I had the privilege of escorting Mr. Mimic and Captain Flail to the ward Easter egg hunt. They enjoyed themselves immensely and had no trouble figuring out how things worked. They were limited to twelve eggs each, and I didn’t really have to follow them around counting for them. Even the Mimic seemed to have things under control.
They had such a great time and when we got home, Mr. Mimic ate about three quarters of the candy he’d found and promptly ran upstairs to vomit it into the toilet. I tried to convince him that the reason his tummy hurt is because he ate too much candy, but he can’t seem to find it in his heart to blame the candy for his troubles.
Woops! I almost forgot to post part 3. We went over to Grandma A’s for a special birthday dinner. Anne made a cake. It was just as good as it looked.
We all got to sing “Happy Birthday” in our own way. The Captain needed a little help blowing out the candles though.
Grandpa and Grandma T also were able to make it and both the Captain and Mr. Mimic really enjoyed having them there. It means a lot to both of them. They brought the captain a birthday present that was fun for the whole group.
So we invited five or six of Captain Flail’s buddies over on the Saturday following his actual birthday for a two and half hour extravaganza. It was quite a bit of work, but pretty fun. I think the hightlights were the spicy Cheetos and the treasure hunt, but he did seem to really enjoy his presents. I filmed him opening each of his presents and put each up on youtube except for the first present which I filmed sideways. . .oddly enough. I guess that mandate to get more vertical oriented pictures was taken a little too literally.
We have tons of photos and videos from the good Captain’s birthday, so I guess we’ll split it into parts. Since we split the celebrations into multiple days, I guess that makes sense. The first day was his actual birthday, and we celebrated by presenting him with a new bike. We had a good time surprising him with it and then trying to teach him how to get on it. It was quite a bit bigger than his last bike, we finally worked out a system that he’s since mastered (he walks it up to a curb and gets on – the extra three or four inches are just enough.)
Mr. Mimic asked to play “the dancing game” today so I set it up after dinner. The results were predictable but amusing all the same. Captain Flail also joined in and while he certainly understands the mechanics better, he still had a little trouble. He and I had played together quite a bit last fall with me handling three of the “buttons” while he took care of the top two. Today I made him play it without help and he did better than I’d expected, but still was getting Fs in “home” mode.
So my last post was a little premature. It turns out the sellers are unwilling to bend even a tiny bit, and in this market I don’t feel comfortable paying their full asking price. There are a lot of things in the house that need some TLC, so we’ll be continuing our quest for the perfect house for at least a little while longer. I’ve had some unkind thoughts about the sellers, but I’ll keep those thoughts to myself for now, because we’ll most likely find a house we like more. We did like that house quite a bit, so we’ll be keeping tabs on it to see if they drop the price at all.
I do understand that a lot of sellers in this market are frustrated because they bought homes during the boom, hoping to fix them up and re-sell them for a big profit. However, that’s like being upset when you lose money in a casino in Vegas. Odds were the boom wasn’t going to last with all the construction companies going crazy building new houses anywhere they could find land. I know of several people who bet their credit rating on the market continuing upward, and while I feel bad for their pain, someone always ends up the loser in any get-rich-quick scheme.
Daboo’s brain almost exploded last night, but we signed an offer sheet and put down earnest money on a house about a half mile from our current location.
Well, our three-year-old bundle of joy has finally outgrown his original online nickname. His potty-training has more or less completed, so referring to him as “The Poopsmith” no longer seemed fair. He has, however, picked up the sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying habit of mimicking everyone around him. Many of Daboo’s catchphrases (e.g. “thanks for playing”) are now being uttered by little lips barely capable of forming the words. He also follows Captain Flail around as much as possible to mimic him. This is pretty much the worst thing possible from the Captain’s perspective. Thankfully, I haven’t seen too much of myself yet. I fear it is only a matter of time.
Captain Flail gave his first talk in Primary today! It was super exciting, especially since we forgot about it until we were out with Ancient of Days and Mrs. AoD last night. So Daboo woke up at 4:00 am and wrote a talk for him. I got to spend the morning going over it with him so he could actually read it. It went pretty well.
Here’s the text of the talk:
Heavenly Father loves each one of us because we are His children.
Because He loves us, He sent us down to earth to be part of a family.
All families look different, but they all help us to be safe and to grow.
Heavenly Father sent me to my family. He knows what kind of family is best for me.
He puts all of us in families because He loves us and wants us to be happy.
I know that my family loves me and wants to help me grow up to be brave and make good choices.
I love my family, too. I know that we can be together as a family forever.
I want to read the words of a song about families. I know that it is true.
I have a family here on earth. They are so good to me.
I want to share my life with them through all eternity.
Families can be together forever through Heavenly Father’s plan.
I always want to be with my own family,
And the Lord has shown me how I can.
The Lord has shown me how I can.
I know that I am part of a family who loves me. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.
This is from a couple weeks ago, but I’d wanted to take some pictures of the “party” we went to at my uncle’s. As you can see, the boys were not very interested in the game. (Although to be fair, it wasn’t that great of a game until the fourth quarter.)
