We're still very busy

but now we're not just sitting we're running around doing stuff because we only have a week left.

Today we're going to the Toy Barn. I mean, that's not what it's called but it should be.
"Why are you going to the Toy Barn?" Matt asked me last night. "Why do the children need toys?"
"I don't know," I said, "their grandmother promised to take them."
"What will they do with more toys?" he asked.
"I don't know," I said, "carry them around and break them."

Originally, unbeknownst to himself, Matt was supposed to accompany us to the Toy Barn, but he has escaped by taking on the gargantuan task of digging out his mother's long broken pond. Its a really pretty pond but the pump broke a few years ago and there was just never time to fix it.

So Matt and Elphine and Alouicious went outside yesterday, cheerfully, prepared to move rocks and have a good time. Matt moved the first rock and out crawled a little itsy bitsy cockroach.
"Ooo," shouted Elphine with delight.
She and Alouicious have been hunting roaches all week, thinking that they are awfully cool 1. because they have never seen them before and 2. because some helpful person told them they were around at the same time as The Dinosaurs. I caught Elphine asking her grandmother for a glass jar and a lid.
"Sure, hang on sweetie," said her grandmother, but then paused for just a moment, looked Elphine up and down and wisely asked, "what are you going to put in it?"
"Those dinosaur bugs," she shouted (she's taken to shouting Everything. Its driving me crazy).


So they moved a second rock and out crawled another roach. Matt blithely sprayed the two bugs to kill them and suddenly, as they say in the Bible, a multitude of roaches swarmed over the face of the whole pond. Alouicios and Elphine were hustled back inside while Matt killed and killed and killed and killed roaches for quite a long time. Eventually, however, when it seemed there more no more to kill and poison was dripping off everything, he clad the two in gloves and stuff and let them get in the mud and help him move rocks, which they continued to do for almost the whole rest of the day.

So maybe a visit to the Toy Barn is in order. "Its the first time," said Matt at the end of the day, "that they've been an actual help to me in the yard."