

"Are we concerned about Drake's habit of climbing things?" I asked Mike as we waited for our table at the restaurant. We had taken the kids on a short getaway in the Ozarks for spring break, and the day was finally sunny so we opted to wait outside.
"Should we be?"
"Well, it seems dangerous."
"Kids like to climb. It's normal."
"Yeah, but I saw a picture on Instagram of him at the top of a flag pole."
"How did he climb a flag pole?"
"With his incredible arm strength and low body fat."
"Impressive."
"He also told me that he climbed all the elementary schools in West Des Moines one night last week."
"He'll get in trouble if he gets caught doing that."
"He might also get hurt."
"Mom!" Drake shouted. "Look!"
I looked around but couldn't see him anywhere.
"Where are you?" I shouted.
"Look up," his voice said from the rafters of an antique store Mike and I were walking past.
"I'm beginning to see what you mean," Mike said.

Tail of Trouble

Since it was well below freezing outside, I was surprised to hear excited voices coming from the neighbor's yard. Nobody wants to play outside when breathing causes frostbite of the lungs. So, out of curiosity, I peeked out my window to see who would be risking death and amputation of limb to play outdoors.

Then I saw three people standing by their car screaming and wildly waving their arms.

"Are they fighting?" I thought. And then I played out what my role would be if my neighbors were brawling with each other. Should I run to their driveway and plead for peace? But since we live in the country their driveway is quite a long run away from my house. Should I call the police? Then I opened my curtain and looked closer.

Just as I determined that these violent people were too far gone for my help, a silver fluffy tail protruded from the driver's side window.

"Get out of my car!" a frantic girl screamed. "Go home!!

My dog loves car rides.

My dog is on the gigantic side.

It is nearly impossible to extract him from a car once he is inside.

And he is usually muddy.

I am not proud.

Balloon Injury

Things are pretty predictable without siblings.

Makenna got all dressed up and went to homecoming. The couple looked glamorous and gorgeous.

When the glamorous couple returned, they brought a bunch of balloons from the dance with them. Within a nanosecond the balloons were confiscated by Makenna's brothers and their friends, and a game of popping the balloons commenced.

However the balloons did not pop as easily as you might expect. So, Drake, who was of course sporting bright red hair, decided to crush the balloons with his body and pop them all at once. But they did not pop under the weight of his body, red hair and all. So his friend, Jacob, helped out by adding his weight to the balloon crushing experience.

Drake soon learned that when balloons are crushed in such a way, they leave a mysterious injury of horizontal red scrapes that cover the skin from armpit to waist.




I had a lot of questions: Why do boys have to destroy things? Why are balloons so hard to pop? Why do they have to make such a terrifying noise when they pop? How does a person receive an injury from a soft, round balloon? Lucky, those aren't the questions I asked out loud.


"Drake, does that hurt?"
"Yeah, a lot," he answered.
"Maybe you shouldn't do that anymore."
"Oh," he told me, "it's totally worth it." 

Snowday Story in Pictures

Once upon a time, some children lived in a frozen land where they experienced way too many snow days. Since they were not worn out from going to school, their parents ordered challenged them to go outside and build snowmen. So they did. Two boys were the first to leave the warmth of the house and brave the cold outdoors - one in shorts and the other in pajamas.

But soon, one boy got distracted because there was a tree.

That is all it took.

Just a tree that was.

The other kids were upset and decided to pelt Distracted Boy with snowballs.

Distracted Boy pelted back.















But it didn't matter because there was still a tree.

And that is all it took.

Blue Valentine Redo

Although we laughed our way through our Valentine's Day date
that we hated, our sweet daughter, Makenna, was not okay with that. She gave us a redo.

She picked out songs and played them for us as we danced in the kitchen, and then she presented us with tickets to see the Blue Man Group.

Because we are us and not regular people, we arrived to the show with only one minute to spare. We ran through the doors and showed the ticket warden our tickets. She then yelled, "We've got latecomers! They'll never get to their seats in time!!" Then another ticket warden rushed us across the front of the stage to the opposite side of the auditorium, which is where our seats were located. Then we were told to go directly to our seats and sit as quickly as humans are able to do so.

The show began with humor and continued on with musical gymnastics and impressive percussion. The Blue Men were quite funny, and we laughed for most of the show. Then, at the end, about ten gigantic, cloth balls were brought onto the stage. They began white, but changed colors as they were drummed upon. Then they were shoved off of the stage and into the audience, where we bounced the balls, which kept changing their color, back and forth across the people.

Then we returned home to our wonderful children and helped them finish up their homework, gave a sick one some cold medicine, and tucked them all into bed. And it was no less fun. 

Hated Valentines

It's hard to squeeze a sweet Valentines Date into the parenting of four teenagers. But we made a valiant effort. I prepared food for the kids to scarf down, hopefully without too much damage to the kitchen. I showered and applied make-up and was actually ready by the time my dear husband was to be done working.

But it snowed. Which meant Mike had to plow. Which meant he was late getting home.

"Should we leave?" he asked, still in his work clothes.
"Well, we missed our reservations, so we will have a hard time finding a restaurant that doesn't have a huge wait."
"We could go to the movie first," he suggested.
"The movie is apparently horrible," I said quietly, hating to impart more bad news.
"How do you know?"
"The reviews are the lowest I've ever seen, and my friends who saw it told me they hated it."

We both looked at each other with frustration and dread. It was obvious we were both thinking we should just give up and stay home. The universe had spoken.

"I don't think we should give in, dang it," Mike stated. "It's Valentine's Day, and we are going to celebrate love no matter what."
"Okay," I said encouraged.
"But what do you want to do?"
"Let's just go to the bad movie that we are going to hate," I said. "In fact, let's make that the theme of the date. Everything we do has to be something we hate."

So we went to the mall because it was crowded and we hate that. We walked in the cold from the very back of the parking lot which was terrible.

"Two of us," Mike told the hostess at the Cheesecake Factory, where they recently stopped serving the only kind of cheesecake I've ever liked.
"It will be at least forty-five minutes before a table is open," the hostess said with a frown.
"Great!" We said, "We hate waiting!"

We walked around the crowded mall and laughed as we kept getting separated from each other. We ordered food we thought we wouldn't like, and laughed when we actually loved it. And we watched the movie, which really was terrible.

Halfway through the movie Mike started sneezing and coughing. By the end of the movie he was shivering and sweating at the same time. He took the theme of the date and really went with it. He was asleep before I drove into the garage, and slept until lunch the next day.

What a Valentine I've got!