You little shit.

If you're looking for a Christmas post or even New Years you have come to the wrong place, for now anyhow. We haven't gotten around to downloading the pictures, hopefully we'll have something soon. For today however we have a funny story to tell you.

Now I know that some of you reading this post saw the title and immediately got offended. Call Michelle, hop on the band wagon and complain to the ombudsman--she's making a petition up to force me to stop calling my kids this. Though I have explained it before, I'll tell it again. In my family there was this little old lady with imposing batflaps and soft arms named Alda, or Grandma B. She would yell at you as soon as swat you and calling a child a "little shit" was akin to saying "I do" at a wedding; you say it and in some ancient way it means, "I love you very much dear." It's a very sweet thing. Of course it can also mean "if you get with in arms reach of me in the next ten minutes I'm gonna beat you senseless child" usually the former; like Cantonese, it depends on the intonation.

So, the story. Yesterday we all piled in the car and drove to Ft Worth. There we watched the Air Force Academy play the University of Houston in the Armed Forces Bowl. It was fun to see the WOBs jump into the game at half time and the boys loved playing on the bleachers. Then we went shopping and ate dinner at Panera. It was a fun trip. On the way out of town we decided to stop at an Albertsons to grab some travel food and let the boys run some energy out so they'd sleep the three hours home. Because we were letting them run, our trip through the grocery store was sort of like an old mechanical pinball game. Brig would walk in a zig zag down an aisle touching what ever it was that he happened to stop on for that moment. I would follow him and like the swinging arms in the game knock him back up the ramp.

It was a pretty good deal going on. It was fun and I hope it was a learning experience so Brig can someday in the near future be able to walk around a store without requiring so much attention and so many time out sessions. Then we got to the check out line. There was a period of time while walking around that Michelle and I got split up. I had the boys. When we got back together and were finishing the checkout process in the self-service line we were putting the bags into the cart. I noticed a box of strawberry rice crispy treats sticking out, one which I had not put in there. "So some gooie snap crackle pop sounded good to you huh?" I said to Michelle.

"No, I thought you got those bud", she replied. We both turned to the basket of boys and grub and Briggie cocked his head up sideways at me and looked extremely innocent. Then we both said, "You little shit." I don't think we could have expressed our love any more affectionately in that instance. He had slipped it in the basket unbeknownst to his parents and had gotten away wit it; it was too much of a hastle to turn it back in. So we have box of Rice Crispy treats in the cupboard if anybody is interested.