i bought grandma a gel manicure.  she let me pick the color.  (but that was before she found out it doesn’t come off.)

and grandpa bought jale a $15 sewing machine.  real enough to work.  cheap enough to break.  the first thing she did was sit down and sew herself a pillow case.

in her princess dress, pearls, and fairy wings.  of course.

she makes a nice straight stitch too.

i gave her some material and she sat down and ran through a whole bobbin.  she can work the presser foot and drive, neat as a whistle.

of course, grandpa still has to thread the needle.  what are grandpa’s for?

and judith likes having even more people around who love her.  that or she just likes to be carried.  particularly by people with handles.

spooooooooiled.

grandma doesn’t believe that babies should ever cry.

baby agrees.

it was a riot.  i believe i woke up sore the next day.

but children love riots.

especially when you add sticky and fire.  then everyone is happy.

isn’t daddy a saint?

rahab and her somewhat leery friend.  maybe if habbers didn’t trash talk her guests after windmilling them she’d get farther when it comes to winning friends and influencing people.

and if you must know, i’m rather infamous for my backyard.  it is, and always has been, an absolute pile.  literally.  and the kids love it.  i just thank the lord i have a privacy fence and then don’t go back there.

my number one son.  on his way to practice that evening he was soliciting the girls to see if any of them knew how to tie shoes.  which was making me bust up.  i’ll be teasing him about that well into his twenties.

“she seems like a nice girl, son.  but can she tie shoes?”

i just realized what’s wrong with this photo (other than it being fuzzy).  no one’s smiling.  the self-timer must put the fear of god in people.  3 seconds to detonation….

what’s in it for you?  nothing but a magnet.  and i don’t care how passe the slogan has become, those are still words to live by.  leave me a comment if you want it.  or even better, suggest a new blog name.  because imustnotthinkbadthoughts is going the way of crockpots and old people.

speaking of drink umbrellas, whoever is making them these days sure seems to have lowered their standards.  if that were possible.  don’t breathe, rain, or slam the door.

the upside is that the kids got the extras.  they made villages in the spinach.

played market with dandelions and nuts.

while gideon built traps for wild boar.

suffice to say, with a pack of 150 my yard now looks like a christo and jeanne-claude installation.  how could you even have more fun?

homeschooled kids with superpowers maybe.

bwahaha!  secret agent man and super baby!

yee-haw!

that day the kids had even got their art anthology in the mail.  so they were super stoked to go to the art museum for the first time and see the real stuff.  unfortunately, the current exhibits seemed to be primitive basket weaving, picketing signs, old lady glass vases with chipmunks, and a herd of life-size, white elephants inflated by electric fans.

i thought it was funny that the elephants had a plaque that said they represented our unsustainable culture and how it’s a “white elephant” that no one talks about.  while it occurred to me, that for once, the white elephant in the middle of the room that no one talks about, might just be…a white elephant in the middle of the room that no one talks about.  except for gideon.  who walked through the door and blurted out indignantly, “hey, this isn’t art!”  kids.  the constant plague of emperors.

moral of the story, don’t let your children browse an entire volume of art history before taking them to see the “real stuff.”  they might be sadly disappointed.  jehu suggested that maybe they had run out of good things to paint.  although he did find one (the only) painting in the whole museum he liked.  it reminded him of “the garden of earthly delights” by bosch.  a painting, which probably has no business reminding him of anything.

now watch mommy censor the art book with painters tape.  i’m sooo fascist.

just ask anyone.

odds are they’re just goofing off.

which is why i’m installing a row of antique school desks in the living room.  the kind that bolt to the floor.  then i’m going to get a ruler.  and maybe i’ll even put clothes on them.  things are getting serious.