Wow... my little Davey Crockett!  I brought home new clearance cammo shorts and t-shirts and this is what we saw a bit later.  What you can't see is the result of the great tree attack.

Yes, you read that right.  You see, it all started with a dead tree.  That's right.  Tree.  Nineteen years ago when we moved into this house, the fruitless mulberry tree in the back yard had those weird bores in it.  It was dying.  We couldn't save it so we didn't try.  The kids loved climbing it but about eight years ago it finally gave up all hope of ever turning a new leaf again.  Apparently it's been rotting all that time.  I figured it was. 

However, I had no idea how far advanced the decay was until Saturday when Kevin came in and said that he'd leaned against it and heard it crack.  He decided to push it over before some child tried to climb it and got hurt in the process.  Smart guy, my husband.  Well, sure enough, he went out there, sawed off a limb or two (so they didn't pull down power lines with the tree) and then pushed the tree right over!  The children were all amazed at their daddy's brute strength.

Lorna raved about it for some time.  She kept insisting that I come see the "all down tree".  I wonder if she meant "Fall down tree"?  Sometime that afternoon, Nolan and Ethan got it in their heads to knock the twigs and such off of the tre limbs and break it up for firewood.  Being city boys, they had no axe.  Being clever kids, they found something to do the job anyway.  Baseball bats.  Wielded properly, they destroyed twigs and crunched limbs beautifully. 

Unfortunately, some pieces of wood were a bit too hale and hearty to succomb to the pressure of a blow from a baseball bat.  Ethan found that out the hard way.  He whacked.  The tree held firm and bounced that back right at him... and into his eye.  He had quite a huge goose egg.  I've learned since Jenna's accident that goose eggs are actually good things.  Apparently with a goose egg there is a smaller chance of concussion (or so the ER docs told a friend of mine with one that lasted over a month!).

So, a few days later, we finally got pictures of the infamous eye and what is left of the goose egg.  Isnt it funny how that bump and his eyebrow makes it look like he got stitches?  He didn't.  Just a well "shadowed" eye.  I told him that generally we leave the eye shadow to the girls.  He was not amused.  I also told him that washing around his eye might hurt but I promised that washing chili from his chin wouldn't cause a smidgeon of pain.  He is now chili chin free but unfortunately you don't get to see the picture of his non-chili-chin-chin.

One bruised but not beaten Ethan-  (You should see the TREE!)