Jeans and Chips and Recorders, Oh My!

The other day the whole family was loading into the burb to go to a small group gathering.  My husband got into the driver's seat last, and as he approached the burb I noticed how handsome he looked in his Dr Pepper T shirt and jeans.  When he got in, I told him he looked good in my favorite jeans.  From the backseat a youngster piped up, saying, "He's wearing your jeans?!"  Good gracious.

After school today as usual, my ravenous children tore apart the kitchen on the wild hunt for junk food to consume STAT.  One of my children opened this bag of tortilla chips (Aldi brand for the win of course!), only to find an unexpected visitor hanging out in the chips:

As Anne of Green Gables would say, "I suppose it was a rather romantic way to die, for a mouse Sonic character".

Our dear Shadow, who most days can be found lounging on our bed like this. . .

. . .is not always as innocent as he may appear.  He is quite naughty in the snatching-things-up-and-darting-away category.  He seems to have an insatiable desire to chomp all toys, socks and the like whenever we are home.  We have tried many a technique to get him to release the objects, with varied success rates.  The other day, however, we seemed to have found our ace in the hole.  My youngest daughter was playing lovely music causing our ears to bleed on her older brother's recorder.  I noticed Shadow nearby whimpering pathetically.  I quickly told her to stop, and after a moment he stopped whimpering.  While the sound was not exactly melodic, I was surprised at his reaction.  Perhaps the high-pitched sound was even more unpleasant to him than to us.  Being the quick thinker I am, I wondered if the recorder would help us remove forbidden objects from his jaws.  Sure enough, he was soon chomping on something an hour or so later.  One of the kids quickly grabbed the recorder and gave one quick toot on it.  Almost immediately, a blue plastic toy came shooting out of his mouth like projectile vomit.  We have used it twice more with the same results.  I have told the children to hold off on all screechy recorder playing (I would assume a euphonious recorder concert would not offend him) and reserve it solely for removal of verboten objects.  I sincerely hope our new secret weapon continues to be victorious!