So we put it up on the market. Within one week, it was under contract, and within another week that contract fell through. It might be a little bit of a roller coaster for the next little while.

Next, it has been a crazy time keeping up with Glen as of late. He has decided that he is no longer just content running around the house. He has discovered he can climb! Much like my sister Rachel as a child, he finds himself little areas where he can crawl in and hide. And like his cousin Isaac, he has also learned what light switches are, and since he has discovered one he ca reach, he runs there every chance  he can get. And Grandma Evelyn will be pleased to see that he has good taste in soda.

James is getting more and more independent, and doesn’t listen very well at the moment. When we try to offer correction or explanation on why he can’t do something, the response is usually “That’s not fair!” or something similar. Hopefully he will grow out of it soon.

As for Aiden, he is doing better and better with his reading, which has been a struggle since day one. He is getting to be a very big help around the house, and since he will be turning eight in a month, he has also been doing more with the Scouts when Johanna is in charge. He’s excited for the Pinewood Derby coming up, and for the camping trips he has been promised this spring by Grandpa Dodge.

All in all, it’s been pretty eventful as of late, and doesn’t look like it will slow down any time soon.

We plan on hanging a number of these in the house, and giving some to parents as gifts (yes, Mom, that means if you are reading this, don’t try to print ‘em, we’ll be getting some really good prints out to you soon.) Enjoy!

Last night we went to see State Fair at the Sugar Factory Playhouse, and it was a pretty good show. Some of my old friends there haven’t seen me since I was a single, not-even-anyone-on-the-horizon sort of guy. Finding out that baby Dodge is on the way was a real shocker.

But even with all this great news, the most memorable part of the recent week was when we decided to take the kids to a free puppet show at the West Jordana library for Family Home Evening. It was the Starry-Eyed Puppet Show, and it was really something else. What made it so great? Well, let me tell you…

Johanna’s friend Heather told us about a free puppet show at the library, and since we didn’t have any concrete plans for the evening, we decided to go and see if it was any good. We got there quite a bit early, and had some time to wait in the kids section of the library. There is a ‘bug’ theme going on right now, and kids are able to sign up for contests and reading clubs to earn prizes – plastic bugs among them. Of course, for little boys, there’s not much that can top a good plastic bug.

When the puppet show finally got under way, and we were completely amazed at the quality of the show. We thought it would be some hokey little thing with a card table and a guy with some socks on his hands or something. But there was a complete 2-tiered ‘puppet-stage’ with soundtrack, silly-string-sneezing noses, giant spiders (remember the bug theme), and the kids went crazy! The show was actually funny enough that most of the adults were laughing a bit, too. And since it was at the library, of course it was educational to boot.

The show was about things that “Bug” us, and one of the first I can recall was rap – a sorry excuse for music, in my humble opinion. They had a rap about the life-cycle of a butterfly. Then they had another thing that “bugs” a lot of people – bad poetry. Some boring-to-tears worm came out and read poetry about daffodils, and all of a sudden, daffodils are flying all over the place at this worm…he never does finish the poem.

During “scene changes” a puppet comes up singing “eency weency spider” to the audience, but he isn’t supposed to be part of the show. So the master puppet tries to shoo him off, and calls on his friend spider to help. Each time the scene changes, the singing puppet reappears, and the spider shooing him away gets bigger…until the spider is HUGE and the little puppet runs away screaming! A classic joke, but well played here.

The main story was about a worker bee who noticed that all villains are popular, while nobody remembers the heroes in those books (eg. Dracula, Moby Dick, etc.) So he decides that in order to be famous, he needs to be bad. But every bad thing he does ends up saving some other bug’s life, and he gets frustrated. In the end, his conscience gets the best of him, and he is awarded for being a good worker bee.

All in all, it was a really fun little show, and Johanna thinks it might be something we could do on the side for extra income – put on puppet shows. We will have to see about that, but this much I can definitely say: the Starry-Eyed puppet show was a real hoot, and I will not second guess the programs that the library puts on for kids again. I highly recommend looking into the nearest public library to see what youth activities they have planend in the near future – and going!

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