Poor Troy-Boy...

When Troy was little, he had a 4th of July...mishap.  You can read a little about it here. The whole time he was getting fixed up, he kept saying, "Poor Troy-boy. Troy-boy got hurt. Poor Troy-boy."  It was so cute.  And so very sad.  It's kind of the story of his life, though.

One fast Sunday, Troy wanted to bear his testimony.  I told him to go ahead and go up after the current person was done.  There was another person waiting their turn on the stand.  I had told him that once he gets up there to wait until the other people up there were done, but he didn't hear that part.  As he was climbing the stairs, the person on the stand waiting his turn got up.  Troy's little face just crumpled up, and he started crying and ran back down to our seat.  I think he thought that that person cut in front of him or something.  Again, just so sad, but so cute.



The other day, he wanted to go play with a friend that lives around the corner from us.  He was begging me and begging me.  I told him that he could go if Brock went with him.  Brock is buddies with the older sibling, while Troy wants to play with the one closer to his age, though I think they all end up playing together.

So Monday after Brock's homework was all done, the boys took off for their friend's house.  Not two minutes later, I heard screaming and crying coming from outside.  My initial thought was that one of them fell down and scraped a knee or something.

The two of them came bursting through the front door.

"MOM!!!!  There was a BIG, SCARY dog, and it WANTED TO EAT US!!!"

"It was chasing us and tried to GET MY PANTS!!!"

My kids are a wee bit scared of dogs, of all sizes.  I peeked out the front windows and looked up and down the road for a dog, big or small.  I saw some neighbor kids out, who happen to have a dog.

"Was it so-and-so's dog?"

"NO!!!!  It was a BIG SCARY DOG!!!!"

"Where was the dog at?"

They both pointed at the house on the corner.

"Well, let's just wait a few minutes, and maybe that dog will be somewhere else, and you can try walking over there again."

That's when Troy piped up: "But Mom, I lost my SHOE!"

Sure enough, Troy only had one shoe on.

Me: "You ran all the way home without your shoe on?"

Troy: "Well, the BIG SCARY DOG was chasing me and my shoe came off-" (bursts into tears) "-and so I just kept running."

I was trying not to laugh.  Because it was just so cute.  But it was just so sad, too. (Also, a little Cinderella-ish.  Running out of the shoe and all.)

So I bundled up and started walking up and down the street, looking for a lost shoe. Shouldn't be too hard, right?  I went up one side, and down the other.  No shoe was to be seen.

I got back home, and asked Troy if he remembered where he lost his shoe, or which side of the road he was on.  And of course, being 5, his story switched around.  "It was in the road.  It was over there in the yard. It was in our yard."

I sighed a big heavy mom sigh, and told him to get his boots on, we were going to go look for his shoe together.  We went up, we went down, on our side of the road.  Then we started to do the same thing on the other side of the road.  We got close to the house with the dog.  You know, the BIG SCARY dog.  And Troy froze in his tracks.

"Mom, the dog is going to GET ME!" More tears. I assured him that the dog would not get him, and is probably really nice.  He wouldn't budge, and was getting ready to bolt for our house again.

The big, scary dog was in his yard, doing scary things like RUNNING, and WAGGING HIS TAIL.  He reminded me of the dog on Up, named Dug.

Now granted, if some animal came bounding up to me that was as tall as me on all fours, I'd be a little skittish, too.

So instead we turned around and started looking the other way again. 

A minute later, out comes a little boy, who Troy recognized as a kid from his kindergarten class.  Because I'm a bad neighbor, I have no idea who lives where, or half of my neighbors' names.  I suck like that.

But Troy knew him, and this little boy was carrying Troy's shoe.  They met, and the boy said, "My dog took your shoe.  Sorry."  I nudged Troy with a "Tell him it's okay, and thanks for finding it."  We went home, and Troy (and Brock) were no longer traumatized by the dog.

At least for now, until they dare venture to their friends' house again...DUN DUN DUNNNNN!

Memory Monday: You Spin Me Right Round

Sorry it's been nothing but Memory Mondays around here.  I promise I want to post more than once a week.  My days keep getting away from me...

I was traveling back to school from either Thanksgiving break or Christmas break my junior year of college...give me a sec to think of the year...late 1999, or barely into 2000.  Now that I think about it a little harder, I think it was back from Christmas break, because I remember that a couple of guys my roomies and I hung out with, Shawn and Sheldon (brothers, from Hawaii), had stopped by our apartment and left us a note, along with one of their new roommates Morgan.  Little did I know that Pete was going to be their other new roommate.

Dun-dun DUNNNNNNNNN!!

The drive from Idaho Falls to Logan is not too bad.  I would get some Alanis or Phantom blasting in my little Neon, and sing at the top of my lungs.  I no longer do this, mostly because I don't drive alone.  Because alone, I have a fabulous voice and can hit the notes as well and as high as Sarah Brightman.  But when I'm in the car with, like, Pete, I realize that he has a better voice than I do, and so I just hum quietly along to myself, usually.  Unless by some bizarre twist of circumstance we'd be playing some Beatles music, then I be-bop along as loud as I please.  But Pete hates Beatles, so it doesn't happen very often.

Now that I've derailed twice from the topic, I'll get back on the story.  So.  Driving along.  It's only a little bit over 2 hours from one destination to the other.  I was singing along, and noticed my exit coming up.  It had been snowing, but the road was mostly dry, with just a few wet (not icy) patches here and there.  Snow was blowing every so slightly across the freeway, but there was no reason to fear the weather on this particular day.  I turn on my blinker to indicate my exit from the freeway, and...then totally lost control of the car.

I don't know if I hit an icy patch, but it seemed unlikely since it wasn't icy.  But my car started spinning.  I can't remember if it started spinning to the right or to the left first, but it ended up doing both.  I was spinning onto the exit ramp, toward a lamp post.  Suddenly, I was spinning the other way, back on to the freeway.  Suddenly I was spinning between the freeway and the exit ramp.

I swear to you I wasn't touching the steering wheel.  Well, I'm sure I was touching it, but I wasn't steering, or over correcting, or...anything.  It's as if my car was driving itself, and I was on a horrible car roller coaster ride.

I kept thinking: oh no!  I'm going to stop on the freeway and someone is going to bash right into me!  Oh no! I'm going to run into the exit sign!  Oh no!  I'm going to fall in between the two roads and the car is going to roll! 

I kid you not that my car made at least 10 full circles.

Suddenly, and I mean SUDDENLY, my car stopped spinning.  I was sitting in the middle of the off ramp, car facing the right way.  As if I had just stopped a little early of the stop sign at the bottom of the exit ramp.

You know on "The Wizard of Oz", where Dorothy is in her house and it's spinning around in the tornado, and the furniture is moving around, and it's super windy and loud, and then instantly it all stops?  All the wind and the movement, and the house just lands there?  It was like that.

I know, absolutely beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something-more like someone-stopped my car from spinning.  Someone saved my life.  Someone reached down, grabbed my spinning car, and placed it in the right place, without any harm done to me or to my car.

Of course I started crying.  I immediately said a prayer of gratitude for being safe on that day.  Because things could have turned out really really bad.

Now, I know that people have been in more dire circumstances with their cars than I was on this day.  They'd be like, spinning around?  Psh!  That's nothing!  And hey, I've ridden in cars where the driver is doing donuts in the church parking lot, and that's basically what this felt like.  But the instant stop, the instant safety, this little miracle in my life, is what was so wonderful about this memory.

The Ghostlight

Do you own Cars the movie? If so, go to the feature "Mater and the Ghostlight". Very cute.

We've been setting up Jakob's and Brock's new room downstairs. Their new room is HUGE, and there's a ceiling light in the middle, but near Jakob's side it's a little dark. So we bought a lamp. It's a touch lamp, which reminds me of a lamp my Grandma Watts had when I was little-I thought it was the coolest thing that you could just touch it and it would turn on.

But...this light turns on by itself. I'll touch it off, and then a minute or so later I go in the room and it's on the lowest setting. What's up with that? I thought maybe it was the boys turning it on, but nope-they were out of the room this morning when it turned itself on. Kinda creepy. I tried the bottom plug of the same outlet, and same thing. So...maybe I'll try the other outlet in their room? Or we just live with a possessed lamp, I guess.