A Fish Tale

This morning the kids and I set out for our favorite local park at 6:30am to avoid the Texas summer heat.

Okay, 6:30am is a slight exaggeration for humor's sake...however we were there bright and early. And it was already hot.

The children's new favorite thing is to hold hands in the backseat of our car. This usually starts off sweet and innocent...until someone pulls a bit too hard on the other person's hand or a finger is yanked in an unfortunate direction. While at the park this morning we decided to feed the large amount of Koi they have (with the fish food fellow sucker Moms buy for 25 cents from the local vending machine). Isaac really gets into this...as do the fish. They jump and bite at each other as if they were not fed the same food a mere 7.3 seconds earlier from the other kids visiting the park. We tossed fish pellet after fish pellet at the aggressive fish as Evelyn giggled along in her stroller. Eventually she wanted a piece of the action and was given her own food to toss to the fish, after several stern warnings not to actually eat the pellet. She was excitedly tossing her food into the water when she finally ran out of food.

In a moment of what she likely deemed sheer genuis, she tossed her sippy cup into the fish pond.

The sippy cups used at casa de phillips are cheap and easily replaceable. Normally I would have let the yellow cup stay with the fifty Koi that had eagerly surrounded it. However, our cups also have bumpy name labels on them, which are neither cheap nor easy to come by.

Deciding that I had to retrieve the tossed cup, I gathered my courage and laid down on my stomach to stick my hand and most of my arm into the water. I managed to retrieve the cup but am still working on erasing the memory of all those fish nibbling at my fingers.


This little girl now has a black eye. The poor thing accidentally crawled up onto an open, empty plastic container. This caused it to swing up and whack her in the eye (same effect as someone stepping on the end of a rake). She is going to look a little rough this week until the purple and blue heals.

Finally, here is the family Saturday night when we celebrated Tobe's birthday. We are still left wondering if we will ever be able to capture a decent picture of the four of us.