Chairs...not just for sitting!

This was a nice, relaxing weekend. The weather was perfect and we had a lovely time at Nick's for Ani's birthday party. Auntie Anna went back to school so Niklaus will be sad and ask for her, I'm sure. Grandma Sue and Grandpa Harold stopped by with some kitchen chairs. One chair mismatched all of them and I put it on the porch. Three of the chairs matched eachother, but one had arms and the two others didn't. One of the matching chairs with no arms was broken beyond repair and Matty eyed it with much glee. Instead of making Grandpa load it back into the truck, I gave Matty the ok to destroy it and he ran looking for a hammer. For the next hour or so he mutilated the chair beyond recognition. It was a thing of beauty to see that boy swinging away. At one point I asked him if it would be easier to separate the legs from the brackets by using a screw driver and he looked at the hammer, looked at me, and sighed saying, "But Mama, the hammer works soooooo much better!". There were some spindles and bobbles that he worked particularly hard at not destroying, saying that he was going to "do something" with them later. When it was all over and he sat in the middle of a splintery mess, he begrudgingly but dutifully filled Niklaus' wagon full of the chair remains and brought them down to the fire pit and swept up what was left. Later on he brought his treasures over to me and said that he would like to make them into something. He thought they would make good back massagers! I told him that all the pokey splinters sticking out of the ends might make that a bit uncomfortable. When I went to bed tonight and after all the kids were settled, I looked at my night stand and saw that he had laid all the spindles there with all of the ends meticulously covered in duct tape! I can only assume he made them for me and Butch and I explained what they were to him. We both had quite a chuckle over our crazy destroyer/builder boy. We also cleaned the garage today and Matty got a special place for his "inventions", two drawers and the top of the little two-drawer dresser that Trina told us wouldn't be big enough for his awkwardly shaped, sometimes huge creations. I'm starting to think that we will need a wing of the house to keep up with that boy. His desk is littered with so much scrap and clutter from his inventions: little chunks of plastic, rocks, circuit boards, buttons, gears, rubber bands, old pieces of phones, bionicle pieces, etc. that there's no room for things like books and pencils and paper and all of the reasons I gave him the desk in the first place!!! If I ever try to throw away one of his thingies, he looks at me like I'm cracked and says, "MAMA! THAT'S my special invention!". Oh well, I guess it's a good thing he doesn't ask me to put them on the refrigerator!

Mama-o Andretti

OKAY, before I tell you about the latest zinger from Trina, I feel it's necessary to give a little background info. Every time Butch and I are in the car with or without the kids we do this bicker thingy about how I think Butch drives too aggressively and doesn't know how to:
A. NOT stare at just the road ahead of him
B. NOT listen to country music full blast
C. have an actual conversation while driving (I know he is a man and therefore incapable of multi-tasking, so I'll give him a bit of a pass on this one on account of his handicap which is quite generous of me, don't you think?)
D. wait patiently for someone to move into the slow lane without going right up to their bumper
E. Observe interesting things along the chosen route of the moment (i.e. hey Butch did you see THAT? NO)

The main complaint I hear from him about MY driving is that:
A. I drive too slow, then too fast
B. I go RIGHT up to the stop sign and THEN SLAM on the brakes (this must really happen because he dramatically braces himself every time he sees a stop sign ahead even though NOBODY else in the car does this, hmmm)
We usually bicker about all of these things until we get where we are going and the kids have heard this enough to where they have started to join in and take sides. At first they used to think we were fighting, but now they know that it's more like a sport with us and they laugh and think it's funny.
ANYWAY...
Yesterday we decided to take Papa's boat out to BB lake and do some boating with the kids. On the way to the lake, Butch was wondering out loud how we would get the boat in and out of the lake with all of the kids with us etc.. I don't know how to drive the boat and he thought he'd better teach me so I could move it out of the way fast when we launched and drive it up onto the trailer when we landed. I told him I didn't care to learn how to drive a boat because I was wary of a vehicle that doesn't actually come with BRAKES. He sassed me by saying something like, "Well, we ALL know that brakes are something you don't use until the LAST SECOND anyway, so it should be no difference to YOU!" We got into the old argument again and the kids perked up and joined in. After a few minutes of this, Trina settled once and for all the question of who was the better (on the road) driver...

"HEY! Mama, Daddy can drive a boat, but YOU can drive a CAR!!!!"
Butch just sat there with his mouth agape while I hooted with laughter and slapped him on the arm while gasping for breath.

I always knew that girl was a genius.