Why yes! I WOULD like a refill!

Have you ever noticed how your tolerance level for little kid shenanigans is greatly increased after the waiter delivers your schooner sized margarita? No? Liar. Well let me enlighten you. My patience tank always occasionally reads -492 by the time we reach dinner in the evenings. This generally means I become a total Nazi when we finally sit down to eat..."STOP kicking the table! Don't thump crumbs at your brother! You are NOT a dog, you are a little BOY. Now use your FORK!" So, here's the scene at dinner the other night:

Me: STOP kicking the table! Don't thump crumbs at your brother!

Matt: (staring off in the distance, lost in his own little happy place)

Me: You are NOT a dog, you are a little BOY. Now use your FORK!

Waiter: And here's your margarita!

Me: *glug glug glug* Oh Jaden! What are you building over there? Is that food art?

Jaden: No, Mom. It's a catapult! (visualize a french fry base, tortilla chip launcher, and edamame projectile) I'm trying to fling this bean into that cup of ranch over there. Watch!!

Me: *glug glug* Sweet!! Scoot the chip a little this way and it'll go farther...try it!

And the moral of the story is??

--Sometimes you just need a little splash of tequila to help you appreciate the sweet things in life.

Here's another sweet thing: Swim lessons at the Seahorse...

He graduated!! I love these diving board/diploma pics. I've got the same pic of J when he graduated about 4 years ago, and my mom has the same pic of ME when I graduated thirty, er, a few years back.

Quick family vacays are also pretty sweet things...

Here are the chickens, acting like flamingos, at the Ft. Worth Zoo

Check out my bookworm...

I was having one of those Gestapo kind of days from about the moment I woke up that morning...

Me: NO! You do NOT need to bring that book into the zoo! We're here to have FUN, not study!

I'm sure you're not having any trouble identifying which part of that rant was my lightbulb moment for the day. Jeez. It's hard to tell from the pic, but the book is just full of quick facts and info about animals, most of which we actually saw at the zoo. I think I may have some control issues. But that's babble for another post & another day.

All G really wanted to do was "smile at a crocodile." Here he's waiting patiently. We did finally find one. Only it was an alligator. Apparently when you're 5 though, the distinction is irrelevant. He was pleased as punch for the rest of the day that he managed to "smile at a crocodile" without getting eaten.

Somewhere in the last few months, something has happened to my big kid. On this day he was simultaneously too young to resist riding the carousel and too old/cool to climb onto one of the horses and let anyone know he was having fun. Seriously? He's only eight.

You can see here that J is back to himself...climbing on the fake termite mounds, sucking on jelly beans. But really, it's the bag of jelly beans that are important in this story. Shortly after snapping this picture, a fat, fuzzy bumble bee flew into the candy bag for a little snack of his own. Now, Jaden is terrified of stinging insects after an incident involving an aggressive wasp a few years back. So he freezes statue still, tells me what's happened, and, being the excellent mom I sometimes am (who, incidentally is also terrified of said insects), calmly took the bag from his statue hand and headed for the trash can. WHAT possessed me to want to peek into the bag and see the bee trying to eat jelly beans is beyond me, but of course I did. As you can imagine, the bee seized this opportunity to escape and came zinging out at full throttle. Straight at my FACE. Thus causing me to shriek like a banshee whilst wildly flapping my arms and hopping about, because this is clearly the most intelligent way to rid oneself of a pesky bee. I must've looked like the idiot I clearly was on this day as the nearby mothers herded their children away from the crazy shrieking lady. I regained my composure, the children stopped cackling with laughter, Matt rolled his eyes, and we moved on the the giraffes.

Just another day in the life of the Potts fam.