My Husband thinks Legos are evil...

My husband thinks legos are evil, but I know better. A year ago some friends of ours moved away (sob. We miss you Brink Family!) and left us some of their good stuff. That is the good thing about living here--you get lots of hand-me-downs when people leave. So, amongst the strange and good, there was the amazing: A 1,078 piece Ultimate Collector Series Yoda Lego set--without instructions, but with most of the pieces. My husband was not thrilled to see it come into the house, but it was free and it was STAR WARS! He mumbled under his breath something about there being missing pieces and "where was the instruction pamphlet?" I just sighed and stuck it in the basement.

It has only been the last few months that Xavier has gotten on the Lego bandwagon. Or shall I say, he has been allowed to get on the Lego bandwagon. I have fought it tooth and nail, figuring I was going to be the one picking up the jillions of little squares off the floor and picking them out of my vacuum. Matthew fought them because he hates doing anything that doesn't have all the pieces and really, when does anything with more than 3 pieces owned by a child have ALL the pieces at once? Oh, and the fact that they cost more than gold. Xavier's friend, Adam has introduced him to the joys of Lego, and in particular Lego Star Wars. We've played the computer game and now, we play with the little plastic blocks of doom.

I had forgotten about the Yoda Lego set. It was hidden in a pile in the basement, but like any good eight year old, Xavier was where he shouldn't be and found it. He asked if he could have it. I told him he could have it if he cleaned his room and the basement and the garage....figuring I'd never have to give it to him. Less than 24 hours later all three were pretty well cleaned up and I couldn't deny he'd done a bang up job on all of them. I caved. I gave it to him. Matthew told me I was nuts and on my own. Then he took it back and informed Xavier that he could only work on it with supervision, so the pieces didn't get lost. I reminded both of them that I don't do legos--that meant Daddy was doing legos, whether he liked it or not. Matthew was not happy with the idea.

The next stumbling block was the lack of instructions, which we handled thanks to Google and the Internet. Download. Check. Print...um...ran out of ink and oh, by the way the instructions are 67 color pages long!!!! So download and find the table so he can look at the computer screen while building. Check. Enter Matthew and his laptop. Matthew agrees to put the instructions on his laptop, making it easier to see the instructions while building. Thanks Daddy. Daddy also wants to inventory all 1000 + pieces. I tell him he needs his head examined. I also tell him it is the time for him to help his son out. He moans. He groans. He procrastinates. He steps up. Two hours spent on Yoda yesterday and my eight year old is a different child. He smiles. He tells everyone about his Yoda project. He is obedient on the off chance Daddy will help some more...

This morning, Sunday morning, Xavier was less than excited to get dressed for church. Daddy hollers out the bathroom door: "If we are late to church, there will be no Yoda Lego-ing today." Need I say that I've never seen Xavier move that fast? We had minutes to spare as we sat in our cushioned seat in the chapel (yes, we were that early)--and he was an angel throughout church. Daddy and Xavier spent a couple of hours this afternoon working on Yoda. "I hate legos," mumbles Matthew as he is sticking pieces together. Then he proudly points out how much they've accomplished. After I've sent the kids to bed, Matthew sheepishly asks if I mind if we wait an extra 30 minutes before we start our movie...because he wants to work on Yoda with Xavier for a few more minutes. "I hate legos," he says, "but I promised I would work on it a little more..." Ninety minutes later Xavier fell into bed with the biggest smile on his face and my husband watched a movie with me. I don't know a lot about male bonding, but I do know two boys having fun when I see it. My husband thinks legos are evil, but I know better.

Mom was right.

"Mom was right." A phrase that I've known all my life. Why is my mom always right? And really. I'm the mom. When do I get to be right all the time? Tonight our ward (church group for you not-so-Mormons) had a Fiesta with a little hispanic music, some hispanic food in the cultural hall. We were so cultured. I decided, due to my lack of time because of my multiple trips to Walmart (another long story in which my mother was right.) to make sopapillas--or in other words: fried bread with cinammon sugar. I grabbed some frozen rolls (gotta love Rhodes Rolls), a bottle of Canola oil, a pan and some newspaper along with the sugar and cinammon and we headed to the church. But not before my mother threw out her last words: Ummm, are you sure you want to do that? You know you are not suppose to cook at the church. I can just see it now: all that newspaper, the oil and a stove--and YOU. You know you are going to set off the smoke alarm and have the fire department come for a visit...they make such a mess.

Whatever, Mom. I'm a big girl. I can handle it. I can even clean up my own messes. Yeah. Famous last words. All was peachy. The fried bread was nice and golden brown. The culinary reviews were solid: "MMMM...SO GOOD! How ever did you make these? Are they hard to make? What is in these?" Fantastic. I do love a little gustatory praise. Helps with my long lonely nights doing laundry. The party was awesome. Yeah Creed and Tiffany! Those two know how to party. We were baillando-ing here and limbo-ing there. A little bit of this and a little bit of that.

Soon, I was done frying my dough, and I turned off the stove and began to clean up. See Mom. All's well. Not so much...As I slid the pan of hot oil off the burn to the back burner to cool off, a minute (I mean very small) amount of oil splashed onto the burner and began to smoke. It didn't look like much, so I grabbed a rag and began to wipe up the mess. And then I noticed it...the Limbo song had a really irritating beat...and the lights were flickering a bit.

A friend's husband (who is in the know about these things apparently) came into the kitchen and was waving a tray at the fire alarm above my head. I looked at him completely confused, and then, as I saw the BLACK SMOKE cloud above my head, I caught on: I had set off the fire alarm. Not only that--it had set off the security system and no one knew how to turn it off. So we did what any normal bunch of Mormons do when confronted with the difficult--we turned up the music and kept limbo-ing. The alarm was going off. We were dancing. I found a baby to hold. (Hey, I don't limbo and Soloman Trockel is cute!) The firemen came. My good friend Taylor saw them standing at the door watching us dance. He explained what happened and they went on their merry way. The alarm subsided. What on earth must they have thought?

The phone rang. I'm not sure how we heard it--the music was pretty loud. Taylor took that call too. One of our local church leaders had gotten the call that the security system alarm had gone off--and the fire department had been there? Did he need to come? Once again, Taylor assured him "all was well." Taylor informed me I owe him big for that phone call. I believe him.

Can I tell you where I was at this point? In the kitchen, hiding? Scrubbing oil, trying to disappear! So, it would be lovely to say that at this point, the laughter of all of us ended and we went out our evening partying, I mean fiesta-ing...however, we weren't quite done. No, Matthew decided to clean the burners and make sure they were clean by testing them out. Yes, you guessed it: he set off the fire alarm again. Like the good wife I am, I stood by the open kitchen window, pointed at my husband and said, "He did it this time." Thank goodness, we had learned a little and called the fire department--so they didn't have to come again. We did get another call from the church leader. He was very explicit that we would be taking the burners home with us and getting them clean FAR away from the meetinghouse. So, now I have 4 electric range burners that are mostly clean, I think, but no way to check because I have a gas range, but I know I am NOT going to check them at the church!

I was assured by all that my fried bread was worth it and the excitement just added to the fiesta, but really. What is a girl to do? Not only did I break the rules and get caught, once again: Mom was right.