Smiley face on a police car.

If you ever get the chance to tour your local police station, make sure you take along a 6 year old girl. We toured the Lenexa Police Station for Boy Scouts on Tuesday, and Lauren took it upon herself to draw a smiley face on the dusty police car. We LOVED the irony. The kids had a great time and we were amused by the fact that everything in this police station could be hosed down "in case the perps vomited."

Joe took it upon himself to do some research on the gangs of Lenexa and Johnson County. If you are familiar with Lenexa and Johnson County, feel free to make the same stereotyped jokes we did about the types of gangs that might be found here. For instance, one gang wears RED POLO SHIRTS, another gang wears BLUE POLO SHIRTS. Initiation involves buying an item from each store in Oak Park Mall in one hour.

Dylan got to attend Take Your Child to Work Day on Thursday with Joe. He reported the experience as being "grrrreat." The boys enjoyed a long lunch hour, Dylan took notes at a meeting and drew on the white board. It was a fun day for both of them!

On Tuesday, Joe served as the WATCH DOG for the kids' school for the day. This is a program to encourage dads to get involved with their children's schools. He helped with the morning drop off (the scariest assignment of all in my opinion), made ice packs for the nurse, volunteered in the kids' classrooms, volunteered for the entire 2 hour lunch shift and helped the cranky art teacher. The kids were SOOOOOOOOOO proud to have their dad there. I will post a pic when I get it from the school.

Big, slithery snakes and rockin' cats.

I try to find interesting things for the kids and I to do when Joe is working on Sunday afternoons at the bike shop. Today, we went to the Kansas City Pet Expo. Ironically, there are no PETS allowed at the PET Expo, so Katy stayed home. We saw this:


The snake looks big, doesn't it? The picture does NOT do this thing justice. It's HUGE. I knew I was safe but I was seriously wigged out by looking at it so closely. The presenter dude, David Nieves, is one of Dylan's heroes. He works with reptiles, writes books and does shows everywhere. We got his autograph and took a picture with him. If I can figure out how to get the picture out of my phone, I'm posting it.

We also saw the Acro-cats. I'm just not sure cats can really be "trained." The Acro-cats are kind of cool, but you had to feel sorry for the trainers because, let's face it, cats will make you work a LOT harder than dogs will. Dogs like to please. Dogs forget that there is a treat in your hand. Cats could give, well, a rat's ass (no pun intended) what you want - they just want that treat. Half the time, the cats would not do what the trainers wanted, and the trainers literally had to drag the treats along to get the cat to perform. They could get away with this poor performance because the trainers would just shrug their shoulders, hug the cats and smile. And this is like, apparently, the PREMIER cat performance act in the midwest. IN THE MIDWEST! We all felt a little embarrassed for the trainers, so we clapped. Which probably just perpetuates the whole wicked cycle. The highlight of the Acro-cats was the Rock-cats (what a pun-filled day!). Here is a fantastic video of the Rock-cats. I am sure you will enjoy the song.



Yes, I know. They don't really rock. But "Electric Avenue" still rocks big time! All I can think is that if these were dogs, they would actually be playing music, singing, and possibly destroying a guitar a la Pete Townshend. But because they're cats, and they could really care less about what they are being asked to do, they can get away with minimal music skills. Just sayin'.

It's business...it's business time!

I have 13 weeks left of school and it is like being inside an avalanche. From here on out, I'm just riding the wave. I wish I'd had more time to post. I should say something like, "I can't believe it's been this long since I posted to the blog! So much has happened, I don't know where to start!!"

SO,

I can't believe it's been this long since I posted to the blog. So much has happened, I don't know where to start.

When we last left the Thompsons, they were getting ready for March. We celebrated Lauren's birthday, and her whole Kindergarten class came over. Joe's mom came in town and we were SO grateful to have her there. Having a lot of 5-6 year olds in one house is not the easiest thing to do. Let's just say that character was built that day.

Then Dylan kicked off our Spring Break by inventing his newest game - Underpants War. He even has a bag at his side for extra ammo.

Sadly, Katy was drafted.

We had a good spring break. For the first few days we just hung out, but then we took the kids to visit our friends who live in Springfield. Another friend and her kids met us down there, and we had to laugh because within an hour of being in town, we had everyone lined up at the bar.

The adults were also figuring out how we could pool our money and buy this PARTY BARGE. We'd like to think we've grown up, but we haven't.

We also went to Branson and went to "Splash Country." It was very fun.

To finish the blog, Dylan would like me to show you that he has reached his personal best in climbing the tree in our front yard.

Behold the glory.

Thanks to my friend Cyndy for turning me on to Flight of the Conchords. I don't have HBO so I hadn't seen them until a few weeks ago, so I'd like to leave you with this (not really safe for kids but super great for adults):