Step Right Up!

I hope you all had a great weekend!  Our three-day weekend, while cold, snowy, drizzly and overwhelmingly dreary, was jam-packed with all of the the excitement of a tropical getaway. You know, if your idea of a tropical getaway is spending two days stuck indoors with an accident-prone four year-old and a terrible two-er hopped up on Prednisone.  We did watch The Lion King, though. 

The desert is sort of tropical, right?

Since it was clear we weren't headed for Tahiti, we planned some activities to fill our chilly weekend and crossed our fingers (and toes) that our unusually grouchy boys would cooperate and we wouldn't have to toss them from the island.  On Friday night, as I nosily perused Facebook to see what my friends and barely-there acquiantances would be doing over the weekend, I noticed that several of the profile pictures representing my friends depicted them with large fake mustaches.

Did I miss something?  I know that there are strange Facebook games being played all the time, something I occasionally do myself.  For example, I post a link to a blog post and then I play a little game where I pretend like I don't care how many of you read it. 

No comments?  I really don't care.  I swear, I don't.  

Okay, I do.  See, wasn't that fun?

But it didn't explain the barrage of bushy mustaches splashed about the Internet.  I turned to Joel and told him about the virtual display of mustachery I'd unconvered, and his first instinct was to join the club.  No, he didn't slap on a 'stache and a smile, but he did grab a ballpoint pen and transform my youngest into a french singer on a gondola in a striped shirt with a romantic handlebar mustache.


And not to be outdone, Cael eagerly played the role of a 1940's newspaper reporter with neatly quoffed facial insulation.

See?  Joel likes games too.

Saturday morning, we bravely decided to venture out on the snowy roads to visit the Iowa Children's Museum in Coralville.  The weather didn't scare us, but we knew that taking the kids into public in their current state might just cause us to make a scene of carnival side-show proportions.  But Cael and Graham have enjoyed playing there a few times before, and their frequently changing exhibits keep the museum fresh and interesting for our two hairy weasels, so we went ahead with our plans.  Once inside, they ran frantically from one room to another, trashing the grocery store in a record four minutes as they filled their carts with frozen quiche and plastic danishes.

I was almost disappointed that their inked mustaches had faded, because a little 5 o'clock shadow might have warned the other small children to get out of the way-- NOW-- when my kids rounded the corner to purchase their three watermelon wedges and hollow turkey.

We blew through the various rooms, permanently damaging our eardrums in the music room...

Plotting each other's deaths in the ambulance and hospital rooms...

Climbing to new heights in the ball/car/track room...

Defying gravity in the flight room...

And after we'd wreaked havoc on most of the museum, we made one quick stop in the art room.

"Can you draw me a train?"

I can draw a train in my sleep.

While I was busy drawing Cael's locomotive, my husband was busy making some art of his own.  He grabbed some markers and gave the boys another shot of testosterone to grow new, much more voluminous, mustaches. 


So if you were at the mall on Saturday and saw the crowd gathering, it's a safe bet that they were staring at us.  And just in case you missed, I'll be sure to let you know the next time we plan to attend the museum.


Step right up to see the rare Bearded Toddlers!  And today only, the greatest oddity of them all-- the World's Strangest Father and the woman who loves him!  

Funnel cakes are in the next tent.