Mono Monday : : Fairy House

We gave Owen his birthday present yesterday, rather belatedly, but its not always easy to coordinate kid's play dates, doggy day care, homework, violin lessons and tae kwan do lessons. Our pièce de résistance  was a Lego truck with a crane on the back and a trailer with a box on it. Even with two of us, a trip to Target is fraught with everything from fluorescent lights which make me dizzy, to Oilman's idea that not matter what the venue, he should have it to himself. We didn't realize until he opened it and started examining the box, that what we had bought him was a truck designed to carry a portapotty with a crane to lift it into place and two little men, one of whom is pictured sitting on the potty! Oh well…one of life's essentials, I suppose.

While Owen put together his truck (he liked the tiny shovel and bucket) Maya and I were deciding how to build a more substantial fairy house than the last one whose demise we blamed on Blake. Turns out it was OilMan…
It was quite a feat of engineering requiring much hot glue, and blutak, since Maya's chosen place was beneath the leafy branches of a potted bamboo plant, the roots of which are tough as nails and circle the inside of the pot so many times that it would require breaking the pot to replant it.

We had a lot of fun gluing leaves lichen, acorn caps, little pieces of colored glass tile from the now deceased pool in the patio, and buttons from the box we inherited from OilMan's grandmother. We ran out of time to finish the furnishings….

Owen had fun putting together his truck in record time and probably wondering, "what the heck were Ahmi and Pop thinking?"

I don't think OilMan had much fun crawling under the house in his Nomex "rat suit" (inherited from his days of crawling through oil refineries) looking for possible places of ingress and egress of rats which we can hear gnawing on something under the floor, and scratching around in the attic. He called the pest control guy who is coming tomorrow.