The Amazing Twin Adventure

I had such a fun afternoon with my boys today. We have a really big backyard, but it's pretty much rocks and dirt and patchy bits of grass. Because of the rather rough terrain, we haven't really spent any time out there with the twins. We play on the back deck a lot, but I've never really let them venture out into the backyard. But now they are both competent walkers- and Hays finally learned how to walk in his shoes- so I decided it was time to give the backyard a go. I took them out after nap this afternoon, and they had a ball! They were amazed by this whole new, uncharted territory. It was like they had just discovered a new world! They explored every inch of the yard and loved every minute of it. Well, not every minute. There were lots of falls, a few of which resulted in tears. At one point, Hays tripped, rolled down a hill and busted his lip. That resulted in lots of tears and blood, but all was well after a few hugs and kisses and a popsicle! Once Mason got home from school, we had even more fun. It was one of those all-too-rare idyllic afternoons. The kind of thing you see in a commercial, or the dreamy, perfect version you imagine an afternoon with three little boys to be (minus the split lip). Truly a great day.
We did have one little hitch. Mason has "character day" at school tomorrow where he's supposed to dress as a character from a favorite book. We were going to use the book "The Devil You Know" which is a cute story about a family that has a mischievous little devil that lives with him. He causes all kinds of trouble, so they hire someone to get rid of him, but she, in turn, causes much worse problems. The story illustrates the old adage "If you trade the devil you know for the devil you don't, you just might get burned." It's a really cute, clever book and we were going to dress Mason as the little devil. Well, when he got home from school he told me , "My teacher doesn't think my costume is a good idea." At first, I was mad. The story has no religious connotations whatsoever, and there's nothing offensive about it. But after thinking about it, I realized that only the kids in his class will hear the story. The rest of the school will just think that I sent him to character day dressed as Satan! So even though I thought it was ridiculous, I convinced him that it was probably a good idea to change his costume. So now he's going as Skippyjon Jones, a siamese cat who thinks he's a bandit chihuahua. We went to Party City and bought cat ears, and a bandit mask, and I painted a cat nose and whiskers on him. He looks adorable, he's happy with it, and no one will be appalled or offended, so crisis averted!