Another reason to love Florida (besides 75 degree weather in January), is that strawberries are now in season! I just got 2 lbs for $4, and they are sooooo good. I just had a bunch for a late-night snack. I'm afraid this letter might be a little disjointed because I'm trying to write it while also carrying on a conversation with Joseph. He took a nap this afternoon and consequently is up till all-hours tonight... I just got back from a movie, "Memoirs of a Geisha." I conned Ben into letting me go tonight while he stayed home with the boys. I didn't think he would really like the movie (and I think I am right on this judgment), but I really wanted to see this one on the big screen. I really liked it, and in fact there were some aspects of it I liked better than the book. Although the book is really long and so there was no way the movie could encompass the whole book. I would have loved to have seen a 20-hour movie (although maybe in segments) of the whole book because the movie was really beautifully done. I did think it was weird, however, that the actress who played the main character is CHINESE. What, there were NO Japanese actresses that could play the part? She was wonderful in the role, but to me it was a little distracting that she was chinese. In my eyes at least, I can generally distinguish between Japanese and Chinese phyical traits.
Brigham is getting so, so good at his puzzles! I'm going to have to get him some more, because he is really into puzzles right now. He has done his 100-piece Spiderman puzzle by himself about 5 times now. He just sits on the tile floor and spends an hour or so putting it together (the first couple of times it took him a few hours, but he is getting pretty fast now), and after he is done he disassembles it and starts over again!
Yesterday was our outing day. I took the boys to Parrot Jungle Island. Our annual pass is up in about 6 weeks so we need to go a couple more times! It was really fun, and in fact I had to practically drag the boys away when it was almost closing time. At one point Joseph and Brigham foud these millipede looking things. Not millipedes, but sort of like them, about 1 inch long with a whole bunch of teeny tiny pink legs. The boys were entranced by them! They carried them around (they each found 2), examined them, talked to them (Brigham introduced himself by name), showed them to other kids, and begged me to let them take them home. I told them they needed to leave them at Parrot Jungle since we didn't have any container to take them home. They tried to convince me that their pockets would serve as suitable containers, but I wasn't swayed. One of Brigham's ended up suffering an unfortunate end, however. He was holding it with both hands and was a little too rough and ended up pulling it in half. :-( I quickly told Brigham to put it in the grass so it could find a place to heal. Brigham can be quite sensitive (breaking down in tears when a spider gets squished), and I wasn't quite willing to inform him that he killed his beloved worm. I hope it was a quick and painless death for the little thing. Do you think those kinds of creatures feel pain? I hope not.
After Parrot Jungle Island we met Ben down on Key Biscayne. Shorter drive for him from work to Key Biscayne than back home, since it was against traffic. We walked on the beach for a while, found a beached jelly fish (Ben wanted to squish it but I convinced him to nudge it back to the water which he kindly did), and let the boys play at a little playground until we got kicked out because the beach was closing. The whole day Mosey was such a little trooper. He barely rode in the stroller at all and must have walked a couple of miles at least. When we were walking back across the sand on the way to the playground, he was toddling along beside Ben. It was just so cute to see my two men, one big and one little, side by side, trailed by one big set of footprints and one little set. I tried to take a picture of it, but it was getting pretty dark so I doubt it turned out. I took a ton of pictures that day, practicing a few things I'm learning, but haven't uploaded them yet so you'll have to wait for pictures.
Ok, I better wrap up here. Joseph is still up, talking to Angel. He really loves our animals. He's definitely the kindest and most attentive to them of probably any of us! He talks to them as if they can understand every word. Just now he came up to me with a big smile on his face and told me he made Angel think he is a giant mouse. I asked him how and he said, "I put a bell on my bum and crawled around like a giant mouse." He wants to be in charge of getting food for the cats and dog. He desperately wants either the dog or one of the cats to sleep on his bed at night. The other morning I woke up to hear him downstairs talking to Angel, and then he came upstairs with a lizard in a container. He told me that he and Angel caught it together. Angel had it in her paws and then let it go and he trapped it in the container. They are quite the pair!
I better get to bed now since I think I probably have child-duty in the morning since I had the night off. Ben and I try to alternate weekend mornings to sleep in since we now have afternoon church. Morning will come early!