Dragons

Grammy works at a Christian day school and along with doing office work most of the day, she is the librarian. This works well for us. They get lots of donated books, movies and tapes/cds that, as a Christian school, they cannot use. For example, if it talks about Santa or The Easter Bunny or evolution or items that are too young (board books) or duplicates. These rejected items are put in a pile for the teachers to take home for their personal use. We get to look through as well.

The latest batch of books had Dragonology in it. It's a really neat book but probably mentions magic somewhere so they couldn't use it at the school. Matthew LOVES it. There was a thick cardboard dragon in the back to put together and that was done immediately. The dragon flew around here for a couple days and earned a spot of honor in his room on his bookcase. What's neat is that he's going through the Harry Potter series right now so dragons fit right in there nicely.

Yesterday it was a nice day and the kids wanted to go outside. The two older kiddos went and left Linnae, me and sick Jade inside to do the room-switch-dance (more about that later). Matthew came in after a while and asked me if he could have some of "that putty you used to put my poster up". Eying him suspiciously, I asked why he wanted it. He replied excitedly, "So that we can set a trap for the dragon!" [pause for dramatic effect while I pondered what in the world he was thinking] He continued, "Well, Rose and I are trying to figure out if dragons are real or not so we think we should put some putty outside and try to capture a dragon footprint!" The Scientific Method at its finest. :)

Thinking fast, I said, "That's a great idea! I'm not sure that putty would be the greatest medium for footprints though. You know what works really great?" Now it was his turn to eye me with suspicion. "Mud," I answered. His whole face lit up as he exclaimed, "YES!! Mud is really great - like how it preserved the dinosaurs!" He ran down the stairs and out of the house yelling, "ROSE!! We need water!!"

We have a large compost bin made out of concrete blocks in our back yard. To save the neighbors the site of beautious concrete blocks (lol), we enclosed the area with some white trellis gate pieces. [See? We're great neighbors - come live by us!] It has been really windy the last week as we have cold fronts followed by warm fronts (and tornadoes). So part of our trellis gate was knocked down in the wind...or so I thought.

Today, the kids ran outside again to "check their trap". They played some too and when they came in and Matthew had settled at the XBOX with the girls watching him, I asked them about what they did outside.
me: So, what did you guys do outside?
Matthew: We played.
Rose: I picked a dan...uh...dandelion.
me: What else?
[Matthew is zoning out to Crash Bandicoot]
me: Did you find a dragon print?
Matthew, disappointed: No. But we re-set the trap for tonight!
Rose: Yeah, we filled it up again.
me: Where is your trap?
Matthew: By the compost bin.
me: Oh, so you think the dragon will head to the compost bin?
Matthew: Well, that's where the gate is knocked down! We think he might have done that.

I teased Hubby that he should go give them a dragon print tonight but I'm not sure how ethical that is. Should I playfully indulge his imagination about dragons or would it be cruel when he realized it was a plant? Knowing Matthew, he'd probably be angry that we faked it. But I'm looking forward to seeing where this experiment is leading us. :)