L is for the way you look at me,O is for the only one I see,V is very, very extraordinary,E is even more than anyone that you adore...

It seems as though Eli's heart has become twitterpated. Today on the ride to school, Eli started a conversation about love. Apparently there is a little girl named Abigail that he likes - you know the type - blond hair, blue eyes, wears the same things that you do ( they wear uniforms, but love is blind). He asked me if he could dye his hair golden, the way it used to be... this morning before he 

left for school. 
He asked Sherri if he could tell her that she is beautiful...Sherri said he could tell her that she is pretty. Eli asked if he should tell her that he loves her...Sherri said that he could tell her that he liked being her friend. Eli thought about the course of the conversation and then said...I know how I can get her to like me. First I need to create a team of Super Villains and then I could rescue her from them. He added that they weren't going to date until they got older. For this stage, he told Sherri that he would have to build a robot that could tell him where she lives.
Evidently ( according to Eli), Abigail has announced in the school newspaper that she is in love with someone that has really cool hair ( Eli smile, points to self and raises his hand), very smart ( Eli smiles, points to self and raises his hand), can do back flips ( Eli smiles, points to self and raises his hand). ( Eli, for the record can NOT do back flips), a hundred front flips ( Eli smiles, points to self and raises his hand) ( again, Eli can NOT do front flips, either)...
I can tell that I'm going to have to intervene. I've told him that I would hear from God FIRST about his wife/ girlfriend and then I would let him know...I've gotten nothing. The airwaves are silent about this Abigail chick.

The key is...

Tonight, when it was time for Sherri to go to class, Eli couldn't remember what he had done with the car keys. You may be asking yourself, " What were they thinking, letting Eli have the car keys!". Well, you see Eli needed to get his books out of the car ( which was a good and noble quest) but then he became distracted and wandered over to our neighbor Michelle's house. By the time Michelle walked

 Eli home and he had played with Piper and had done many adventurous things, it was time for Sherri to leave for school. She asked Eli where the keys were and that question was met with a dumbfounded blank stare and a solid response of " I don't know" ( this is a direct quote). Sherri demanded that Eli remember where he put the keys which is like asking the age old question of Whose on first? Sherri, Ariana, and I started looking for our ONLY, LAST, COMPLETE, set of keys. We looked like we were looking for a missing person - organized and spaced apart, responsible for our area and ready to yell with any leads.i came inside to see if Eli had had any luck sparking his memory, only to find him jumping on my bed.

I said Eli, I thought you were helping us look?
I am.
How?
I'm trying to remember. This helps me remember...
Sherri out of frustration announced that she was going to have to miss her class and Eli came up with a brilliant idea. You could wear some fast air shoes and fly to class. Sherri was not amused and told him that he wasn't helping. Now trying to track a 7 year old boy is like trying to follow the wind ( and they even have machines to do the latter) and I imagined in my mind one of those maps in cartoons with black dots going in circles and random places, when I was snapped back to reality by a loud..." I remember where they are". Now Eli being Eli, couldn't just walk directly to the keys. It was as though he had gotten into my head or I in his and he randomly walked through our den ( as though on a map with black dots in a cartoon) and ended up at a basket on the bookcase. He reached in and retrieved the keys - much like a magician reaching in and pulling a rabbit out of a hat. There was no time for questioning and there were no answers given as to How? Why? Or When?
By the way, Sherri did make it to class and through the search and rescue, I found another key to the car...not bad!

You say potato, I say...

Eli still has a way with words although the school system is determined to replace his words and phrases with proper terminology and words that adults deem correct. I think his terms are a lot more descriptive and actually make more sense. For example: an umbrella has become known as an underbrella around our house. Tonight he asked if the school lunch featuring baked chicken would also have one of his favorites...mash-ma-tatoes ( sometimes also said: mash-a-my-tatoes). I hope we never have boring old mashed potatoes at our house, but just like cradle crap ( as our daughter Ariana used to call it when she was little) has to go, so do some of the most innocent of sayings.

Back to nature...

There is nothing quite like coming home to the peaceful sounds of a waterfall to take your mind off of the cares of the day.........wait a second......I don't have waterfalls in my house, nor do I live by any waterfalls, babbling brooks, or playful streams. I don't hear well, so I do have to check out and verify what I THINK that I hear, only this time I could SEE what I thought I was hearing.

El

i decided to take a bath when he got home from school (odd for a seven year old boy, I know). He started running the water, but became distracted when a friend from next door knocked on the door and asked him to play. Well, being more like the typical seven year old, he went to play and forgot the water.

When I opened the bathroom door, the water was cresting over the top of the tub embankment and enjoying its new freedom, began making a mad dash out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. I did catch it before it made it out of my bedroom and into the dinning room. From there, it would have been like a river making it to the ocean... By flooding the living room, kitchen, and den!
Sherri and I won't be taking a bath for a while since it took every towel in the house to stop the great flood of October (15) 2012. I put the date in parenthesis because tomorrow is another day, history is bound to repeat itself, I live in south Louisiana where a flood can happen with any rainfall, and last but not least - Eli lives here!

Back to the future...

Giving a heads up...Eli has been spending his afternoons doing experiments. There are various containers and water bottles with food coloring in them...some even have dirt in them. His goal is to create a time portal. If he succeeds, I may see you in the past...or the future. I just wanted someone to know, just in case. I'm also going to start carrying around a list of things to invent just in case I get to go back to the past...

salesman of the year...

Eli has been inspired to win a laptop computer from his school by selling the school's fund raiser of cookie dough and other baking things. He must sell 80 items which is very lofty, but he is asking Michelle (our neighbor) to help him by selling them also. To clinch his goal he has also opened a petting zoo in the backyard. He has a lot riding on the appeal of Piper (our dog) as his only attraction. He tried to include Mrs. Beasley (our cat), but she was uncooperative and kept walking away.

Mary did you know...

I was so excited that my Great Aunt gave me her nativity set that I remember being in awe of when I was a child. I brought it home and started opening it and setting it up. I wanted Eli to sense the same magic that I felt. Just when I finished and could hear faint choruses of "Oh Holy Night", Eli ran into his room, came back, and added a modern twist to the moment. Immediately the heavens closed, the music stopped, and the magic ended... Maybe by Christmas!

we three kings?

I was so excited that my Great Aunt gave me her nativity set that I remember being in awe of when I was a child. I brought it home and started opening it and setting it up. I wanted Eli to sense the same magic that I felt. Just when I finished and could hear faint choruses of "Oh Holy Night", Eli ran into his room, came back, and added a modern twist to the moment. Immediately the heavens closed, the music stopped, and the magic ended... Maybe by Christmas!

Do you have any last request?

Getting Eli to eat has become a major event at the house. In order to expand his dinning selections from chicken nuggets, pizza, spaghetti, and Marconi and cheese, I have had to implement a new diet plan. He must try/eat six new things before he can have another pizza. Last night was our first trial run. Sherri had made the soup that my mom used to make for me.( I called it vegetable soup, but tha

t is a loose interpretation...it only has tomatoes, tomato sauce, onions, celery, potatoes and stew meat) Eli refused to try it. He said he would rather go to bed hungry, so i obliged him that opportunity. After two minutes, I felt guilty so I went in and tried to convince him to try it...like the guy in green eggs and ham. NO was the reply. I told him that if he kept eating only the 4 things that he eats, i was going to have to get wider doors because it was going to catch up to him. He thought on this point for a little while and even asked how they could make the doors bigger...he missed the point. I tried another approach. I went and got the food and told him that I was going to have to shovel it in. He liked this idea and wanted me to hold him down and blindfold him. i did put a towel over his eyes but I told him that he would have to stand up to eat...we could still pretend that he was a prisoner, but it wasn't safe to lay down and chew (see, I am a conscientious dad!). Once I had him blindfolded, Sherri had to count to ten while he breathed and on ten she had to stick it in his mouth. after eating a bite, he decided that he liked it, but still wanted to be a prisoner. he ate three more bites before claiming that he was full and going off to brush his teeth and go to bed. He now has five more new things to try/eat before pizza. I'm not sure that this little "game" will work at restaurants...I may get arrested for kidnapping! I'm also not sure how many scenarios of torture I can come up with that will get him to eat...firing squad, water boarding, Iron Maiden...

He knows when you've been bad or good...

I guess Eli has realized that Christmas is right around the corner. This morning on the way to school, Eli asked Sherri what list he was on. Sherri asked for clarification on the subject and Eli said you know, the naughty or nice list. Sherri replied with a question," How do you think you end up on the naughty list?" Eli thought and said that being mean to his sister would put him on there. Then S

herri asked him how he could get on the nice list. Eli thought a it longer on this one and finally came to the conclusion that staying far away from his sister should do the trick.
For good measure he came home from school and did ALL of his homework without screaming, wailing, and/or gnashing of teeth. (This is now just one more example and reason as to why Christmas should be before us all year long!)