Madison has been drawing a lot lately, mostly portraits of the family in different situations. Sometimes we're sleeping in our beds at night and others amongst flowers. Madison makes sure Daddy scans these - he's been trying to make sure we don't lose record of any of them, so that some day she can look back on her artistry. There are different themes that appear from time to time - like St. Patrick's Day and Easter - but these pictures in the movie clip above are more generic. The purple lines, by the way, represent a spider. I'm not sure if it is a good one or a bad one! Oh, and look for the one of all of us on a boat. That's a Disney boat, of course.
Today was a day of catching up, and a day of recovery. We were pretty tired as evidenced by:
1. Daddy lit the grill when the gas had been on a few seconds longer than needed. The end result was something like you'd see in "Backdraft," where a wall of flame shot out towards his head and singed every hair. Seriously, I had burnt hair all over. My face was coated in white - my eyelids singed shut, my eyebrows crusty, and every hair in the front tipped with an ashen point. Yikes!
2. We left the car door open last night. All last night. Wide open. We discovered it this morning. We must have been really zonked!
3. Daddy left his wallet in his jeans and it got washed. Normally not a tragedy, but in this case, there were lots and lots of receipts from the illustrated sermon inside. We actually had to put them out on the deck to dry out, and then carefully peel them off of one another. They look like the ancient Dead Sea scrolls, but we're thankful you can still read them.
We were tired, but Daddy still wanted to get something started, so he and Madison started to hang up the license plates in the garage. I'll have to show a picture here some time soon. Madison was at the table where the license plates were, acting as a salesperson. Each time Daddy got to the table to get the next one, she'd have it ready with two small nails. But, for a small charge: she would ask for imaginary money. Sometimes I'd have to pay three imaginary dollars, and other times ten. It would be different every time. These will be on the wall, hung up along the top, all next to each other like a wallpaper border in the garage. It should look pretty good when finished. What's neat is that Madison mostly picked out the ones to go where they go, so she can say she helped Daddy put them up.
How many license plates do we have, you ask? Probably close to a hundred, I suspect. We have one for every state - that was a collector's thing for Daddy a few years ago. It took a while to get at least one of each, but over the years we managed to find them all in different places, sometimes ordering online. We got some from a shop in Orlando, and one I remember getting from a kid in our children's ministry who knew I collected them. This kid knew I was missing a Rhode Island, and was going to visit his relatives there, and so he asked! Isn't that nice? Anyway, we got one of each over the years - even a few from the Bahamas. Nothing from China yet, though that might be a good one to get!
Why collect license plates? Blame Honeycombs. Do you know the cereal Honeycombs? They used to put a license plate inside every box of Honeycombs, one that you could put on the front of your bicycle. I wanted one of each. This would be nearly impossible, of course. You'd have to buy hundreds of boxes of Honeycombs to do that, which of course was the goal. I only wound up with seven (too bad I don't know where they are now!). But inside I was thinking it would be cool to have one of each for real. And so, about ten years ago, I got a few Georgia license plates and started collecting right then. They're only a few dollars each for the most part, so it isn't that big of a deal. But some are unique: Hawaii and Alaska are of course special, the former because it was the place where Mommy and Daddy had their honeymoon. There are a few great looking ones from Colorado. Also, the New Mexico and Wisconsin ones are pretty neat, and sort of symbolic. We have our own personal license plates up there - the one Mommy had on her car for years, when Daddy first met her. Also up there is Daddy's grandfather's license plate from New Jersey - that's Madison's great-grandfather. There's an Georgia Olympic one up there too - that's a special one. Madison was looking through them all today, and of course likes the ones with the pretty colors and pictures: Mississippi has a magnolia, and Alabama has a heart. Utah has a bright orange arch set against a blue sky. And yes, Hawaii has rainbow.
We didn't get them all hung up today, part of the reason being that Madison and Daddy were spending more time playing and looking.
Speaking of "playing," Madison used up another Mom-buck today, and we played an old game that I thought might be simple for Madison to play, especially after the Lego games. It was a two-player game, which made it one that Daddy and Madison can play together - and it was also really cheap! To add to all of this, Daddy plugged in a few cheat codes and made both characters extremely powerful. In fact, in Madison's case, a little too powerful! She would use this one super uber move over and over again and we'd both crack up as every robot villain on the screen would turn to ice and fall apart. Sure, we tried different moves here and there, and had to solve a few puzzles. But when it looked like there were too many villains around, Madison would just do that one move and destroy everything. We actually finished the game entirely, and very quickly. A comparison: we're still not completely done with the Lego Star Wars game which we got at Christmas. This one we finished in one night. Madison did enjoy it, and so did Daddy. We had fun playing games together.
We read from her Bible tonight before bed, and she actually had her Bible in her bed with her going to sleep. Daddy himself went to sleep pretty quickly again, as did Mommy: we're all still trying to catch up. But one thing has happened that might keep Mommy up later, and that's the release of the 1940 census data. Big news for genealogy fans!
"No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. Sometimes I just want it to stay saved! You know, for a little bit? I feel like the maid; I just cleaned up this mess! Can we keep it clean for... for ten minutes!"
- Mr. Incredible
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