A New Year!

Looking back on the last couple of months, I realized how time flies. For instance, it's been two months since the last blog update!

I figured it must be time to catch you up on the latest antics of the Fisher family so far for the year of 2011.

I, Ben, got temporarily "laid off" as the amount of work at the airport slowed down. This is a good and bad thing. I have much more time to work on raising our support, which is good. Jonas likes seeing his daddy more, which is good. Caroline can get a shower in before noon, which is good.

But, the kids have a hard time staying on their schedules when daddy's home and daddy has a hard time staying on his schedule when the kids are home, this is a bad thing.

All that said, it seems that we have been more productive and hopefully we'll see that in the support numbers.

ARBY'S ... BY DEFAULT

The other day Caroline made a batch of enciladas for supper and went to preheat the oven. A few minutes into the cycle, a noxious plasticy smell began bellowing out of the vent and door when opened. When we looked into the situation, all we could see was a pile of molten yellow goo on the oven floor and heating element with traces of solidified substance on the top rack.

The fumes gave me a headache and with a worry for the kids and our well being, we decided the best course of action would be Arby's while we assessed what to do. So, with the early January air flowing through our now open windows, we headed off to the relative safety of fast food hoping to return to fresh air.

Now, I know where your mind is going. You think it was probably Jonas' toy that accidently got put into the oven in the name of mimic play. Well, let me tell you, he got too excited about eating a roast beef sandwich for me to think it was accidental.

As we munched away at our curly fries and sandwiches, we pondered what on earth could have been the source of the yellow goo. We ruled out crayons due to the consistency of the evidence.

Then we thought maybe it was a cob of corn Jonas' aunt had given him for his birthday. We were pretty certain of this until we found it later in his toy box when we got home.

Another victim we thought of was one of his indians. We didn't have a solid theory on how Crazy Horse would have ended up in the heat, unless the cowboys finally got their revenge, but we figured he was as likely a puddle of plastic as any other yellow toy. We had no good way of disproving this hunch except to wait it out and hope something else would shine some light on the mystery.

The other logical choice was of course, an egg. We were sure he has seen us make eggs on the range and figured there is a good chance he would assume that the oven would do the same trick. Once again, there wasn't a good way to prove this one way or the other as there are a lot of random Easter egg parts in the toy box. We were perplexed, and starting to go slightly mad over not being able to figure it out.

Then, a few painfully long days later, it all became clear as liquid plastic. Caroline pulled a cookie sheet out of its storage for use and noticed something weird on the bottom. When she looked at it closer, she discovered a magnet with little strings of yellow melted plastic still attached to it. What relief we felt knowing it wasn't an action figure or egg that would have meant a little boy intentionally placing them in a potentially hot oven when we weren't watching. Instead, it turned out to be a number that belongs on the side of fridge. Some how it must have stuck to the bottom of the cookie sheet at some point in time after the last batch of cookies but before the enchiladas. With mystery solved, we could finally rest easy that Jonas isn't strong enough to pull the oven door open and he didn't stage the whole thing to go out to eat. We still don't know for sure which number met its demise, but at least we can use the oven again without putting a lock on it.