Why a pet monkey would be handy...

We took the kids to Outdoor World yesterday, a big sporting goods store with loads of taxidermied animals (which is sad, but still fun to see. "Oh! Look at the dead cougar, Nuala!"). Also, there are fun little "ponds" and "streams" with catfish, etc., swimming around. AND, there are ATVs and 4-wheelers and stuff like that planted around that the kiddos like to sit on. Well, Bran has this key obsession, and Granny was nice and/or foolish enough to indulge it while he was perched on one. We'll go with "nice" ;) She handed them over, and shoop! Down they went through a seam into the engine. The panic on her face as she called me over was great! Okay, not at the time, it was actually somewhat worrisome. But after I realized Bran was fine, I could appreciate the situation more. Man...moms never get a break.

It was actually kind of funny, just because whenever my family gets together, we tend to find really dumb things humorous. Honestly it can be a bit embarrassing at times, but at least we have fun. I'm sure many families are like that and y'all know what I mean. Hmm...there's also the "Ricker clump," but that's a different weirdness for another time. So anyway, they had to call over a fellow who worked the department, and we were all envisioning him having to take apart the whole ATV there on the floor, but really he just had to take it a little bit apart. He was very nice, although he may have doubted our sincere apologies for the trouble, since Mom, Aislinn, and I were all trying hard not to giggle. He didn't even mind when Granny plunked Bran back on so we could take a picture of the little key-fiend with the store guy. Bran wasn't too thrilled about that. He was, however, thrilled to see the keys again, and acted like he deserved to have them back. As if! Granny had learned her lesson.

And here we have Maire and Rowan sticking their fingers in a poor dead zebra's nose. Aine wished he had a third nostril. Yes, the hilarity is never ending...

(Well, goodness. Now that I wrote all that out, it doesn't sound as intense and funny as it was at the time. You'll have to just trust me. It was. And if we had that pet monkey, he coulda fished those keys right outta there! I'm going to look into that.)