Swear Jar

Diary of a Wimpy Kid has come in handy again. Zachary announced he was going to make a Swear Jar. He explained it to John, and then announced he was going to get rich. John asked him what it would cost him if he said an inappropriate word, and Zachary said, "$1." In our house, curse words of course are off limits, but so is calling people names like idiot or dumb, and then there is s*cks and cr*p. John is going to go broke if he is not careful. And I'll tell you one thing, my son does not have a hearing problem.

A friend of mine the other day was meeting me and she said s*cks, and Zachary busted her. She is our first contributor. Zachary has officially set up the jar. So if you plan to stop by, either watch what you say or come with your ones.

Puzzlemania

During the summer, Zachary takes to assembling puzzles. He actually is on his fourth puzzle right now. He's so sweet to watch. He quietly works on these 750-1000 piece puzzles. I had some friends over the other day and they didn't even know he was in the other room the whole hour and a half. He loves it when we help too. I've promised to do a piece a day, although I normally get sucked into more pieces. "Just one more, and then I am stopping."

We started at the lake with our family reunion. We had about 8-10 people working on this puzzle at various times.

Work in progress.

A completed puzzle (he's in his swim jammers), which came apart right after he finished and took 3-4 pictures. John nearly died after we worked on this for so long. He said the other day he wanted to build it again, and then frame it. And the puzzle on the right, thanks to Aunt Kathy, is our newest challenge.

Family Reunion 2011

I'm a bit behind on my posts, but for those who were not at our reunion, this is worth seeing. We often have an ice cream freeze contest, accompanied with a skit. The skit and ice cream are voted on separately.

Mom came up with the clever idea of dressing as Wal-martians. I was pleasantly surprised that John was willing to dress the part too. So once we decided on our skit, we had to think of an ice cream to match. We decided to make B.S. - Beer Sorbet. And surprisingly we only got 2 votes. We came in second on the skit though.

We competed against Uncle Mike's Irish Cream, which apparently was pretty lucky because he won the taste off. Aunt Kathy and Uncle Bill brought "Whataicecream" with all the fixings, and it was da-gone delicious (but not low-fat). Aunt Ruth and Uncle Steve brought their own booty-lisheous ice cream for non-dairy fans. And Eric and Ryan, with their families, added the Swamp People with a tasty treat of pistachio ice cream.

And a few photos for your viewing pleasure (in order of mention above)...

And last, but not least, the Walmartians...

Walmartian in training...