Mud Puddles

At boot camp Wednesday morning, it was raining hard enough to create a nice sized mud puddle in our driveway. Carson and our neighbor's one-year-old, Trevor, found this to be very entertaining. It seemed like a perfectly innocent little boy thing to do, so I did not stop them. After boot camp I changed his pants and shoes and assumed he would be good to go for the day. I was getting myself and the house ready to go for our very busy day when Lilly said to me "Mom, I have a bad word for you." Curious to know what Lilly considers a bad word I said, "OK Lilly, what is your bad word?" "Carson is playing in the mud puddle." She was right, that was a bad word. I got his pants changed once again and sent the kids outside to get into the car without me. This was, of course my mistake. Carson walked outside and ran right out into the mud puddle again. At this point I was out of shoes, out of time, and very nearly out of pants, so I let him live with damp feet.

Pretty much everything Lilly says cracks me up. We were in the car the other day and she had a discussion with herself that went like this: "Where is the baby's blanket? Oh, it's back here. How did it get there? Maybe it walked. Oh, wait...I put it back there."

Our renter moved out last week and left us with a huge mess. She left couches, beds, dressers, clothes, and bags and bags of garbage. Shelby went to clean it out on the busy day that Carson spent playing in the mud puddle. I volunteered that evening at the Ronald McDonald house. This was something I really wanted to do because we stayed at a Ronald McDonald house in Salt Lake and had a very good experience. I wanted to reciprocate. On the way home I called Shelby and he asked if I could stop by the rental and help him load up a couple of the big things. It was late and the kids were tired and hungry, but I couldn't leave Shelby with that big mess, so we headed out. By the time I got there, no more that 30 minutes later, there were three neighbor guys helping Shelby load up the last of the stuff. I had time to fill one bag of garbage, and by then the whole place was cleaned out. They just saw that Shelby needed help and jumped in. It just goes to show that when it comes to service, you always come out ahead.