Ants in Their Pants

It's 11:38pm. I admit we are a bit unusual in our sleeping habits, but some things just go too far. Because Shannon works until 7:00pm a couple evenings a week, and because we spend a good deal of time at sporting events in the evening, we generally don't get to bed much before midnight. The kids are sent to bed at 10:00pm. Some nights a couple of them have zonked out prior to this, other nights they're wound for sound. Tonight was one such night.

They were wild when they got home from AWANA tonight. Shannon and I left for the fitness center around 9:00pm. The big boys were in the process of getting Hudson to bed. We were back home by 9:50, and they (all but Hudson) were still going strong. We shuttled them all off to bed (at least to their rooms), and settled down at the kitchen table in front of our laptops. Alex had called while we were gone, stating he had a weird message on his laptop about some type of a security breach. Shannon was working on fixing all of his problems. I was just checking blogs.

All of a sudden Shannon jumped up and hollered for Alex, Jackson and Chase to quickly come to the kitchen. He had just seen the gerbil run through. You see, on New Year's Eve when we had a bunch of company spend the night, we moved the gerbil cage down to the basement so it wouldn't disturb anyone. Unfortunately, out of sight means out of mind around here. About two months ago we realized that the gerbil had chewed its way out of the (empty) plastic self-feeder, and was nowhere to be found. NO BIG LOSS! When Alex and Jackson cleaned their rooms (even under their beds) last week, they found evidence that some type of rodent had been residing in each of their rooms.

When I got home from driving Jackson to track practice today, Katie came running to meet me at the door exclaiming that there was a mouse in the family room. All of the furniture was pulled to the middle of the room, and Chase was standing on the ottoman armed with a broom. Alas, they were unable to catch the gerbil (the "mouse"). We moved the furniture back, I considered bringing in a cat or two to see if they could solve my problem, but decided that it might be a bit traumatic for Colton to see his birthday present be stalked and eaten.

Alex ended up catching the gerbil (can't remember it's name) with a plastic shoe box. We cleaned it's cage, gave it some fresh food and water, and it now lives up in the girls' room. I'm still voting we give him permanent residence in the basement.


We got everyone settled down again--we thought--and went back to our laptops. I was catching up on a blog I had posted a link to several months ago. It belongs to a couple who had a tiny micro-preemie baby. The mom has CF. Today she got the news that she has been matched to receive a double lung transplant. Surgery is taking place right now. Here is the link again.
http://cfhusband.blogspot.com/ I'm sure they would covet your prayers.

Anyway, Naomi comes bopping down the stairs and she looks like this.

Colton wasn't far behind her.

They apparently got this grand idea to stuff their pajamas with stuffed animals. Where do they come up with these ideas, and why aren't they asleep?

Never dull moment...I'm heading up to bed.

"Foolishness is bound up in the heart of a child..." Proverbs 22:15