Our summer of living Brady-fully has gotten off to a bit of a slow start. Thanks to (in no particular order of distraction) a tornado that hit the Cottage in June, First Born breaking his foot and the surgery that followed, Puppy's surgery and subsequent self-removal of stitches, Steadfast Husband's travel schedule and well, it's summertime and the living is easy! But yesterday, serendipity struck in Brady-like fashion.
Remember the Brady Bunch episode when Greg and Bobby got stuck in Sam the butcher's meat locker? They were locked in until Greg broke the glass out of the window, Bobby squeezed through the small opening, used the payphone to call for help and saved the day! Well, the other day we had an incident here that reminded me so much of that episode!
We decided to take an over-night trip to the beach on Sunday. We had such a great time, but First Born decided to stay home (the thought of crutches on the beach didn't appeal to him for some wacky reason!) We spoke to him a couple of times Sunday evening, but when we tried to call him mid-morning on Monday, we didn't get an answer. We didn't think much of it, his convalescence seems to consist of sleeping-a lot!
We returned home at about 3 in the afternoon. When we opened the garage door, First Born was sitting on the top step that leads into the house. "I've been locked out since 10 O'clock this morning!"
I said, "I don't have a key." Turning to steadfast husband, "Do you have a key?"
"No, I have never had a key."
Yikes, (did I mention, we didn't make a restroom stop on the way home, "because we're almost home, you can hold it"?)
An urgency washed over the crowd.
First Born informed us that he had checked every window and door and they were all locked (he must have done this between snacks- judging from the wrappers littering the floor, he clearly passed much of the time eating.) So, while Steadfast Husband went around checking all the windows and doors, I went through door by door and window by window asking if he had checked them, "What about my room, did you check the one in my room? My bathroom?" and on it went.
By the way, children seem to find this questioning terribly annoying.
Halfway through my interrogation, I noticed that First Born was in his boxers! Oh the luck! Could this get any better? Truly, I imagined myself telling the story and saying, "too bad he wasn't in his underwear." But he was!
It turns out he was going to grab something from the garage pantry for breakfast and evidently when he is the only one home, he doesn't feel the need to cover up his skivvies-nor does he wear shoes or carry his phone!
As I was relishing in the good fortune of these newly realized details, it dawned on me that we were still locked out and I began to calculate the price of a locksmith verses the cost of replacing a window.
Steadfast Husband confirmed that everything was in fact locked-up tight (which made First Born roll his eyes) and began to remove the door frame. When he was about halfway through, we heard a faint, "Stop... I'm in... I'm in the house!" thump, thump, thump. nothing.
So we did what any reasonable folks would do- we started pounding on the door, yelling, "Let us in! Let us in!" Ta-da! Youngest Son flung open the door!
It turns out that Youngest Son was able to crawl through the firewood doors to get into the house! yippee! Let the heroic rumpus commence!
The tag: (the part of the show that comes after the final commercial break)
Close-up of First Born's furrowing brow, he can't decide if he is happy to finally be back in the house or totally annoyed that his little brother was able to get into the house in little more than 1/100 of the time he had been trying to get in! He cracks a smile. Fade to black.
Although I don't believe that art can be "wrong"- I do believe it can be ugly. In order to tip the odds in favor of having an eye-pleasing object d'art,at the end of the day, I bought three canvases-2 for practicing and one that would become our "masterpiece" (or at the very least-practice canvas number 3!) Additionally, I chose paint colors that (in my opinion) would work well together and were pleasing to me! But most importantly, I also chose to remain consistently vague about what we would do with our masterpieces after we finished-just in case. 
