Nado and Cane

Warning: This one is long. Grab yourself some coffee, a Pepsi, a Dew or perhaps something a little stronger and enjoy.

Our boys officially have new nicknames. First, let me say these names are given with love and came about after an especially, lets just say, trying day.

Tater was affectionately given the name Nado. Yes, it is short for tornado. He's a little bundle of energy that can't be contained. Rooster was affectionately given the name Cane. As you probably guessed its short for hurricane. Although not as destructive as his brother, Nado, he has his moments.

A little background info: A good friend of ours had a stem cell transplant in March of 2007 after beating Leukemia. Her parents organized a big get together yesterday to celebrate her "one year birthday" and to thank her brother for donating the stem cells to her. So, it was a big day with a lot of people.

The party was at our friends parents house, which is gorgeous. Her dad is a builder and custom built his home. My description wouldn't do the home justice but imagine a home with top of the line - custom everything. As we were taking off our shoes, I noticed that Tater was gone. I found him down the hallway about to enter a bedroom. It was like this home was an undiscovered island and he had to conquer every region of it. After having the "this is not our house-don't touch anything" discussion and a few times pulling him aside for a gentle reminder, Tater decided he was hungry.

I was putting together a plate for him when I noticed he was having trouble getting a drink from a BIG GLASS (key words) drink dispenser. As I'm about to ask him if he needed some help, my little Nado snapped the valve off the dispenser leaving a approx 2 inch round hole with gallons of water gushing out of it. Immediately, I went into some weird kind of protective mode where I heard nothing, saw nothing and forgot that I had the ability to move. Twitch said he heard a pop, a gush and then a little voice say "uh oh, sorry".

Before I knew it, towels were coming from everywhere and someone had moved the container to the sink (duh, all I could think was there is no way to stop this water). While I'm frantically trying to clean up the water, I feel my backside getting a little drafty and reach behind me to check, the whole time silently praying "please God, no, don't let my..." and sure enough - star wars. Star Wars is code in our family for, it appears that your pants have fallen below an acceptable level and your rear end is now hanging out for the entire room to see.

As I'm trying to quickly pull up my pants, I look over to see my son ringing his shirt out on the floor! Could it get any worse? Ah but of course. Apparently my emotional control only goes as far as having my child create a small flood in an amazing home and showing my hiney to 30+ people and tears began to pool in my eyes. Again with the praying, "please, God don't let me cry." I guess he was a little busy because I had to clean that damn floor for a good 5 minutes before the tears stopped.

We got everything cleaned up and were trying to have some casual conversation that did not involve "the accident" when Cane looks at me and says "Excuse me Mom, is there someplace where I can step out and make a few phone calls?" I promptly said to him "Excuse me Son, you are 11 years old and you don't need to step out anywhere to make some phone calls. I would prefer that you sit here and enjoy this moment like the rest of us." Well, it was something along those lines, perhaps not as polite.

We left shortly after and drove to Idaho. I'm sure as a reward for the trials of the evening, some weird cosmic force is going to step in and we'll win the lottery. Although, our numbers didn't come up today, the tickets are good for 5 weeks, so I'll keep everyone updated ;)