Willie
and Teddy's Excellent Adventure
Well today was pretty good (except for a while in the morning) but not all of the week was so good. Willie took his turn at being sick this week -- he was sick, then mostly better, then kind of sick again. Alas for Willie, he found out how boring it can be to be sick! Not just because of what you can't DO, but also because of what you can't EAT...which is, basically, everything you want to eat.
We did a lot of building today and did some very funny programs on the NXT. Willie wants to learn more about downloading more sounds!
Teddy and Willie drafted a letter to the Lego company, because they have not sent Teddy the Brickmaster gifts we say he is supposed to receive.
Teddy talked about "The parents from the black lagoon" although we are not sure exactly who he might have meant. He has also been useful in the kitchen several times this week, helping to get Willie's toast when he (Willie) was sick, and helping to make his own eggs, and learning how to make tea (in important skill in this family). Willie tried a new kind of tea that Mommy was drinking recently, and he liked it, and said "HEY! You've got me addicted to caffeine!" Sorry Willie, the joke is on you (though it was not meant to be a joke, no offense): it was decaf. (Mandarin Orchard, if you want to know.)
Big Willie and (formerly baby) Robin were here for dinner, after Big Willie and Papa had to do some noisy sawing, and we had chocolate sorbet, mmmm. Oh yeah, we had dinner, too, but did I mention we had chocolate sorbet? And cookies. And we all stirred and stirred and stirred our sorbet until it was liquid! The grownup boys had chocolate peanut butter ice cream (another Marla specialty...sense a trend here?).
Oh yeah, speaking of peanut butter, Teddy tried a peanut butter sandwich. This time he tried it plain, and kind of liked it. Maybe next time he will try it with jam. He is finding out that fruit flavors are sweet. Why just this morning as he was dipping his pancakes in strawberry syrup, and he and Willie were talking about mixing flavors (Willie likes chocolate strawberry milk and also some combinations of raspberry and chocolate), Willie told him that chocolate and strawberry were great together, so Teddy tried dipping his remaining pancakes in both! He gave this a thumbs up.
And then we started doing Sudoku this weekend! (Thanks, Auntie Monica, we are finally into it!) It's fun, and there is no math involved, even though it's full of numbers. You should try it sometime.
Did we tell you? The house has gutters now! Sorry, you'll have to wait til next week to see the pictures. What this means for the contractor is that he has about 2 tiny things and one garage door left on his list, then the house is done! Well, except for the master bathroom, but we're only talking about the stuff Paul has to do. Right?
And when we are not making each other crazy, we even sometimes still play together, but this game didn't get finished before bedtime unfortunately. Papa almost vacuumed the money, but he noticed it on the carpet at the last possible second.
Mmmm, liquid ice cream. SLURRRRRRPPPPP!
And now time for the demolition derby. In this corner, we have the Teddy's Torture Truck. In the other corner, we have Willie's Wild Whammer! Let the meanest truck win!
CRASH! CRUNCH! KERBLOOIE!!
These are my (Teddy's) bionicles made out of K'nex. Willie thinks the real ones are cooler, but what does he know.
And now, because papa must be feeling lonely or something, more boring house pictures:
The shower floor is finally cemented down. Cutting the little marble tiles to fit the drain was the trickiest part. Normally, one would start tiling in the corner and work their way across the shower floor, but papa did not want to take chances with where the tile would hit the drain, so he did it the hard way.
He's on a roll folks. He started on the bathroom floor right after the shower. A normal person would start from the back wall and work their way backward out of the room, but he wanted the tile to line up with the doorway a certain way, so he started at the doorway, and worked his way in. The problem is that he couldn't walk on the tile when the thinset was wet, so he has had to tile the floor in 4 stages, letting each stage dry for 48 hours before moving in further to the room. He only has the toilet area in the back corner to do at this point, and that will happen tuesday.
Again, papa had to cut tiles to precisely fit the doorjam. Some knucklehead (cough--papa--cough) put too much self levelling compound down on the floor so the tiles could not be slipped under the door frames. Then the very same knucklehead thought that all he would have to do to fix it was remove some of the compound with a chisel. That's when he remembered that there is the electric floor heating element running under the door frame embedded in the levelling compound. Luckily, he only knicked the outer casing of the wiring and didn't actually compromise the whole thing. Phew!
More cut up hex tiles. So there you have it. The master bath is getting done. No more disparaging stuff can be said about papa, except maybe about his spelling.
Updated 10/14/2007
Copyright © 1997-2007 The Berman Brothers--Willie and Teddy. All rights reserved.
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