Dumpster diving for treasures

One man's trash in another man's treasure and E and T have literally taken that to heart. On Saturday E, T and one of their friends started going through the big trash cans. The friend found a big red stuffed animal. E found some books, computer games, and markers. T found a box of markers and crayons. There is something disturbing about seeing you're little ones open up trash cans and climb inside or else after it is tipped to scrounge around. They were told to stop and they said that they had enough stuff. Great. What does that mean that one has enough?

Steve and I told them that we don't look through garbage because it's 1) not ours and 2) it's disgusting. On Sunday, I had E take some recycle stuff out to the blue can. She was gone for a lot longer than what it should take and M was with her. I went outside and what do I see but E closing the lid on another person's recycle bin and running back exclaiming that she has found a journal that has never been written in before along with some more pens. I reiterated that we don't keep other people's garbage and that she needed to throw them all away. She was quite sad and told me how clean they all were and that she just wanted a journal to write and color in. Couldn't she keep it? I told her that this was the last time. No more dumpster diving.

Tuesday night E was out with friends and what did she find, a dictionary. Her very own dictionary to use and look up words with. Can't she just keep it? She doesn't own a dictionary and now she can look up all the words she needs to and she won't have to use the one we own. Then T came out and showed all the little neighborhood kids how to tip over the trash cans so they can look inside and see what they can find. All those little kids were so excited until I told them all that they needed to stop looking in the garbage cans.

I am so glad that today was trash day and all trash cans have been emptied and hopefully the treasures will stop coming back to our house.

Lucky fish

Lucky is one lucky fish. He has now been alive over two years and despite our inability to properly take care of him, he is still swimming. On Sunday, M decided to feed Lucky herself and instead of giving him a few flakes dumped the remaining half bottle of fish food into the tank. What a lucky fish to get so much food. M was so excited to help and it was hard not to laugh when you saw the bottom of the tank covered in food. We thought nothing more about it until Monday when I woke up and went downstairs. Lucky's tank was a puce green color and Lucky was floating upside down. I didn't want to handle a dying fish and 3 crying girls who lost their fish. I called Steve and asked him if he had noticed the fish tank. Nope. Why can't I be oblivious to things like that? Lucky was still breathing so I hurried and filled up a pitcher of water and put in one of the water tablets. After it was dissolved, I scooped Lucky out of his old tank and put him in the fresh water. He was still upside down and I told the girls that perhaps they needed to tell Lucky goodbye and perhaps they could say a little prayer so that Lucky wouldn't suffer long. I felt downright terrible seeing Lucky breathing and swimming upside down and thinking we should have cleaned out his tank the night before. I cleaned his tank out and put fresh water, and filter in it and then placed Lucky back in before we went to swim lessons. We had to run some errands afterwards and I was prepared to come back to a dead fish, but when we arrived home, the girls and I were overjoyed to see Lucky swimming right side up again. Lucky is one lucky fish and now all the fish food is kept where M can't reach; although she is delighted to see him every day and give him a few flakes of food.

All mine--even the little blue man

Last week we went to one of the local home improvement centers to pick up various items. I had all four kids with me and all 4 kids were not too happy to be there after about 30 minutes and I still had a few more things to look at and purchase. We made our way to the front of the store and a lady telling about the home center's carpet cleaning services asked me if the kids would like a little sack of fruit snacks to eat while we shopped. Of course they would like it and thank goodness for carpet cleaning services who had a big pail of fruit snacks for kids available. What a great diversion. While each of the girls were choosing a fruit snack package, the lady looks at all of them, at me, at them, at H in the cart and then at me again and asks, "Are they all yours?" My reply, "Yes of course they are." Did she really think I would take four children who aren't mine to a home improvement store? I even claimed the little man who was sporting blue hands and feet as mine and who wouldn't when he looks up from his discolored hands and smiles?

And how do you think H got blue hands and feet? I'll tell you and it's really quite simple to figure out. It was me. I needed his hand and footprints to document how small they are at this age in life but my regular black ink pad was all out of ink so I simply did them in blue. However the blue didn't come off and so for the next few days he had blue hands and feet.