Get off the phone/internet. My Heather wants to call your Heather.

Edit to note: Apparently it’s Heather’s fault, not Dale’s. She’s the one who posted this morning.

Hey Brother Agent 2, your wife is running amok online again, expressing her own opinion. This really is reflecting poorly on your leadership skills, and will be noted in your next performance review.

Heather took Peter and Evelyn out to the store last night to finally spend some money they had received at Christmas (we obviously weren’t in a rush). Evelyn got some nightgowns (she needed them) and a Strawberry Shortcake doll. Peter got a pair of cars from the movie Cars (Lightning McQueen and Sally), a tub of Legos, and a package of six Toys-R-Us brand Army Guys (generic G.I. Joe guys, I guess).

This morning when Peter got up he asked Heather “Can I go open my army guys?”. She said yes (while still in bed and groggy), and he left, leaving her with Tow Mater.

When she got up (whenever that was) and went into the kitchen, Peter was standing next to the table, playing with his army guys, surrounded by shredded packaging. “I used scissors”, he said.

A little later he went up to Heather and said “I want to name my army guys”. She started thinking of names, but before she had a chance to make any recommendations, he informed her of the names he was picking:
Telemachus, monk, martyr, and Saint.
=

and Prudentius, poet.
=

Those were followed by Stilicho, that is General Flavius Stilicho, Patrician of the Western Roman Empire
=

and Honorius, Western Roman Emperor.
=

and then Alfrick.
=

Quick break in the story to explain the origin of these names. The kids have a bunch of CDs and tapes of Adventures in Odyssey, and one of them tells the story of Telemachus. Telemachus’ martyrdom was responsible for Honorius calling an end to gladiatorial combat, and included in the story (two episodes worth) are Prudentius (who, it seems, was an ascetic like Telemachus, but I haven’t seen anything actually linking them like in the Odyssey story), and Stilicho, who was Honorius’ backbone, for all practical purposes. Alfrick was an “extra” in the story…I don’t think he matches up with a named historical figure, although he was supposed to be a member of Alaric’s army, and a major cause behind Telemachus speaking out against the blood sports. He’s the guy about to be killed when Telemachus steps into the stadium (probably not the name of that particular Visigoth.) and is martyred.

Stylized history lesson over. If you want to know more, follow the links on the names above…the Wikipedia articles didn’t seem too bad, and they’re probably a bit better than the Odyssey tale. Better yet, get some books on the time period. And get the Odyssey episodes.

So Peter had 5 of the 6 army guys named, and with some pretty cool names to boot. He paused, looked around, and his eyes fell on a colorform on the doorwall.

TRAVIS!
=

Well, they can’t all be 5th century historical figures.

I was supposed to get this up about a month ago. Sorry, Sr. Kay.

Quick background: Holy Saturday, my sister-in-law took the kids over to their Grammy’s house to dye Easter eggs. I had no idea when they were getting home (late was expected). We got Lily settled down for bed (she wasn’t allowed to really go anywhere then), cleaned the house, and were doing various things here and there while waiting for sis-in-law to come back.

Shortly after 10pm I heard the storm door open. I happened to be near the door, so, assuming it was Court with the kids, I opened the door. I think I shocked/scared the poor young ladies who were out there, one in the process of dropping a note in between our front door and storm door. They stammered that they were from St. Anastasia doing an Easter Egg drop. I was somewhat surprised by this, and didn’t really respond right away, so they tried to clarify things. I thanked them for their generosity and time and took the note.

We looked at all of the eggs that had been dropped off. Plastic eggs with candy inside were covering my front yard. They lined the walk to the front door, were in the awning, on the border of the flowerbeds, and strewn liberally across the lawn. There were a ton of eggs!

Later, when the kids did come home, we made sure they didn’t see the eggs. This was facilitated by the fact that they all had basically passed out in the car on the way home, so it was just a matter of not waking them up when transporting them from car to house.

In the morning (after it snowed), we took the older kids (again, Lily stayed in) outside with a huge basket to gather up the eggs. There were so many eggs, and our kids are so young, that it looked like it was going to take several hours to gather them all in. Plus, it was really cold out…did I mention the snow? So the kids (and mom) went to a neighbor’s house and invited them to help (two more bigger kids).

This really sped things up, and the two bigger kids each got to take home a plastic grocery bag full of eggs. We ended up with 3 bags worth ourselves. The squirrels only got a couple.

Please pray for our friends Heather and Dale. Heather has been rushed to the hospital for chest pains.