The final blow?

What's the deal behind the idea that "bad luck comes in 3's?" Was it a theory that proved itself since the dawn of time and we are simply sharing a true wisdom? Like one day, Confucius was contemplating life atop a mountain, slipped on his silk robe, fell upon his meditative @ss and realized "That's the THIRD time this week!" Or perhaps we're all victims of yet another catch phrase when one day a guy threw it out there in order to fill the uncomfortable void in conversation to a down-and-out buddy? (It was probably the same Vanilla Ice loving idiot who began chanting "NOT!" after his own outlandish remarks...)

Elliott's 2 week stint of being grounded from his bike was finally over last weekend (we realized it was also a punishment to mom and dad...) Sunday evening was a hot one so after dinner, we hopped on our bikes and enjoyed what little breeze was coming off of the lake. We ran into some neighbors, we enjoyed the exercise and most of all we enjoyed each other’s company. After about an hour, we pedaled ourselves home and packed it up for the night. Ahhhhh... Little did we know that some droopy-pants wearing pimple-faced punk (I'm just guessing here) found his way into our garage to steal MY bike! Not one of Andy's supped up bikes (yes, he has 2), but my nice but simple bike that I received as a gift for my high school graduation. I loved that bike. Sniff sniff...

Now of course Elliott, who is more concerned about the world around him than any other 6-year-old I've met, has been seriously stressed out about this invasion. While Andy replaced the garage's service door the other night, Elliott set numerous traps around the perimeter of our yard. Not only do we have sticks barricading walkways, but he found the hot pink sidewalk chalk and wrote "KEEP OUT!" all over the place (nice to see his spelling skills are coming along...) He punctuated this bizarre yet understandable behavior by taking my "Welcome" sign down off of the garage and exclaimed "They are NOT welcome here!" Oye.

We are continuing to deal with Grandpa Wiberg's passing and the effect it's had on our family members. We're waiting for things to calm down so that we can find a way to help out with Grandma Wiberg and/or the aunts and uncles who are mourning. And of course, we're contemplating our own lives as we remember how quickly a journey can be ended. ((As a side note; there doesn't seem to be any rules or guidelines associated with this theory of "3's", so when I first felt guilty about grouping the loss of a human life to the other seemingly miniscule items, I rationalized as much.))

And finally...last night as we dealt with the heat and our extremely wild children, a moment of silence revealed that a strange crackling noise was coming from our den. We followed it and found that one of the panes on our sliding glass door was morphing from one piece of glass to millions of small cracks. Andy swears he head this noise at least an hour or two earlier so as far as we can guess, something hit the door during the coarse of the day and caused it to begin this expensive yet fascinating process. (I swear I can hear an occassional "Cha-Ching" in the midst of the crackling noise...)

So there ya have it; our three things. For whatever reason, life would like me to be sitting on my non-exercised butt, clipping coupons and contemplating life.

Thanks for listening.