Random pictures, hilarious comments

I always new there was a reason I had three kids. Now don't get me wrong, I love the them, but normally, they spend most of their days at home making messes. Their idea of cleaning them up, isn't on the same scale as mine, but they try, sort of. The reason I had kids? So someday, they can do the jobs around the house that I don't really want to do. That is why my parents had me, but as a kid, I never really appreciated all that they did, so I never quite got the whole having kids thing. I thought they were lazy, turns out they were just smart. My kids aren't very old, but they are just old enough to think helping daddy around the house is fun. I'll milk this until they are fully trained, then BAM! it's their job. My plan is moving along just swell. Here is Makiah mowing the grass.

You can see that he appears to be struggling, which he was. I keep cheering him on, and pulling the mower back into line. It seems that when you push with all your might, you tend to lean to your strong side. The lines in the yard aren't exactly straight, but if you look closely, half of the grass is dormant, so whatever. I didn't take very good care of the grass this year, so it's a bit weedy and a lot dry. Hey, Iowa is the Alaskan tundra in the winter and the Arizona desert in the summer. Just so Makiah didn't feel like he was having all the fun, I had Max working as well.

This is our pool, that he is power washing the mud off the bottom so I can roll it up and put it in the garage for the winter. Then, next spring, I will roll it back out and spend several hours looking for holes that happened when we power washed it and rolled it up. WTF! Mason hasn't exactly jumped on the bandwagon yet, but I'm dreaming up some jobs for him.

I found this picture from earlier this summer.

Now this picture cracks me up. Mason is holding my BB pistol and Makiah is holding my Red Ryder, single pump, BB rifle, the same gun from A Christmas Story. I have not shot my eye out, but the kids will at some point and Marcy will give me the "I told you so" speech. Bring it. I'm working with them on gun safety, with guns that probably won't kill them if they break a rule. Since both guns are single pump, that means two things. One, they can't pump either one of them, so I have to do it, so I always know when we are live. Two, since they are both single pump, not a lot of power. We shoot cans in the backyard, with my wood privacy fence behind the cans to stop the strays. The first time we ever shot them, two summers ago, Makiah was a dead eye. He hit the cans with every pull of the trigger. The cans were about 30 feet away, so not bad for his first attempt. This year, his eye is no longer dead. We could have thrown a handful of BB's and had the same result. Oh well, they haven't shot me or each other, or an animal, so we are good.

I found this shot that I took as I passed a car on the way home.

If you see that white dot, just to the bottom left of the gas door, that is her gas cap dangling there. Not sure why I thought this was funny but I did, and do. Maybe because I have never done it. I never lost a gas cap, when they weren't attached, back in the day. Now that I've said that, this will happen to me. There appears to be something under the wheel as well, but I'm not sure what it was. I would have gotten a better look, but I hadn't looked at the road in a few minutes trying to get this shot, so I thought I might take a gander at where I was in the traffic. Safety first.

Another shot happened near my office.

This is probably hard to see, but it is burned into my brain, so let me describe. This truck is all decked out. It has the huge CB antenna. It has large wheels. It has fricking smoke stacks on both sides of the cab. It sounds like across between a Harley motorcycle and a funny car. A deep rumble. Then, to top it off, it has a Rascal Scooter strapped to the back. Hilarious. At least if his truck breaks down, he can continue his trip and a whopping 3 1/2 mph.

And finally, I took this picture on my last trip to White Castle and was going to sign off my last post about the WC with it. Well I forgot, so let me sign off this post, with a very sad shot.