To Boldly Go Where No Man Ever Wants to Go Again

Monday - Jay went above and beyond his fatherly duty. Earlier that afternoon, Lexi informed me that her favorite lion had gone down the sink drain. Fine I thought, we can just loosen the pipe and shake it out thinking our pipe had the traditional 'J' in it. Mmmm .. no ... not so much ... it's not 'traditional', but stick STRAIGHT - leading away to who knows where. After much consoling, and mourning, Lexi came to terms that the lion had gone to sea (what else was I going to tell her!?).

That evening after Jay came home, I told him what had happened in the event Lexi told him. He told me that there was a 'sink trap' in the basement and he thought he could get it off to see. Well - after six earrings, a stone, a pound of hair and inches of goo, in the very bottom of the trap sat Lexi's beloved lion (from Uncle Bob - he gave Lexi his prized zoo collection he had when he was a boy). After rinsing, washing and soaking in bleach, Lexi was reunited with her prized possession. YAY!!!!! and GO DADDY :)

Now - on a side note, I think this is so cute. Lexi adores animals ... A-D-O-R-E-S them. Adores .. Adores ... Adores. She has a great variety of stuffed and play figures - somewhere around 100 or more play figures aside from her stuffed collection - seriously - thanks to Uncle Bob who shared his prized toys with Lexi from when he was a boy. Well - I am a firm believer that it's not the toy that creates the play - but the child - because the lion that went down the drain was NOT shiny or fancy, didn't have bells or whistles, wasn't produced by Nick or Sesame - but was a well worn, well loved, well broken-in lion that is probably reaching 40 years old. I love when things can take a child to places only their imagination can - with just that, their imagination and it thrills me that Lexi will have many more memories with her favorite lion. I'll think you'll smile too when you see what brought Lexi to tears and her Mommy too as I watched her understand it was gone - and again when her daddy fished up to his elbow in goo to fish this little guy out:

I put the lion next to Pecan so you can see how tiny it is and then....

I took a close up so you can see how special it is :)