As a side-note, her sister actually found the key after all.

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!

Amazingly enough, we found it at the second store we went to. My sister Sarah told me that my other sister Rachel had been referred to a store by my other sister Liz (!!!) and that I should check it out. The name of the store was Teton Nalder, but when we started looking for it, I misspelled Teton as Titan…and we couldn’t find it. So we started looking at any warehouse on KSL with good prices.

On the 7th we went out shopping with $350, and at the first warehouse we found something we could afford, but we wanted to wait until we had looked elsewhere before committing to it. Then, at the second warehouse, things got interesting.

When we arrived, Johanna reminded the sales rep they had talked on the phone, and that they had advertised a really inexpensive mattress. When we went back to see it, she said she only had twin mattresses to actually lay on, the larger ones weren’t on display but were in stock. Then, ‘FLOP,’ she shows us the most embarrassing excuse for a mattress I have ever seen. Johanna’s sideways ‘are they SERIOUS‘ glance says it all. The mattress is covered with little blue rockets, and looks old enough to have come over on the mayflower.

Johanna said “We’re looking for something a little higher quality than that…” and the sales rep obliges us with ‘FLOP,’ something dating from the civil war – blue without the rockets. At this point we were about ready to leave.

On the way out I saw the REAL mattresses, the nice ones with pillow tops and memory foam. I laid down on one and asked it’s price. The sales rep, desperate to keep us there, said it was $375 or so, but if we would buy it right then, she would give it to us for $350. Johanna thought it was comfortable, but I wasn’t totally sold – it was a little firm for my taste. So the rep left while Johanna and I talked it over.

I said I still didn’t want to spend money on that one. A mattress is a long-time purchase that you have to live with. I couldn’t live with a mattress that firm. So we decided against it, even though it was a nice one in our price range. We started walking out again, and saw their two top-of-the-line models. On a whim, I laid down on one.

INCREDIBLE! A wonderful, WONDERFUL Queen mattress with memory foam, encased coils, just the right firmness, I was near tears! I lay there and told Johanna to try it out. “But it’s out of our price range” she chided. “Just try it out, this is what I am looking for. We can check for this firmness elsewhere, but I want you to feel this!” She obliged, and agreed, it was really, really comfortable.

But was it in our price range? The rep was desperate to get us to stay. It was about $475 for the mattress without tax. But if we would buy it right then, it was going to be $475 with tax. That was a better price than the other warehouse, but I was still nervous about the price of buying a box spring. She offered a mismatched one for $50 more, but I was still hesitant. Then, she offered to just include one. That meant we were getting a retail $1,200 bedroom for just $478.67 with tax. The other warehouse couldn’t come close. And that did it.

Agreeing to pay our $350 right then, and the additional $128.67 the following week, we went out to fill out the paperwork. Taped on the table we saw:

“Checks payable to Teton Nalder”

I guess some things are meant to be.

It seems that my sister has been having a really neat-o time on her mission…as you can plainly see. A brief description follows.

Oh, this week I pet a Lion. Sis Ras and I live on a street with a new hotel. It is “The Lion Garden Hotel”
It was having its grand opening and they had a lion there. Sister Ras and I turned the corner as usual to go home and she jumped and said LOOK A LION…. its not on a leash!!
it was rather funny. Anyway, there was a man there that let us pet it. So there you have it. I pet a Lion in Hungary. Right on our own street too. Who knows what exciting things await is this next week.