We Just Had To Laugh

This has been a horrible year for ants.

Beneath our plum tree is a very active anthill with tiny little sugar ants. They looove plums, apparently. That one we can't do too much about, as any chemicals used to eradicate them would eventually wind up in the fruit. So, while harvesting the fruit we must stomp our feet to keep the little buggers from crawling all over us.

We also have a red ant hill which the boys know to stay away from, as bites from those ants will make you miserable for hours.

But this was our first year to have large black ants in our yard.

Judah, boy that he is, has a 'pet' black widow which lives on a web on the fence in our front yard. He routinely catches bugs which he then goes and 'feeds' to the black widow, by sticking them carefully in the web so that the black widow will come out and wrap 'em up for later.

One day he came running in the house, shaking his hand wildly and saying, "Ow! Ow! It hurts so bad!"

"What hurts?" I asked, thinking it was probably a splinter or thorn from something out back.

"Da black ant bit my thumb!"

I examined his thumb, and sure enough, it looked as though two small rows of teeth had clamped on the pad of his thumb pretty good, though for his sake I was glad there was no blood.

"Well, how did the ant get on your thumb?" I asked, wondering.

"I picked it up to put it in my jeep (to take around to the black widow, I'm guessing), and he bit me!"

Well what did he expect, lol?

:: :: :: ::

The other day, Jeff took the boys into a local fast food restaurant that had an attached playground.

As they walked inside, the place was packed and there was the usual hum of chatter, particularly from a table filled with young teen girls near the door.

Jeff said he knew the moment Jericho had finally made it through the doors, because the conversation from the girls table stopped suddenly as they turned to watch the cute teenage boy walk past their table.

Totally oblivious to and unaffected by such things still, Jericho called out, "Hey, Dad...can I take Judah to the playground?"

Uh huh. Yeah, sure, Jericho...Judah wants to go to the playground, lol.

:: :: :: ::

While in a bookstore the other evening, we picked up a cute Little Golden Book for Judah called, Doctor Dan The Bandage Man.

It's a cute little story originally put out in the 1950's and has darling vintage illustrations to go with the story of a boy who hurts his finger and runs home, and whose mom puts a band-aid on his 'injury' which (as we moms know) makes him feel all better.

As a result, whenever anyone he knows gets a boo boo, Dan doctors them up with band-aids. Even the family dog. As a result, his dad gives him the nickname, "Dr. Dan the Bandage Man".

In a stroke of pure brilliance, the publishers include a couple of brand new band-aids affixed inside the front cover of the book so that any little kids reading the story and needing to fix their own real or imagined boo boos have their very own band-aids at their disposal.

Judah spotted those immediately, and like Ralphie dreaming of his Red Rider BB Gun, he, too looked off into space, eyes aglow with all the possibilities of where he could use them.

I just looove those moments where you can totally see the wheels turning in their little minds.

But why is it that I can practically guarantee I'll find them stuck to a wall, or a fridge or grandma's bathroom door?

:: :: :: ::

For Jeff's birthday yesterday, I baked a really decadent birthday cake.

First, I baked a dark chocolate fudge layer cake. The filling was a homemade ganache or hot-fudge type mixture loaded with macadamia nuts, and the the cake was frosted with homemade chocolate caramel icing and garnished with even more macadamia nuts. Yummo.

It sat under the glass of our cake platter all afternoon, taunting us as we waited for the family dinner and dessert later that evening.

When I went to put candles in it later that evening, however, I noticed two very narrow prints on the outer edge of the cake...where one very little finger had gouged out a couple of samples of icing.

Hmmm...wonder who that was?