Someone Parked a Tree Behind Me.

So. I backed into a tree today. In my own yard. I’m sure it wasn’t there yesterday. It was a shock for all of us! My first thought was, “Who parked behind me?!! Dan’s at work, (Thank the Lord.) and we don’t have any company.” Then I looked. (I probably should have done that first….) Somebody parked a TREE behind me!! I mean, really, who does that kind of thing?

Next problem – to tell Dan, or not to tell him… hmmm. It would be a much easier decision if I didn’t four little tattle tales in the car with me. Three of them who thought we were just in a terrible wreck. “Mom!” Zackary says, “I bet there’s a BIG dent in the back of the van!” I very calmly said, “Zack, sometimes it’s better if you just keep your mouth SHUT. And, this is one of those times. Mommy doesn’t need to hear things like that right now.” I mean, if there is a huge dent in the van, how am I supposed to explain to my insurance that I can’t remember WHERE the trees are in my OWN yard? I’ve only lived here 8 years after all…..

I decided to get out and survey the damage. I couldn’t see any. Whew. Maybe I won’t have to tell Dan that I hit the huge tree he must have just planted in our yard last night while I was sleeping. Of course Dan sees things on cars that not even a person with a microscope can see. He’ll say to me, “Honey, how did that scratch get on the car?” “What scratch?” I innocently reply. “You haven’t seen it?” He says incredulously. We then go out and look. He points and I look. “What scratch?” I ask again. He just shakes his head.

I didn’t see any damage on the van, but that doesn’t mean he won’t. I better just fess up. If I don’t, the kids will do it for me. Or, just the mere fact that I’m writing this on the internet, chances are it will leak back to him. I did check to make sure the back end still opens and closes!

I regained my composure and finally, successfully got out of the yard. As we drove down the street Zackary pipes up, “Wow! I can’t believe the airbags didn’t go off!” I tried to keep my composure. Really I did. If you’ve ever ran into anything you know what it does to your nerves.  Everything in me wanted to turn around and scream, “JUST SHUT UP!!!” But, that wouldn’t have been very Christ like, and we’re not allowed to say “shut up” at our house….

Besides that fact, I was backing out of my yard, maybe going a top speed of 5mph. The jolt of smacking the tree was a shock, but nowhere near setting off the airbags. I counted to 10 and through gritted teeth said, “Zack that was another one of those things that should have been left unsaid….” “I can’t help it, Mom,” He said. He just doesn’t know when to quit.

I had lunch with Dan today, but I decided that wasn’t the right time to tell him about the non-dent in the back of the van, that I put there backing into a tree in my own yard. Maybe tonight after I fix his favorite meal and clean out the garage for him….. Yes, that might be a good time. 

May the Best Turtle Win

The annual turtle races. It sounded good when I first saw it advertised. We've watched them in the past, but never participated. I told my kids this year was the year. They could collect, keep, paint, and train turtles for the big annual turtle races.

What was I thinking???? 

We found turtles all right, but keeping them was a different story. We caught some pretty fast turtles, but they turned out to be regular Houdinis!!!! Escape artists they were. All of them. It's hard to race your really fast turtle if you can't keep it penned up until the race. We even tried to bribe them to stay with us by giving them fresh fruits and vegetables. No luck. 

We finally took ONE turtle to my sister who had a turtle proof cage. That seemed to do the trick. On the day of the race we took our ONE turtle and two borrowed ones to town in a box. The turtles really didn't like the small box and tried their Houdini moves to get out. This time we won. The turtles stayed in the box. Good thing because three turtles in a box stinks up a mini van pretty bad. I can't imagine what they would have done out of the box...

We got to the race sight to find that there were over 130 turtles to race. This was an event! I would have brought my lawn chair and my supper if I had known. Because there are so many turtles they do the race in heats. If your turtle comes in 1st, 2nd, or 3rd you move on to the next heat. Do you know how long it takes to race that MANY turtles in that MANY heats!!??? I do. We had one turtle that was exceptionally fast and kept WINNING!!! After almost an hour of watching turtles run in circles, I started hoping our turtle would SLOW DOWN and lose. (Don't tell my child I said that.) 

Then they brought it out. The cute little girl with the genormous (I made that word up.) water turtle. She was wearing gloves and desperately trying to hold the turtle as far away from her body as possible. Probably because the turtle was trying to desperately swim through the air with motions that looked like it might attack at any moment. The turtle was 4 times the size of any other turtle there and would barely fit in the starting box. As soon as they lifted the box, he was off to look for water. In a desperate," I don't like to be on land" fashion. The problem was there was no water to be found, so it went straight into the crowd. There were several hundred people there and I think they were almost all scared of the poor harmless (very large) water turtle swimming across land. People started backing up as he entered the crowd, and shrieking like maybe a bear was after them. Kinda reminded me of my bird days. I laughed. It was the most comical thing that happened at the whole SLOW race! 

The really large, scary water turtle ended up beating our turtle in the last heat. It was ok, except because I had been there so long, it would have been nice to have something to show for our time. 

The kids are already planning next year's race. I'm thinking it sounds like a great daddy/child date!