Thorburn Family

 This is a little like “Where’s Waldo,” but …. meet our lizards, Spring and Pearl.  Spring and Pearl live in the same aquarium, and Spring and Pearl are not the same gender.   This means that we expect that we may have little baby lizards eventually.   Valerie cares for the animals very well, and keeps up on all their needs and desires.  

Well, today Valerie had an extensive conversation with Steven Tyler at the Claremont Pet Center.   Valerie was buying crickets to feed her lizards, “Spring,” and “Pearl.”   Steven Tyler, lead singer of the legend band Aerosmith….. was buying a pet carrier.  He was quite talkative and engaging.  He has good teeth.  Of course, Valerie did not know him from a bag of beans until Rich told her later (and at first she thought he might be a GIRL.. ), but they had a pleasant conversation nonetheless.    Since one of Anna’s favorite songs is “Don’t Want To Miss A Thing”….she’s been known to sing it to Rich (scary, but true..)….well, we had to post this event to live in the permanent records of web-land.   So, there it is.  You cannot know how badly I wish I could embed the Aerosmith song “Dude Looks Like A Lady” into this post.   I heard it’s bad blog etiquette to embed songs like that, and I don’t think it is a good song (just that refrain!!  so appropriate!), and I don’t know how to do that anyway at this point.. so hey, that settles it.  :^)  

I am actually taller than my Mom but I was crouching down :^)  

Benjamin has been VERY excited about the idea of “doing chores,” and today he was officially given his first Chore Pack.  It just bascially contains his morning routine.. use the bathroom, wash face, brush hair, get dressed, put pajamas away.. stuff like that.  He also gets to feed the cat, set the table (good way to learn left & right & counting), and “help Mommy” cook in her food prep slot before breakfast.  Since he cannot read yet, his Chorepack has pictures (a wonderful bonus of using the Choreware program), and he’s already memorized what each picture means!   Daddy is Benjamin’s partner from 5 to 5:30 AM and Mommy has Ben from 5:30 to 6 AM (obviously we trumped our older children’s votes that each of them be his chore partner.. LOL).    He’s got an evening & Saturday Chore Pack, too!   Of course, the goal is that Benjamin will do each item in his personal routine & and age-appropriate household jobs properly without any help or reminders, in the time alloted on the schedule for chores.  But for a good long while, our little cowboy will continue having a partner showing him the ropes. :^)   Lucky us!  It’s so fun having a little guy in the house again — what an awesome job parenting is!