It REALLY is a small world, after all!

While in Washington D.C., we had a great time walking around with the kids. We visited the zoo where Maggie tried to speak Parseltongue to the Anaconda:

We were having a fantastic time, when suddenly Maggie and Dianna said "Mom, Dad, is that who I think it is??"And sure enough! It was the 3 Amigos! Unbelievable! How did they get from MN to D.C.?????


We said good-bye to the 3 boys, hoping they would be okay, and went on to visit the Museum of Natural History to see the Dinosaur exhibit, the exhibit on Africa and.... the Hope Diamond. Who did we run into again, but the 3 Amigos. We think they were trying to take something that didn't belong to them.... it looked very suspicious...
It was a beautiful day, so we took a short walk around the Tidal Basin so we could see one of my favorite monuments - the Jefferson Memorial. At this point, I thought perhaps the boys were following us, and just really needed a mom and dad. So we asked if they would like to hang with us the rest of the day.
We stopped for lunch, and thought everything was going well. Then we looked up and saw this. The boys had taken off down the Mall with our stroller. I guess they didn't want a mom and dad after all, but something to sleep in?
We also made some new friends from China. These folks were very anxious to get their picture taken with our kids since they had never seen so many from one family. Mike was able to use the one Chinese phrase that he knows for "Hello, How are you?", (he has a special gift for foreign languages - he also knows one phrase in Russian, one in French, and the spanish word for library). We are seriously considering taking our 'show' on the road in China - we are thinking if these 4 people were so enthusiastic about getting their picture taken with our kids, what kind of coinage could we potentially earn in a country of 1,321,851,888 people with a similar enthusiasm for large families??

3 Steps Forward, 2 Steps Back

No sooner had I posted my last blog post, but looked out the window to see this. My heart plummeted. I have to keep telling myself - rehabilitation is GOING to take some time....

Rehab

Well, I want to update you on the 3 Amigos - the direlects living in a lean-to in our yard. Mike says we aren't going to turn them in, but rather we're going to see if we can try to rehabilitate them so that one day they can hopefully function in society. He's the boss, so here's what we did yesterday. (We feel it was quite successful for a 1st day of rehab):














We got those boys dressed up in some wrestling clothes and took them to a local elementary school for a wrestling match. They even made some new friends!

















After that, we took them to swimming lessons (the olympic-sized swimming pool was quite filthy after the boys' lesson - oops!). I think I'm growing a little attached to these hooligans! They were kind of cute and cleaned up real nice.

The 3 Amigos

There are some rough boys in our area who come in for the occasional provisions, and refer to themselves as the "THREE AMIGOS". I saw this poster hanging up at the post office this morning, and it truly alarmed me. (We will have to be more careful from now on about who we hand out food to).

As soon as I got home, I took a little walk around the perimeter of our 2 acre property to see how these little varmints are surviving and here's what I found:
A crude shelter made of fallen branches and wood stolen from our pole barn, with a roof made of smaller fallen branches and twigs. I found 2/3 of the amigos hiding out there. Part of me wants to feel sorry for them and take them into our home. The other part is full of disgust that these outlaws have taken up residence on our property. I can't figure out how I have missed spotting their little home before now.
A little further investigation on the other side of the house brought another revelation: the other 1/3 of the gang was busy checking a live trap. I believe they must be trying to sell animal hides at a local rendezvous, but I can't be sure. I am going to hold off for now reporting them in order to continue my investigation.