Nigel Thornberry and Dora The Explorer

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."--Mahatma Gandhi

No I am not making any of this up. It's 100% true. I don't know if that's sad or just plain funny. I'm going to go with funny. Now on to the story, here is the completely true, non-exaggerrated story of what happened to me on a nice evening in May.

I was minding my own business, just relaxing and surfing the internet, when my Dad walks into my room. He looks at me and says "Can you come help me outside real quick?" First of all, alarm bells should've been going off in my head as it was almost 7pm. Alarm bells definitely started going off when he poked his head back in to say "just come out and don't ask questions."   My response? Uhhhh.... Ooookay. I got up, put shoes on and headed into the kitchen. I was met by my Dad who handed me these tools:

In my head I was saying "what in the world... you know what... I've been handed weirder objects in my life. Let's see where this goes." Meanwhile my Dad is rummaging around in the garage and comes out with a MASSIVE hard hat that I can only explain as what Dora the Explorer would wear on a construction site.

At this point I really was starting worry what in the world I was going to be doing in my own backyard. Why did I need a pencil with fishing line? What in the world was I going to be doing that involved potentially getting bashed on the head? My confusion was only about to worsen.

Most people have fired a slingshot. If you haven't, you might want to get angry with your parents about how you seriously missed out on an epic part of your childhood. What does a slingshot have to do with this story? Everything my friends. Everything. Don't ask me where he got it, but when I went to walk outside my Dad pulled out a HUGE slingshot the size of my lower leg. I'll upload a picture later for all of those non-believers out there. It was this point in time where A. I wondered what a huge slingshot was doing in the cabinet with laundry detergent. I had a feeling no one in the house had adopted a very brutal way of putting soap in the washing machine or a fun way of transferring clothes from the washer to dryer. B. WHAT IN THE WORLD WAS HAPPENING?

I get outside and walk to an enormous tree in my backyard. My Dad had gotten it into his head that he wanted to take a large branch down so he was going to tie fishing line around it to help yank it down... I was to hold the pencil with the fishing line reel in the middle of it so it could unspool itself. My Dad had tied a heavy metal circle thing to the end of the fishing line and was attempting to propel it over the VERY high branch with his slingshot. The construction hard hat was in case he missed and I got whacked on the head by a circular missile like piece of metal... My Dad had a very fashionable hard hat that looked like it was stolen from Inspector Gadget and he had tried to disguise it as a giant ant transformer. Yes I'm still being completely honest here.

Needless to say this flawless (sarcasm) plan didn't work. The metal thing broke free and landed somewhere in the garden. It being the same color as the dirt was not found. It's still sitting in the garden.

What I didn't witness, but my Mom did... lucky for her... was my Dad's second attempt at removing the limb. He managed to somehow get a rope over the branch and tied it off to his 69 land rover. He wanted to use his new winch sooooo he finally got his chance. My Mom looked out the window one day to see my Dad in the land rover attempting to pull down a tree limb.... only the limb won and the back end of the land rover was in the air.

Aren't you jealous this isn't your family? Well that's my awkward family moment for the day. Stay tuned for more mishaps, adventures, and quirky stories.   Oh and thanks for reading this :) I can't say that enough.

"You are confined only by the walls you build yourself"--