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Laughing Til I Cry

I'm so thankful November is over.  All my "Christmas stress" happens then, buying presents, wrapping presents, sending presents.  Now that December is here, I'm able to sit back and enjoy the holiday, and I love it!

My good friend, Celeste, had submitted a story for the Advent book that ended up on December 2.  As John was reading it out loud to the girls and me last night, we could hardly hear him through our laughter!  This story is hilarious, and I can't resist posting it again:

So, out in front of the house in which we currently lie in California (which belongs to Michael's parents), there is this cute little pond that Michael's dad made years ago.  It's not a very big pond, maybe six feet long by three feet across and two feet deep, and is made of concrete and local stone.  Michael wanted to buy some small koi to put into it, so we did.  We enjoyed going out and feeding out cute, little fishies.  Then, one morning, we woke up to see a large heron standing in the pond.  Turns out, we had provided easy pickings for the local water fowl as he had eaten them all.  Undaunted, we tried again with the koi.  This time, they lasted a little longer, but they were slowly disappearing, one by one.  As we got down to our last fish, I decided it was time to clean the pond.  It's very easy to do.  All I have to do is pull out the plug and let it drain into the pasture.  Now, this was one of those moments in life we all have where we know better than to do something and yet for some strange reason, we do it anyway.  (Why do we do that?)  I knew I should take that fish out BEFORE I pulled the plug, but I reasoned, the pond is big enough that I'll have plenty of time to get the fish after I pull out the plug.  As it turns out, I did not.  That poor fish got sucked right down the drain.  Now I had hoped that maybe he went right through and would come out into the pasture, but no such luck.  He ended up getting stuck halfway through and was now plugging the drain.  He was too far in for me to reach, so I had to go find a long, flexible stick so I could push him through and out the other end.  Unfortunately, yet somehow not surprisingly, he did not survive the ordeal.  Michael and I have yet to get more koi.


Another random animal story.  We have chickens.  Lots of chickens.  They don't live in a coop but just wander wherever they want and sleep in the trees.  We also have owls.  Lots of owls.  They don't live in a coop either.  They come out at night and live in the trees.  I don't know how much you know about chickens, but when they are disturbed and upset, they make a horrible ruckus.  So, one night Michael and I were asleep when we hear the chickens making all kinds of noise.  We decided maybe we'd better go out and investigate.  We wander out into the dark in our robes and make our way to the tree where the chickens sleep when, out of nowhere, a dead chicken falls out of the pitch black sky and lands right at our feet.  It was quite disconcerting and part of me expected a yellow-skinned, liver-eating man who comes out every seven years to drop out of the tree on top of us (I know, too many years of watching "The X-Files").  Still, I managed to keep it together and pick up the dead chicken for inspection and discover that it is completely unmarked.  No blood, or holes from talons, or anything, but we did hear the Screech Owls, which, by the way, are very aptly named.  All we can guess is that one of the owls went after the chickens and the one at our feet was literally scared to death.


There you have it!  Nothing says "Christmas" like random stories of animal demise!


Then, later in the evening, I received an email with a link to a site that my visiting teacher, Beth, had told me about.  It's called Kid History.  I haven't laughed this hard in a very, very long time:

Kid History

It was a good day all around!

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