It’s been a few days, so I’ve compiled a few vignettes of the weekend, etc.

The Great Gum Exchange

I had my nephews, Isaac (5) and Silas (6), in the backseat of my car on Saturday.  I gave them both a piece of yummy green apple flavoured gum.  When it was time to get out of the car, Silas tried to hand me his gum, saying, “I don’t want this anymore.”

Isaac piped up, “Aunty Jennie I swallowed my gum.”

“Do you want some more?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I suggested, “Silas is all done with his, why don’t you take that.”  I know, so gross – but they’re brothers, for goodness sake.

Silas handed the chewed wad over to Isaac, but was met with a disgusted, “But it has spit on it!”

I thought that was going to be the end of that and I’d have to dig around in my purse for a fresh piece.  But Silas piped up in the sweetest, helpful big brother voice, “I’ll get the spit off it for you.”  He proceeded to roll the wad between both of his hands, like you’d do when rolling bits of play dough into worms.  “Here you go,” he proclaimed.

“Oh thanks,” said Isaac and popped it in his mouth.

Communion Greed

So, it was Communion Sunday at church this week.  In our congregation, that means that little shot glasses of grape juice, representing Christ’s blood shed for us, and tiny wafers of bread, representing Christ’s body broken for us, are passed up and down the aisles and we all partake together at the appropriate time.

Wellllll….

Mr T’s friend Mr M was sitting on the other side of him and then there was a big gap down the row until there was more people.  So Mr M asked Mr T to hold his little grape juice while he carried the implements down the aisle.  For some reason, Mr T passed it down to me.  Then Mr M came back with his own little grape juice and I was stuck holding TWO!

Communion should be a quiet and reverent thing … but I think Jesus will forgive us all for getting the giggles.  It was awful.  Those two jokers snickered and snickered.  Mr M tsked at me and whispered about how greedy I was being.  And when I shot back not one, but two little glasses of juice – they very nearly lost it.  But what was I supposed to do?  I couldn’t leave one full, it would have spilled on the carpet or upholstery.  And I don’t know why it was so hilarious, but it was.   What would you have done?

All I’m saying is, “Mr M – you’d better watch your back!”

Geocaching

Miss A, the two nephews and I went on a geocaching adventure on Sunday.  At one point, the GPS took us to a point right in the middle of the trail, where a cache couldn’t possibly be hidden.  So it had to be off to one side or the other.  We chose the side that made the most sense and hunted around for a while, with no success.

We looked over at the other side, which consisted of a chain-link fence which I could just reach the top of.  Directly on the other side of the fence, was a barricade made out of those giant concrete blocks that they use on the sides of roads to prevent avalanches from burying your vehicle.  They fit together kind of like Lego.  It was just a bit taller than the fence.

I thought I would casually climb the fence and just peek on the top of those cement things to see if the cache was sitting up there.  Ha ha ha ha.  Not sure why I thought I could still climb a chain-link fence.

So Isaac said, “I can do it Aunty Jennie.”

I held onto him and he climbed to the top like a little monkey.  The next thing I knew he’d climbed up and over and was standing on the concrete barricade, like 9 feet in the air.  “Isaac, you weren’t supposed to climb over the fence!” I shrieked, “But since you’re up there – do you see a cache?”  Might as well make the most of the nightmarish situation.  He came up with an empty Starbucks cup, but that was it.  “OK, now get down,” I hissed frantically.

Just as he was backing over the edge and trying to fit his little feet into the chain-link fence, a couple of people came down the trail.  “Oh my gosh, do you need help?” they exclaimed.

“No, we should be OK, he’s really light,” I responded, as Isaac was trying to stand on my face and simultaneously untangle his sweater from the pointy tops of the chain-link fence.  “We’re fine, really.”  So embarrassing.

Hopefully they don’t call child protection … or his Mom.

We found the cache, it was on the other side of the trail, where we originally looked.

Geo-treasures

For those of you in the know about geocaching, it requires that you replace whatever you take from a cache with a treasure of equal or greater value.  Since I’m not really into introducing more junk into our environment, I don’t like to buy dollar store toys like a lot of people do.  I’ve crocheted a lot of flowers through the years and left those.  But recently I got a new idea.

These are the designs I finally settled on. The flower is for tiny caches that don’t have much room.

Every time Isaac has been over at my house lately, he’s wanted to make something with the “beados”, as he calls them.  They are also called perler, hama or melty beads.  You arrange the plastic beads on a peg board and then fuse them together with a clothes iron.

Well, I got the brilliant idea to make a bunch of geo-treasures with the “beados”.  And that’s what I did.  ALL DAY YESTERDAY.  Seriously non-productive day.  I got lost online looking for patterns.  Then I had to experiment with patterns and make a bunch of prototypes.  Once I finally settled on my design, I had to make a big batch of them.  The idea is for Miss A to take over this job, but I’m not sure if she’ll be a willing participant.

I feel so silly for spending so much time on it, but it was probably more productive than reading … yet ANOTHER zombie novel.  (Do I need an intervention?)

Perler bead charms for geocaching. The little bag in the bottom right corner is how I package them to put them in the cache.

Can you find the robot with the missing legs?  He was in an industrial accident … poor fella.