The 3 year-old was fascinated to watch the chaos unfolding right before her eyes! All she saw was some slime and a couple of squishy toys – but the terror and screaming from her siblings was real & intense!
Kryptonite Battle
OK – I don’t exactly know what happened, and I certainly don’t know how things spiraled out of control so quickly – but I do admit that I might have contributed to the incident…. a little…
Annie was playing with her new Cotton Candy Cuties slime – and Gracie and Dominick seem to have recently developed a very strong aversion to anything & everything that is even tangentially related to slime! So they were freaking out when Annie was stretching & playing with her new slime. Out of pure empathy for my oldest 2 children – I thought that maybe things should be evened out a little.
So I dug a couple of squishy toys out of their hiding place that Annie is not particularly fond of and surreptitiously gave them to Gracie & Dominick to “defend” themselves. Again, – all because, and only because, of my sincere concern for their welfare.
Ok – to say that Annie is not particularly fond of these little critters might just be a little bit of an understatement. Annie has a ridiculously and severe irrational fear of these Halloween squishy toys. (I have talked about her phobia in this post: ADVENTURE UPDATE #012: RELEASE THE BUTTERFLIES! ) Well, as soon as Annie realized what Gracie & Dominick had things just erupted! A true KRYPTONITE BATTLE had instantly materialized!
Sophie was right in the middle of the whole affair and was absolutely stunned & bewildered by what she was witnessing! It was pure & utter chaos! All three of the older kids were screaming and jumping around, Melani and I were laughing so hard that we were crying and poor Sophie was just trying to figure out exactly WHAT was going on with her family! There was no hitting or fighting – just these seemingly innocuous toys that were being thrown around and people were either laughing hysterically or screaming like their hair was on fire! The look on Sophie’s face was priceless!
Thankfully, no one started waving around any aluminum foil or banana peels…. That would NOT have been funny at all! (Yes – I am a toxicphobe and I hate touching either of those items.)
Things did continued to spiral out of control from there – and the three older ones all ended up going to bed early without any TV.
I felt just a tinge of guilt – but, heck, I hadn’t laughed that hard in at least a couple of days. So I think it was really worth it – although I realize the other participants and casual observers may beg to differ!
Soccer – End of Season!
A little bit of a disappointment for the end of the soccer season. Gracie & Dominick played the Binghamton team for the first game of their double header this week and then St. Patricks for the second game. I really wanted our team to beat St. Patricks at least once this season – but it just didn’t happen!
Dominick scored one goal against Binghamton and they won the game 7 – 1. I’m not sure if Binghamton had scored any goals against them for the entire season until the final game. When they scored – Binghamton celebrated like they won the game- even through the score wasn’t even close! I found myself happy for them, though, to have finally scored!
Soon enough our team was experiencing the other side of the coin – and lost to St. Patricks 0 – 6. I think I will be making the kids watch Facing the Giants one night soon – which is a great motivational movie and hopefully inspires them to come out and really attack next year when they play St. Patricks!
Final tally for goals scored for each kid for the 2019 year is as indicated below:
| Goals Scored 2019 | |
| Gracie | 5 |
| Dominick | 21 |
| Annie | 7 |
| Sophie | 0 (She’s not even on a team!) |
Miscellaneous
Artificial Un-Intelligence
The other day I requested Alexa to: “add an event to my calendar – Dominick selling popcorn for the boy scouts @ Sams Club tomorrow from 3- 5 o’Clock” Alexa asked me if that was 3:00 AM or 3:00 PM. Hum, clearly the machines don’t seem even as bright as those neanderthals among us who consider just sitting & breathing to be multi-tasking…..
STEM Competition – Rube Goldberg Machines
Gracie & Dominick are two of the students that have been chosen this year to represent their school in the STEM challenge at the local community college to create a Rube Goldberg machine from the materials provided.
If you are not familiar Rube Goldberg machines – they are complex machines that are built to accomplish simple tasks and to entertain.
Earlier in the year Gracie made a Rube Goldberg machine while Melani & I went wine tasting with her sister to celebrate her sister’s 50th birthday. You can read more about that in this post: ADVENTURE UPDATE #018: MY TRICYCLE IS VERY VERY FAST!
Here is a video that we all watched the other day with a VERY impressive Rube Goldberg machine!
Inspiring Story
I came across this story by Steve Hartman in a Reader’s Digest (March 2019) the other day. I thought it was really good – so I made a point of sharing it with the family. Short read that is inspiring! It’s about a man that intended to embarrass another man who he thought to be an Internet scammer and they actually both end up doing a tremendous amount of good by working together! An online con goes wonderfully, implausibly right!
Sincerely,
