Progress...

We've made pretty good progress around the house in the last week. Perfecto painted most of the inside of the house, and we had the carpets cleaned. The furniture has been put back in place and most of the pictures, paintings, and other wall decorations have been put back in their place. Realistically, it will take another couple of weeks to get things back in order. No real rush now other than we want to have everything knocked out by the time the baby comes.

I took some time out last weekend to help the father-in -law do a little work on the railings on their upstairs balcony. The spacing was large enough to allow a certain couple of 3 yr olds to fall through, so we worked put in some lattice and trimmed it out neatly with treated 1x2's. It looks pretty good if I do say so myself.

Taking MLK day off...

I took a rare vacation day to stay home. Even though we're not moving, we decided to keep making progress on de-cluttering and otherwise sprucing up the house. Perfecto showed up bright and early this morning to start painting. I hate painting, so Perfecto is one of my favorite people this week.

Maybe I'll take some pictures a little later. The house is a complete wreck. Furniture is scattered everywhere, and all of the artwork and other stuff has been removed from the walls and is scattered around the rooms that aren't being worked on yet.

I'm about to go downstairs and help Shelly with cleaning out the inside freezer. I picked up one of the deer this morning that has been processed, and we have to make room for it and the other one that will be ready in another 2 or 3 weeks.

Unfortunately, I've been too busy to go down to the big MLK Parade. Dang.

Not moving.... Yet.

We met with the realtor last night. After going over comparables, talking about the market, and thinking about what our wants are, we had some decisions to make. This morning as we laid in bed thinking about what was ahead of us, we grabbed the computer and started crunching numbers. Of course, Shelly being the financial guru she is, she quickly built an excel spreadsheet to make the calculations we wanted. There it was, spelled out in black and white. We can afford the move.

The decision? We're not moving... yet.

The long and short of it is that we have a baby due the first week of May and we started thinking about all of the uncertainty in the situation. We have a short window in which to sell, buy, and move, and that adds a bunch of stress to a time that is already a little hectic as it is.

What do we do now? Same thing we've been doing. Heavy duty spring cleaning, organizing, repainting, carpet cleaning, and sprucing up the yard. After that's done, we sit back, relax in our clean, uncluttered home, and enjoy the new baby. I might even get to go camping a time or two and make a spring Axis deer hunt out in Rocksprings.

Maybe we'll move next year.

What a morning ...

About mid-morning this morning, I sent Shelly an e-mail telling her how the day was going so far. She thought it was pretty funny, and worthy of sharing.

Just as I was about to go downstairs to leave this morning, Shelly called to remind me to take the leftover tamales with me for lunch. Thanks for the reminder. Those babies were good, so having them for lunch was a great idea. Besides, moving isn't cheap, so saving the cost of lunch is good.

A co-worker is having a baby tomorrow and she needed to borrow a carseat from us, so I had gone into the attic to get the carrier. The base to it was in the storage building, so I had to remember to grab it on the way out of the house. Here's how it went...

go downstairs and let the dog back inside...
think about tamales, gotta remember to grab them...
go out to shed and get carseat base...
stop at my counter in the kitchen to get keys, wallet, phone, etc...
remember I still need to grab the tamales...
put everything down to feed the dog before leaving...
pick up everything and head into the garage...
grab carseat with my already full hands...
open trunk of car to deposit carseat...
(Altima has that funny keyless key deal, so you just open the trunk)
trunk full of dry cleaning picked up last night, close trunk...
put everything down to unlock doors to open back door to put carseat in backseat...
notice trashcans out by street from yesterday...
pick up trashcans so HOA doesn't send me yet another nasty-gram about them...


Damn, leaving the house is a chore some days...

head out, traffic really backed up, so I take alternate route...
crap, wreck on alternate route, really backed up, stuck like Chuck for a while...
finally make it through the accident scene. Dang, car pieces and parts scattered all over creation...
finally get going, log truck exits freeway, cuts across 3 lanes of feeder, straight into my lane...
take evasive action (slam on brakes, hold on, shit pants - not really, but did fart a time or 2 on the way to work)
catch up to truck, roll down window, and give him the finger...
he honks and swerves at me again... I better quit while I'm ahead...
smooth sailing the rest of the way...

Get to work ...
Forgot tamales. Crap.

Still working on the house...

Part of the cleaning out / organizing process to get ready to move involves Matthew's toys. My God, I didn't realize how many toys that kid has. We've managed to whittle him down to what is still too many toys. I packed the rest up into a couple of large tubs. Actually, 4 large tubs and 2 medium sized tubs.

Side note to all... when #2 gets here in May, PLEASE don't buy him any more toys. We have plenty already. If you insist on buying toys, I'll sell you a gently used one for 1/2 price. It's a win-win situation. You get the satisfaction of spending money buying a toy for a child, and I don't have any more clutter in the house. Maybe I'll even promise to put the money into the college fund.

Aside from that, I've hung up the new faux wood blinds, pulled out some clothes and shoes to donate to charity, and a couple of other jobs.

Boring? Yep, but that's life at the moment.

What's coming up? The maids come tomorrow, the realtor is coming by to visit and have a walk-through on Friday night, my parents are going to come help pack up some extra stuff this weekend, and Perfecto is coming to paint next week. This is when things start happening fast. Hopefully we can keep up.

It's a boy!!!

I think back in October before I went AWOL, I mentioned that we're expecting again. A few weeks ago, we found out that we're having another boy. Needless to say, Shelly was a little bummed. Don't get me wrong here. We're especially thankful for a seemingly healthy boy after what it took to get to this point, but with one boy already, we were hoping for a girl to even things out. Shelly's outnumbered as it is, and it looks like it's only going to get worse. On the bright side, I'll have 2 little knuckleheads to cut the grass for me in a few years.

I'm not good with numbers...

Yesterday afternoon, I was at Home Depot getting the blinds cut to fit the windows. I guess it's asking too much to actually have someone there that knows how to do this job. I went in with the measurement of 42 1/4 inches wide for the new blinds. I went to the blind aisle and punched the little button for assistance. The girl that came to help had evidently just fallen off the turnip wagon. She started with a set of blinds 45.5 inches wide. When I told her I needed 42 1/4, she was completely bumfuzzled about what to do. She mumbled something about not being very good with numbers, then pulled out a tape measure and stretched it out. She then proceeded to ask me which little marking was a quarter inch. Holy crap. How do you work at Home Depot and not know how to read a tape measure? It was very confidence inspiring to say the least.

This girl had no idea. She ruined a set of blinds before she finally let me help her with the measurement and set the machine. For the rest of you that aren't good with numbers, that's 1 5/8 off each end. That's the 10th little black line between 1 and 2 on the tape measure.

Movin' on up...

Ok, not really movin' up, but we are preparing to put our house on the market. We're planning to make more of a lateral move. We expect to stay in the same general area of town, but get a few things different in our next house.The main deal will be a master bedroom downstairs, and I hope to get a 3 car garage.

When you live in a house for several years and you are a sort of a pack-rat like we are, the thought of selling the house is quite a daunting experience. We're going through, de-cluttering, and throwing a BUNCH of stuff away. I'm also performing a huge list of maintenance items. It's amazing the stuff around the house that you don't see as a big deal until you get ready to start showing your house. Here's what I did this weekend:

1. remove and replace a rotten piece of wood trim around my garage door then caulk around the new piece of wood.

2. clean mildew from top of patio cover, rear of house, and storage building.

3. clean outside of upstairs rear windows and caulk as needed.

4. Clean back patio ceiling fan

5. paint new wood trim listed above and touch up other areas near garage door (hit with trick mirror).

6. replace all toilet seats

7. replace 2 A/C vents that are starting to rust

8. cut out old caulk from master shower, clean with Clorox cleaner, re caulk with white anti-microbial caulk.

9. replace light fixture in downstairs 1/2 bath (project from SEVERAL months ago that never got completed)

10. measure for and purchase faux wood blinds for guest room and Matthew's room. I'm fine with the metal blinds currently there, but Shelly thinks that since all of the other rooms have wither real wood or faux wood, it will look better to be consistent in all rooms. Whatever. I just work here.

There were a couple of other things to do, but you get the idea. Next up, Meet with a realtor, move some items to storage, paint interior (call Perfecto), have carpets cleaned, hire some "guys" to spruce up the flower beds. We hope to be on the market Friday, February first. Wish us luck.

Long Overdue update...

Man, I thought I sucked before at updating. 2 months later, I'm finally getting around to posting again.

OK, about those pics on the last update.

The first picture is probably the nicest buck I've ever seen while sitting in a deer stand. I don't know how wide his spread is, but people that seem to "know" tell me 22-24 inches. The widest one I've ever killed is 18 inches, which is still quite nice by any standards. The big news is that I let him go. I estimated he was 3.5 years old and he was chasing a doe at the time (it was just at the beginning of the rut), so I elected to pass. Hopefully he bred lots of does and passed those big antler genes on. We'll see in the coming years. I do now have 2 deer at the processors, so it was a good year even if I didn't put my tag on the trophy buck.

The middle 2 pics are just pics of Matthew and I having a good time hanging around at the ranch. He loves that deer hunting.

The last picture is of the inside of my deer stand. It's called "Casa del Marko". It sits on the ground on the side of a hill, which gives a great view of the creek bottom below. Lots of deer come hang out in this area to eat corn from the feeder or oats from the food plot. Here's the rub. I hunt this stand more than any other stand, and have seen more deer here, but I've never killed any of them I see from this stand. Why? I don't know. It's almost like I prefer just watching these deer and taking their pictures.

In the deer stand, I have everything laid out that I need to keep comfortable for a few hours of deer watching. The shelf above the window is for things I don't really need once I get settled in. from the left, binoculars case, camera case, flashlight, range finder case, and wasp spray. Early in the season, we seem to have a bunch of wasps hanging out in the deer stands.

On the bottom shelf, on the left you can just see the blue edge of my snack cooler. I typically pack 2 diet cokes and a couple of Little Debbies. Snacks on the deer stand are a family tradition that goes way back. Next is the Diet Coke, walkman, binoculars, cell phone, and range finder. Cell phone you ask? Set to silent, we send text messages back and forth. The members of our family sometimes hunt a couple hundred miles apart, but we always give the play-by-play via text message (which might explain the low kill rate...)

I should say something about my rifle. It's a Winchester model 70 Super grade. It was a wedding gift from Shelly. Eat your heart out guys. Not only does she hunt, she also bought me a top notch rifle for the wedding gift. (I got to pick it out, but hey, give the girl credit for actually buying a gun).

Hold on, I have a couple more updates.

Catching up...

I'll catch up over the next couple of nights. We got in this evening and unpacked our stuff. As I get a change to work on the photos and blog I'll update, but here are a few teasers...

Hunting...

disclaimer: If you aren't a hunter and are morally opposed or otherwise against hunting, stop reading now. I'm not interesting in arguing about this issue. Thank you.

Those that know me know that were getting into my favorite time of the year. I've never been into the stick and ball sports. I never really played them. One year of each sport as a kid and I knew I didn't like them. I was the kid that couldn't hit, couldn't catch, and spent the year of t-ball out in right field picking clovers without a clue as to what the hell was going on. Luckily, my Dad was a hunter. I don't know how old I was the first time I went hunting, but let's say I don't remember NOT going.

Hunting was a family deal. My Dad and grandfather (mother's dad) hunted together and I usually got to sit on the stand with one of them. My grandfather likes to tell the story of me packing 2 Hot Wheels cars (one for each of us) in the hunting bag so we could play with them in the stand. One day I'll tell more stories about that.

I've got some pretty strong feelings about hunting and the ethics involved in it. We put quite a bit of time, effort, and money into deer management out at our ranch. This involves working with local wildlife biologists and a game management program to deal with issues such as habitat, food sources - both natural and supplemental, and water. It's more than the average hunter's deal of filling the feeder with corn and sitting in a stand to wait for the deer to come.

The reward for our hard work is the ability to see quality deer. With that reward comes a few things that I view as responsibilities to make sure you are being ethical with the hunting.

My first rule is that a weapon never goes out for a hunt before it has been check for accuracy at the range. You would not believe how many people will take the rifle out of the closet and head for the woods without bothering to sight in the rifle. I've never wounded a deer or had to track a deer I've killed. I have flat missed a couple of times, but I've never wounded one. (aim at the neck - it's a small target - you will either have a clean, quick kill, or you will have a clean miss).

The second rule is that you never attempt a shot you aren't sure you can make. It's almost impossible to hit a running deer and make a clean shot, so why even attempt it? There will be another chance at another time.

I know that some people have varying opinions, and I could one day change my mind, but for now I won't shoot a doe that has a yearling with her. Some of the experts say that they are old enough to fend for themselves, but there is still something about it that I don't like.

That's some of my main thoughts. I should probably say that while I really like hunting, part of what I like is the watching. I haven't killed a deer in a couple of years now. I've seen a bunch, but I've mainly enjoyed watching them do what deer do. One of these days I'll remember to take some pictures while I'm watching them.

I'll write more on this subject in the next couple of weeks.

Is there anyone else reading here that enjoys sitting in the woods watching the wildlife do their thing?

MICE...

A week or so ago, Shelly was organizing a few things in the pantry and came across evidence of a critter loose in the house. A package of peanut butter cheese crackers had been chewed on and some little droppings were on the bottom shelf. Let me tell you, there is NEVER just one mouse when you see evidence of a critter.

I went out and picked up a couple of glue traps and put them in the pantry, baited with a piece of animal cracker and a dab of peanut butter. That should get them. The next morning, one of my traps had been successful - sort of. The trap was moved and had all sorts of mouse hair and droppings on it, but no mouse. It must have been a heck of a show during the night. I wonder what Sweetie the Chihuahua thought about it. Surely she heard the commotion from her bed not 10 feet away.

Well, I moved the traps around a little, and put one in the garage behind the freezer where there was some mouse poop. About an hour later, I had a mouse. A quick thump to the head and he was history. One down, hopefully not many more to go. Back in late 2001 we had a mouse in the house. A couple of months later, I had caught 14 or 15 mice, one rat, and one baby rabbit on my glue traps. (the baby rabbit was carefully removed and went on to be eaten by a resident owl a short-time later). Thankfully, MOST of the critters were in the garage and not in the house.

Well, fast forward to Saturday. We had gone to the College Station to see the Aggies play (that's another rant for another day). We got home pretty late and I was checking the traps. I was looking in the corner of the garage near one of my storage cabinets that REALLY needed to be cleaned out and saw more mouse sign. Lots of mouse sign. Like lots of paper and stuff that had been chewed up I opened the cabinet and saw IT. A mouse nest. Crap, those little jokers were setting up housekeeping in my garage. No mice visible, but there was a nest. I set a glue trap and also put out a fancy new electric trap I bought. War has been declared.

This new electric trap is pretty slick. You put in 4 AA batteries and put a little bit of peanut butter in the trap. When Mr Mouse walks in to get his snack and steps on the little metal plates ZAP! I'm happy to report, the trap works as advertised. 2 Mousies down.

I got up early Sunday morning and started cleaning the garage. A full I have a trashcan full of JUNK that needed to be thrown out and found another nest in the clutter. In the next night or two, I'll finish the job and once again have both cars in the garage.

I wonder how many more I'll find. I checked tonight and there were no more signs (droppings) in the areas I cleaned out yesterday, so maybe there aren't too many more. One can only hope...

Preempted...

Shelly claims that she needs the computer tonight for legitimate purposes. We took a vote on whether her use was more important than blogging. Matthew and I voted for blogging. Shelly claimed that her one vote was the winner.

I may need to request a recount. Must have been some illegals or dead people voting on her side when I wasn't looking. Maybe Al Sharpton will come supervise the recount...

Hopefully I'll be back tomorrow.

Pop Quiz...

ok, pop quiz time. Staci, you are not allowed to answer since I already asked you.

What's the first thing you know?

I'll give you a hint... It's not your name, your mothers voice, etc. This question requires that you think outside the box a little.

Leave your answers in comments. I turned off the comment moderation for now so it's easier for you to post. What does the winner get? I don't know, how about bragging rights? Maybe I'll let you pick the topic for an upcoming post (and I can ad lib my way through a posting on your topic of choice)


Bonus joke...

Here's a bonus joke for you. It's one of my favorites (told in my best Cajun accent).

Boudreaux, Thibodeaux, Comeaux, and Fontenot were sitting around trying to think of what the fastest thing in the world is.

Boudreaux says "It has to be a thought. When you have a thought, before you know it, there it is. Now that's Fast."

Thibodeaux says "No, man, it has to be a blink. When you blink, it happens just like that (snaps fingers). Before you know it, you done blinked and it's over. You hardly even notice you've done it. That's fast."

Comeaux says "Yeah, those are fast, but Electricity is even faster. When you turn on the light switch, BOOM, the lights are on. When you turn the switch off, BOOM, darkness. Now that's fast."

Fontenot said, "Yeah, those are fast, but the fastest thing in the world is diarrhea." The others said "You're crazy. How do you figure that it's faster than the other stuff?" Fontenot answers "Well, when I woke up this morning with diarrhea, before I could think, blink, or turn on the lights, I done crapped my pants."

That my friends, is fast.

Big Ole Bag O' Toys...

For the last several weeks, Shelly and I have been attending a parenting course called "Love and Logic". Before Matthew was born, we took one called "Growing Kids God's Way", which is supposedly similar to Babywise. Of course, being the good parents we are, we don't put much of it into practice. We have picked up a few things. This one teaches you some ideas to get things across to the kids and get them to do what you want to do without always harping on them. Not completely bad.

I put one of the idea into motion tonight. It was time for Matthew's bath and the living room was a mess with all of his toys. I told him that all of the toys he wanted to keep, he needed to pick up. I would pick up and keep all of the ones that were left when he was "through" cleaning up. A few minutes later, he told me he was ready to go upstairs. I asked him if he was sure, there were an awful lot of toys left that I would be keeping. He was sure.

Man, he's going to be PISSED tomorrow evening when he starts looking for his toys. I seriously have about 2/3 of his toys that are currently downstairs, and almost ALL of the ones he really plays with. I have a pirate ship, "Lightening McQueen", all of his tools, all of his Hot Wheels trucks, his Bob the Builder hat, and several other items. I guess we'll see if this stuff really works.

Redirected...

Growing up, my family never was into camping, but I've always thought it was fun. I camped out when I was in the boy scouts as a kid, but nothing since then. That changed this year. Last Christmas I asked for and received a tent. This isn't just any tent, it's an SUV tent.



The problem with the camping is that in the Houston area, there are very few weekends that are suitable for tent camping. It's too hot most of the year, and raining the rest of the time. But, I'm determined to take my son camping, so on the 2 or 3 good weekends each year, we'll go out and sleep in the tent. One thing I learned on our first outing... Camping is fun and relaxing, but when doing it by yourself with a 3 year old, it's a TON of work. Did I mention that Shelly gave me the tent with the stipulation that I not involve her in any of my "fun"?

Shelly is not a camper, especially not a tent camper. Unfortunately, more deluxe camping accommodations (RV, etc) are not in the budget, and apparently never will be while she is involved with our finances. Have I mentioned that she has the initials CPA and CFP behind her name? Needless to say, that argument is pretty much done - no RV for this camper.

As of last weekend, the plan for this weekend involved loading up the camping gear and a certain 3 year old for a trip to the local state park. The weather is perfect, the Chamber of Commerce would be proud of the weather we are having. Mid 80's during the day, high 50's overnight. You couldn't order up better camping weather. Alas, it wasn't meant to be. Apparently, there were many chores for me for this weekend that were deemed more important than camping with the little guy.

What's so important? I think it must be nesting. Most pregnant women supposedly go through it at some point. Well, she's jumping in with both feet. A professional organizer spent part of the day at our house on Friday to help Shelly figure out how to best deal with the mountain of stuff that is our kitchen. This spills over into the pantry and laundry room since they are all in the same vicinity. The time with the organizer was a gift from Shelly's mother. Unfortunately, the $200 trip to The Container Store last night wasn't included in that gift.

So, instead of spending the afternoon in communing with nature, I hung up all manner of racks, sorters, broom hangy things, etc, etc. Really, that was just an hour or so. I also mowed, edged, weed-eated, trimmed bushes, took the truck for an oil change / transmission service (wasn't in the mood to do it myself), and had both cars washed. After that, I went to the grocery store, cooked dinner, then cleaned up after dinner. Yes, Shelly was busy today also, but this is my blog - if she wants to talk about her busy day, she can get her own blog.

The consolation - Shelly has agreed to go camping with Matthew and me in a couple of weeks. I'll let you know how that goes when it happens.

In other news today - the Aggies beat Nebraska. Ok, so Nebraska sucks this year, but at least it wasn't another loss for the Aggies. Yes, Katie, even with the win, Fran should still keep working to find a good realtor. Maybe he'll even sneak out in the middle of the night like he did for you guys. I still say it's pretty sad when our 300 lb running back has the 2 longest passes this year (50+ yards each) and our QB has the most rushing yards on the team.

Frog Hunting...

I guess it is the unusually wet spring and summer we have had, but we have a TON of frogs. As a matter of fact, we had just over 5 inches of rain at my house Monday afternoon. The frogs seem to keep themselves pretty well hidden during the day, but at night they are pretty easy to find. They seem to mostly hang out around the edges of the flowerbeds, near the stone borders, and along the edges of the sidewalk, right where the grass meets the concrete.

Several weeks ago, I took Matthew out with a couple of flashlights and we went "frog hunting". Well, the kid now loves frogs. He insists on frog hunting almost every night. He stalks the frogs with a flashlight. Once he finds one, I shine my light on it and he puts his light next to the frog and the frog. After holding it for a second and laughing, he places them in the grass.

Last night, he picked up a little frog. just before he put the frog down, I heard "hey, the froggy tee-teed on my hand". That was pretty funny, especially coming from a kid that a few months ago hated to have dirty hands. Yes, I did teach him that we have to wash our hands good with soap after handling frogs...

Well, tonight, Matthew wasn't having any part of missing out on the frog hunt, so we grabbed our lights and hit the sidewalk. After finding several, I sent him in the house while I retrieved a few items from my car. As I walked in the house, Shelly was leading Matthew out saying something along the lines of "I don't allow frogs in my house". Evidently, Matthew faked dropping the last frog and carried him in the house.

Yep, he's ALL boy. I guess now we'll have to start checking his pockets to make sure no critters get snuck into the house.

Comcast Sucks...

We have been sheep for many years. TV from the local cable company, high speed internet from the same group. Phone has always been with BellSouth, AT&T, or whoever the local remnant of what once was Bell Telephone is. When you do it that way, you likely pay more.

Well, we pay in the $90 range for the basic digital cable and broadband internet. They were through Time Warner, but Comcast recently took over. It's not a good change. The price of the cable boxes went up to $7 each, and the sports package is going from $4 to $8. They are also starting to charge a rental fee for the cable modem, which was always free from Time Warner. Basically, nickle and diming you to death.

They have been really pushing the VOIP phone deal, and have been advertising a $99 deal for digital cable, cable internet, and the VOIP phone deal (Phone over the cable internet). Shelly called and held for over 20 minutes. when the guy finally answered the phone, he told her we were not eligible since we were already customers. It would cost us about $130 or so. No negotiation, no customer courtesy adjustments available.

Looks like Direct TV and DSL are in our future. Shelly writes the checks to pay the bills, and they pissed her off. Basically, they bit the hand...

What do you want to bet that they kiss my butt 9 ways from Sunday and offer me the moon when we call to cancel?

(un)SCREWED...

Last night, after dinner, I heard Shelly in the living room "Where do all of these screws keep coming from?" There were 8-10 little silver screws on the living room floor. She found a few more the day or so before also. After investigating a little, I noticed Matthew playing with Felipe'. For the parents of little kids, that is a character from Disney Channel's Handy Manny. Felipe' is the Phillips head screwdriver. Ok, he has several toy screwdrivers, etc, but somewhere he had found one of my real screwdrivers.

The mystery was starting to come together... Now, where did the screws come from? Was our house about to collapse from missing fasteners? It IS a Pulte home... After a quick check, it was discovered that a couple of his toys had empty holes where screws once lived. After a good laugh, and banishing Felipe' back to Daddy's toolbox in the garage, we could once again say "This Mystery Is History"

Blaming the dog...

While I was out of town for the weekend, my parents kept Matthew so Shelly could get a little rest and get caught up on some stuff around the house. Matthew had a ball, especially since my sisters daughter that is about the same age was also there with him.

At one point on Saturday, Matthew and Allison were playing in the sandbox on the back patio and Matthew had to use the bathroom. Of course, for him that means stripping from the waist down and peeing off the edge of the patio. That's my boy. Even funnier was that earlier in the day he had done the same thing, and Allison also stripped down and was trying to pee off the patio like Matthew did. Poor thing. Mom had to explain to her that little girls couldn't do it like that. Matthew had announced several times this week "Only boys" when asked about "tee-teeing in the grass".

Well, this time, Matthew needed to take care of a little more than just whizzing off the patio. He announced that he had to poop. Before Mom could tell him that they needed to go in the house, he turned around, stuck his behind out a little and dropped one right on the patio. My parents didn't know what to think. Of course, they called me and gave me a hard time about raising a kid that would do such a thing.

Now, the question is - Where on Earth did he learn such a thing?

I blame the dog. She does it all the time.