Ane and Tad were arguing.  I don’t know what it was about, but the argument ended this way…

Ane: “Suck it up, buttercup!”

Tad: (mad) “Don’t call me buttercup! If you call me ‘buttercup,’ I’m gonna call you ‘honey-glazed!’ ”

Ane had to turn around to avoid laughing in Tad’s face.

Does this mean Tad won the argument?

And happy birthday to Grandma!!!  Hope you like your card and presents!

It can be difficult to find new books for Thumper to read sometimes.  But sometimes I get really lucky.  While shopping with Thumper at the Amazon bookstore, we found two brand-new releases that we just had to have.

First, a Little Golden Star Trek book???  NO WAY.  MUST BUY.

It’s a kids’ adaptation of the classic Original Series show “The Trouble With Tribbles,” and Thumper was quite happy with the find.

But he might have been even happier with this book.

Thumper really loves the Pigeon books (and most Mo Willems books), and when a new one comes out, it is very exciting!  Thumper gives “The Pigeon HAS to Go to School!” his seal of approval!  (So do I – it’s a very funny and cute story.)

And yes, Thumper can actually read the Pigeon book – his reading aloud skills have greatly improved over the last couple of months.

The home improvement/remodeling saga continues.

Grandma and Gichan came over on the Fourth to work with me, while the Webmaster and Ane were volunteering at the city parade (and the boys were distracted by the Xbox and iPads).  The goal: remove the carpet from the old master bedroom, and assess the condition of the hardwood floor beneath.

There is now a lot of carpet waiting to be thrown out.  The hardwood was sticky with some kind of stuff under the carpet pad, but it came up with a little elbow grease and orange cleaner in water.

So, with all the carpet out of the room (save a little patch in the closet), the floor now looks like this:

The paint splatters are from when the floor was uncovered while the room was painted originally.  Back then, they didn’t care that they were dripping on good hardwood, because they were just going to throw wall-to-wall carpet over the floor anyway.  Now, we need to decide if we will restore the floor the way we did in the other bedrooms, or if we will put carpet on top again.

I think we are heavily leaning toward sanding and refinishing the floor.  Still so much to do and think about….

This is still one of the best Independence Day pictures I ever took.

This was from 2011, and they’re all so little… and Thumper wasn’t even born yet!

So here he is from his first Independence Day in 2013.

He was SO CUTE.