Out with a Bang

Our precious Owen is going to be celebrating his 3rd birthday this Sunday.  I can't believe it has only been 3 years since he's been alive!  It's seemed like a lifetime.  Part of the reason it has seemed like a lifetime is because he is my naughtiest child to date!  He just has such a mischievous spirit!  If there is trouble brewing, he is usually in the center of it.  You would think we would be having a hard time dealing with him, but he has actually stolen our hearts.  When he's not being naughty, he is usually hugging or loving on one of us.  He has found a way to be a naughty kid who is very hard to punish because he is so cute about it!  He has this toothy grin that he gives when he's just done something he knows he will get busted for.  It is sooooo hard for me to not laugh when he does this.

 That brings us to yesterday.  The weather was pretty nice out so we decided to go swing on the swingset.  After we were done, we all came in and Preston and I took our shoes off at the door.  Well, Owen took off without taking his shoes off and this is what he left in his trail:

Now, at any other time in my life, I would be okay with cleaning this up, but when you're trying to sell your house and people look at your house with a magnifying glass, this is enough to give you a heart attack!  I couldn't use my trusty water trick or I'd end up having a nice carpet full of mud.  I just sat there thinking how I was going to clean it up. I just couldn't think of a way that wouldn't make it worse.  The thing that I do when things seem overwhelming is I just leave the scene for awhile so I can think clearly.

So, I went into the kitchen and started doing the dishwasher.  All of the sudden, I felt a drop of water on my head.  Then another and another.  I looked up above me at our kitchen light which is shaped kind of like a bowl.  The light was on and I saw that the "bowl light" was full of water!  WHAT!?  Where is this water coming from?  So, I call Wes and said "Mayday, mayday, the ceiling is leaking!"  So, being the level-headed fellow he is, he told me I needed to find the source of the water leak.  "I hope I can" I said.  Well, let's just say it wasn't that difficult to locate.  I went upstairs to my master bath and found that SOMEONE had unrolled a whole roll of toilet paper into the toilet and then continuously flushed the toilet and had flooded the bathroom.

What you can't tell from the picture was that there was about a half an inch of standing water in the whole bathroom.  All the bathroom rugs were soaked.  I called Owen up and I said "DID YOU DO THIS??"  Yes, I probably was yelling at this point.  "Yes."  He said meekly.  Well, needless to say he got a spanking for this one.  Cuteness can only get you so far in life.

 So, after being faced with a flooded bathroom leaking through into the first floor, the muddy footprints didn't seem so bad.  I'm not sure if that was Owen's plan, but it worked.  I was able to vacuum up most of the dirt since by the time I got back there, it was dry.  After the day was over, I had to chalk up all this naughtiness to Owen making a big exit out of the "terrible twos" and into the threes.  I'm not sure what they have nicknamed the threes yet, and at this point I don't think I want to know.  Sometimes ignorance is bliss.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful, lovable Owen!

 (And no, those are not bruises on his face, they are marker.  Why would any smart parent leave their three year old alone with a marker?  Wes keeps asking me the same question... I guess the answer is I'm not that smart!)