7 Facts about the 7 Year-old

Once again I am failing to post this in a timely manner. Maybe if I start Ben's 10 year old post now, I'll have it ready by his birthday in Septemeber!  Without further ado.... here are 7 little bits of information about Zack, Zacky, or the Zackster.

1. Zack likes art. If he gets in a mood and has a lot of paper, he can occupy himself for hours. He is always asking and then rejecting ideas for art. For awhile he was convinced that he had drawn everything. Then he got "How to Draw Anything" book for his birthday and realized he hasn't. 

 Drawing is his main thing, but he also likes to get crafty. He wanted me to blog this little message he made from random parts to a desk I was building.

2. Zack can save money. He has a decent chunk of cash socked away and has no desire to spend it. He also won't loan money.This drives his spending prone brothers crazy.  If we are in the store and he sees something he wants all I have to do is ask him if he wants to buy it with his own money and immediately the need disappears.

3. Zack likes to write and lyrics are his specialty. One song he wrote starts like this:

"Oh, I'm right here. Can you see me. I'm looking at the good days yah, I'm looking at the good days."

Then things take a tragic turn:

"Oh, I'm stuck in jail yah, I'm thinken how to get out of this deserted place. I could clime out the window but, there's bars. I could try to knock down the walls but, the walls are too hard. how am I supost to break out of jail. Mmmmm mm mm mm. I might be stuck in here forever. I remmember the good days. yah, i remmember the good days. mm mm o oh oh yah oh yah. i'm stuck in jail." (By the way, this is typed exactly as he wrote it).

I made the mistake of asking him about the lyrics and why he was writing about jail. He didn't approve of my line of questioning. Instead of an answer, I got an eye roll and a dirty look before he left the room. I wish I was home earlier that day when he asked Matt to play guitar for him so he could sing that song. Now he won't even consider it.

4. Zack loves school and homework. Every week he gets a homework packet. He finishes it all on Monday. Sometimes he leaves little kiss up notes to his teacher about how much he loves homework. He really does. He was out of school for a week and was thrilled when Ben showed up with all the papers he missed while he was sick. I swear there were more than 50 pages which he finished that afternoon. He was ecstatic.

5. Zack loves his stuffed animals. Until I had a genius revelation to pick one animal a night to cuddle, this is how Zack would go to sleep.

Last week we had a stuffed animal hospital so we could repair a few holes and trim up some fur so they could see.

6. Zack likes the Olive Garden. Matt took the older boys to see Harry Potter and Zack didn't want to go. Instead he got to pick a place to eat out with me. I thought for sure we'd be dining at McDonald's but he was set on Olive Garden even though he just orders the pizza.  He was on his best manners because we were at a "fancy" place. You can tell because he arranged his crust in a circle on the plate rather than leaving it strewn across the table.

 7. Zack likes to make movies on the computer. So far, his file contains 114 movies. He especially likes to use the special effects. His movies are pretty funny because he likes to make  faces like this:

and this: 

Sometimes he sings, sometimes he dances. He can be a goofy kid.

There are lots and lots of things I could write about Zack. Seven is hardly enough. I started a list of ideas and left it by the computer.  Later in the day, Zack brought me this:

The Meaning of Inception

The following story is 100% true and possibly the creepiest thing to ever happen to me. Intrigued?

I watched the movie Inception when it came out in theaters and loved it. The best part of seeing it in the theater was the audience reaction to the end--is it a dream or not? Gasp! Literally, there were gasps. The movie was on my mind for the next few days so I decided that I was going to believe in a happy ending. Then I read an article where Christopher Nolan (the director) said that there really is an ending-it's not just up for the viewer to decide. And so when it arrived via Netflix I was determined to watch carefully so that I could hopefully prove that it wasn't a dream.

I am not a deep thinker so I really had to make myself focus and concentrate when we finally got around to watching it. The first night, I fell asleep mid-way through. I hate having Netflix movies for too long (such a waste of money!) so I was determined to finish it the next night even though that meant starting it at midnight.  Short of actually taking notes, I was really concentrating on all the different dream levels, the token, any sign that might indicate the intended meaning. Finally, at about 1:00 am it was over. And still the meaning wasn't clear to me. Gasp!

Matt was half awake and while I was in the bathroom I told him that I decided that I don't want it to be a dream and so that's what the ending is about even if it might not be.

Here's where things get freaky. I was walking by the dresser to get back into bed when Noah's old cell phone all of a sudden lit up. Matt can't sleep with any light on (he covers the tiny blue light on the satellite receiver in our room) so he got up to turn it off. This is what was on the screen*:

FOR REAL! Either Matt is the greatest prankster in the world or that was some kind of crazy, crazy coincidence.  He swears that he didn't do it and I think I believe him. Still it will take more than a creepy, demon phone to change my interpretation of Inception.

 *You may have noticed the time on the phone in the photo doesn't jive with the time line of the story. I took a picture of the screen the next day