My Sneaky Little Vandal

Well. We've been super busy lately. As many of you already know, I put on a conference for my professional organization (UAMFT) every spring, and this year's conference was the weekend of the 21-22 of May. So for about a month or two before and a week or so after that weekend, I've been a little nutty. Well, maybe more than a little nutty. BUT--It's over now, and I've enjoyed spending a little more time with the kids and Ryan AND in the great outdoors. I'll post pictures of what we've been up to lately, but I wanted to share something I found outside this afternoon as I was planting "Annie's Garden."

A quick aside: "Annie's Garden" is an area of one of my backyard flowerbeds where I let her pick out some annuals and then we plant them together. She loves to pick out flowers and usually loves to plant them as well, but she was "otherwise engaged" this afternoon and instead told me where to put them and I GLADLY obliged her. You see, this allowed me to make minor adjustments in their placement and order (woo-hoo for garden symmetry). Anyhow, it was her "other engagement" that later caught my eye.


At one point, she said, "look what I'm doing!" and I saw this. The "I love you" was too cute to get mad at and so I didn't say anything. Well, apparently, I didn't notice ALL of it. When I went to go inside, I found her signature on my apple tree:

If you look closely, you'll see "Annie" in pen

It was probably not from today, but it got me thinking that if I looked around the backyard carefully enough, perhaps a vandalism-themed post was in the works. . . So, I grabbed my camera and headed back out. Unbeknownst to either of us, this was the beginning of my Camera-aided Backyard Numbers Scavenger Hunt. I'll explain.


As I was taking a picture of this:

It says "Jack" (the dog) with a backward J.
This is on a stump just outside his doghouse

. . . I found that there was the number 8 on the corner of the shed.

Hmmm, I thought to myself. . .
why the number 8?

I soon found 7. . .

. . . followed by 2. . .

. . . here's a 5. . .

. . .10. . .

followed by what I think was 1
(and also "mom" it appears. . . )


I'm starting to think I got punked!

I decided to stop looking when I found THIS ONE!

I'm not going to search the backyard for 11 through 100, thank you very much. Anyway, I thought it was cute, if not sneaky and creative.

What a little
done-with-Kindergarten-and-almost-6-years-old
stinker!!!