Guest Writer

My husband posted a funny story on Facebook and I thought I would share it here as well.
Enjoy.

Starlings and the Dryer Vent Love Shack - or - Bye, Bye, Birdies... (Your choice, but personally I like the first one.)

Yesterday upon arriving home from my dungeon of a dead end job my girls said, "there's something making weird noises in the laundry room." The Dad Man (that's me) springs into action. I walked into the laundry room expecting nothing and thinking that they were hearing things. To my surprise I did hear a faint scratching in the vent. I left Casey in the laundry room with instructions to turn on the dryer on my command. I went outside and raised up the little door on the dryer exhaust vent to told her to turn on the dryer. Immediately I was plastered in the face with a wad of freshly cut grass. Beautiful... at least I have learned to keep my mouth closed while looking up! After wiping all the grass off my face, blowing the dirt of my glasses, and reminding myself to control my tongue I stomped back inside to the laundry room. After a brief moment of dragging all the laundry room stuff into the hall I wrestled with the dryer. It lost, and inside of five minutes I was headed back out the door with the dryer vent hose in hand. Back inside two little girls were pouting and saying, "what about the baby birds Dad?" I stomped my way across the back yard and out the back gate all the while muttering to myself, "no darn Starling nest is gonna cause my house to catch on fire no matter what!" (Before everyone gets fired up about baby birds... Starlings were not native to North American and were imported by an European immigrant. I'm not a fan of non-native avian species.) (OK, everyone breath now and stop looking up the number to PETA.) I proceeded to dump the rest of the grass, that did not land smack in my face, out of the vent hose. To my girls delight, no babies and no eggs. Apparently my sacred dryer vent was just a tunnel of love at that point. Well, one thing lead to another and I ended up getting everything back together. All was well and the Love Shack was closed.

Yea, right... My dear wife of almost 17 years calls me at 7:15am. She had been bounced out of bed at 6:15am to a horrendous noise. Needless to say no one at my house was singing "Kum-ba-Ya" early this morning. The Love Shack was open and the band was rockin'. Apparently this one went up to 11! (Shameless Spinal Tap reference.) She ran Mr. and Mrs. Starling out of the vent pipe and then proceeded to tape the little flappy door shut with electrical tape. (Yup, that's my girl. She sure showed those amorous avians.)

Yet, The Dad Man's job is never done... So again, I spring into action. With 1/2" expanded metal, a plasma cutter, two vise grip clamps, a piece of angle iron, two different hammers, a wire feed welder, and a little galvanizing spray paint the permanent closure sign was posted on the front door of the Love Shack.

Now we can sing "Kum-ba-Ya". Mr. & Mrs. Starling were pretty torqued, but I'm sure that found someone else's dryer vent. I'm feeling good that my drier vent hose won't be catching on fire anytime soon. The girls were glad that, "no animals were harmed in the making of this story". And hopefully my Mrs. will get to sleep a little longer in the morning.

Chicklets

This is for those of you old enough to remember Chicklets. We used to get them when my parents would go through the Drive Through at the bank.

Joe: "Cody, we have GOT to pull that tooth, it looks like a Chicklet hanging there!

Me: "Joe, they don't even know what Chicklets are!"

Cody: "Yes I do!"

Me: "No you don't, you've never even had one."

Cody: "So, I know what it is!"

Me: "No you don't!" (beginning to laugh)

Cody: "Yes I do.....it's a baby chicken!"

All: HYSTERICAL LAUGHTER

Our Easter in Pictures

We had a really wonderful Easter, hope you did too!
Enjoy our pictures taken by Casey (except the ones OF Casey!)

Making Easter Story Cookies

Can you tell who likes the taste of salt and who doesn't?

Sealing the "tomb"

Eggs

From start to finish

Basket!
New Dress!

Easter Traditions

Every Easter we do some of the same things that a lot of families do, we dye eggs, have an egg hunt, and read about Jesus.
Some other things we do are a little more unique!

1. We fill the girl's Easter baskets (yes, we tell the Bunny that we like to fill them ourselves) then we hide them so that in the morning they have to first find their baskets. They LOVE doing that!

2. They normally get a new set of summer pajamas in their baskets.

3. We go through our set of Resurrection Eggs that tell the story of Jesus' death and resurrection.

4. Easter Eve we "egg" a few people's houses - no, it's not what you are thinking - we put filled plastic eggs in the front yards of a couple of people we know, changing families each year. This was actually started by a neighbor of ours who did it to us a couple of years ago. The girls LOVE secretly putting eggs in their friend's yards. Oh, we always leave one large egg that tells the family who did it so they won't freak out about letting their kids eat treats from an unknown source!

5. When we come home we make Easter Story Cookies (recipe can be found at http://www.allhomemadecookies.com/recipes/drop/easterstorycookies.htm).
As we make the cookies we read Scritpure about Jesus' death and resurrection that correspond to the ingredients going into the cookies (meringues actually).

6. And, of course we head to church in the morning after eating a cookie or two!

7. After church we have lunch and then our big Easter dinner in the evening with our china and crystal. Now that we are vegetarian we do all of the side dishes that we did before, but we don't have ham like we used to! Our menu this year is: sweet potato casserole, green bean casserole, cornbread dressing (Joe's grandmother's recipe), crescent rolls and chocolate pie. Actually, that is the basic menu for Thanksgiving and Christmas too with a couple of variations!

We always want the girls to remember that Easter is about our Savior and are always looking for new ways to do that. Any ideas?!

P.S. I will try to post Easter pictures tomorrow.

Toothy

Cody just lost her first tooth! (With the help of her dad!)
Oddly enough it is a top tooth. Most kids lose their bottom 2 before their top 2, but that's our Cody - doing everything in her own special way!
It makes me sad when they lose their first baby tooth, their toddler smiles are gone and it, in some strange way, is the beginning of really growing up.
But, it has to happen and we are happy that it finally came out! She was beginning to look a little like Nanny McPhee with that one tooth sticking out farther and hanging down lower than the others! She would even walk around the house saying, "Hello, I'm Nanny McPhee." with the accent and everything!
Her new smile is beautiful and she had a great time showing it off to all of her friends and teachers at our homeschool co-op!

The Garden

Well, we finally did it!
Our garden box has been built - thanks to Joe and Casey! We filled it with "dirt", 1 cu yd of topsoil + 1 cu yd of compost (and I even did the math to figure our how many cubic yards we needed!). Whoever said, "Hard work never hurt anyone" must not have hauled 2 yards of dirt using 5 gallon buckets from a trailer in the driveway to a garden against the back fence!
We have sectioned the garden off so that we know exactly where to plant everything and have added marigolds to help with pest control.
We will begin adding seedlings that we started inside along with some seeds either today or tomorrow, and we have the tarp ready to throw on top for the cold nights we still have awaiting us.
Plus, thanks to a new friend's blog I am hoping to talk Joe into building us a compost box to help "feed" our plants throughout the summer.
I will keep you posted as the days get longer and warmer!

Flashback Friday - My Kids