[No you can't see me back-posting this!]

Ben had a wonderful party this past weekend. My now little 7 year old’s chosen theme was all about pirates. We got very piratety decorations, put out the piratety toys, and I baked a piratey cake – a treasure chest no doubt! This one took a bit of time but it didn’t come out half bad! Tasted great too. Another treasure chest was present in the form of a piñata. The kids really enjoyed the booty they got from it. Eye patches and candy galore! As far as presents went, it was the day of the pokémon. Pokiemans everywhere. They’re still everywhere. I think they’re multiplying.

Just got back from my volunteer opportunity helping clean up the Great Miami River. This event spans all of the way from Indian Lake all the way down to the Ohio River. The section I volunteered to clean up was from the Taylorsville Dam down to Needmore Road. So this morning, I went out to the Water Treatment Facility to be driven up to the Taylorsville Dam as our starting point. Most people had a buddy to get in the canoes with, but I volunteered blindly without even knowing anyone who was there. I partnered up with this nice fellow named Harvey and we were off.

Now, this was my first time canoeing, but I don’t think I did a half-bad job of it. Good thing I saw that episode of This is Daniel Cook, huh? Overall, we had a bit of trouble keeping straight and we were pretty much zigzagging some of the way but we got better, I think. To get to the trash we had to land our canoe on the bank or rocks and jump out. We started off our trash picking with this huge wet blanket and some cans. Most of what we got were plastic bags, cans, and bottles – most of which were beer. We even found an unopened beer can. I couldn’t read the born on date so I don’t know how old it was.

The more unusual items that we picked up were a tire, a huge plastic piece off of a boat, a piece of patio roofing, two gloves (not the same pair), and a bucket. We did see a lot of other things but they were too big to haul back in our canoe. I saw a truck (at least the cab portion) out in the river, more tires, a boat hull, and a car bumper. We managed to fill up two trash bags not including the big items.

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Teaching your children new words can be an interesting experience, especially when they are babies. You are trying to get the baby to say a certain word, say perhaps a relative’s name. What actually happens is that they pick up new words almost at random and sometimes out of context.

On Saturday, we were cleaning up and Nicky was getting into something that I’d rather not have him in. I said, “Dude, that’s not for you.” Nick looks at me and says, “Doooo.” He must have saw the look of amazement on my face and tried again. “Doood.” How about that. Here we’ve been trying to get him to say “Nana” and he says “Dude” with almost the right surfer inflection.

However, there are times when you need to watch what you say. Now I didn’t say any naughty words myself. It was more of a juxtaposition of two other words. Anyway, I was helping Abi get ready for bed and Nick was in the room with us. I told Abi that she couldn’t sleep with the dolls and she said that she wanted to sleep with Polly [Pocket]. Now that’s a fairly small toy so I told her, “No, you can’t sleep with Polly because she’ll fall behind the bed and you’ll lose her.” And then that cute little voice down on the floor chirped out, “Loser!”

Yeah. I couldn’t help myself either.