M-I-C-K-E-Y M-O-U-S-E!

Yesterday, the boys decided to play Butthead (or Tushy Head has Brett calls it, since Butthead isn't a very nice word!...which in case you are new to the blog is a game we sort of grew up with where you chunk balls at your opponents head while wearing velcro hats...I think it was a Terry gift, my aunt who is notorious for crazy gifts). Anyway, all of a sudden, they come in to the study where I was working on my lesson singing "It's the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse! Come inside, it's fun inside!" - and if you ever watch Disney Channel, you will know the tune - and Brett had this on his head...they thought they were so funny:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRETT!!!

My baby is 4 years old! I can't believe it. He's such a good kid, learning more and more every day. We celebrated kind of all week...I guess we sort of have a tradition of celebrating "birthday weeks" instead of just birthdays.

The day before his birthday, he got to take birthday treats to preschool and had a great time as the leader that day. We did small favor bags for all the kids with a matchbox car and some stickers from the Target dollar section. He had fun helping put the little bags together and giving them to his friends.

Then, we had presents on his actual birthday and then Grammy, Pop and Lindsey came to celebrate (and Linz had to escape the hurricane) over the weekend.

Here are some pictures of his special week:

Mrs. Elliott and Brett with his special cookie that we made the day before:

Brett and Linz with thier birthday cookie:
A closeup of the retarded cookie, since Linz made me leave off some of the icing border for her:

Fun with frogs...

The boys were outside for about 5 minutes when they came running in with a bucket yelling, "We caught a frog! We caught a frog!" So, after hurrying to get the bucket with the frog out of the house, I grabbed the camera for a few pictures of their critter, which they let go a few minutes later "so it wouldn't die!"

Brett's First Day of School

Brett started preschool on Wednesday. He couldn't get to school fast enough! He was out of the car, up to the door, inside and hung up his bag before I could get up there. Here are a few pictures of his first day:

Brett with his teacher, Mrs. Elliott (the best teacher ever!):
Here he is painting a picture:

We caught the critter!

So, many of you know that we stayed up a lot of the night on Friday night since there was a critter in our attic that we could hear scratching and stomping around. We could tell it was bigger than a mouse, but it took us a while to figure out if it was on the roof or in the attic. We finally determined that it was in the attic after the critter stepped on one of the can lights Matt happened to be standing under. Luckily, the boys didn't have a clue and slept through all this just fine (although Brett was certain it was a red frog up there hopping around when we filled them in the next morning).

On Saturday morning, Matt climbed up on the roof, looking for a hole where something might have gotten in, but found nothing. So, we called a critter catcher to help us. He came over and immediately found the vent that had been used for an entrance and determined that it was probably an opossum and not a raccoon, which was a relief. He instructed us to try to trap it out that night by making short wire cages to wire around the vents and to wait until about 10 PM to give the possum time to go out to hunt. We also have a live trap here, thanks to Grandpa, which we set as well with apples for bait in hopes that we wouldn't catch a cat instead.

So, at 10 PM, Matt climbs up on the roof, armed with the little cage kits we made up before the sun went down, some wire snippers and a flashlight. He got the cages installed and we waited to see if we would hear the critter. We were happy to discover that we successfully trapped him out!

But we didn't catch anything in the trap...until last night! Matt noticed that the trap was shut when he went out to leave this morning and discovered that we had a small possum in our trap. He was very calm until Matt picked up the cage to haul him off to let him go, then he started hissing. Here's a picture of the cause of our fun-filled weekend:

Swimming for Grandpa

Here are the boys swimming after Jace's first day of school:

OK, so you might get bored, but Grandpa wanted to see the boys swimming, so here are some little videos for you!

Jace doing a trick for you:



Jace swimming like Michael Phelps:

Brett swimming for Grandpa:

Brett diving to get his torpedo: