Bobbi, if they are actual pumpkins that's great. But, I want to add a note of caution to allowing cucurbit volunteers to run wild in gardens. Plants of the species Cucurbita pepo include most pumpkins, acorn squash, summer squash, and zucchini. And, they cross! One year the neighbor grew squash . . . pumpkins . . . something! The same tractor tills his garden and mine each Spring. A huge number of vines have shown up as volunteers. He allowed volunteers to produce fruit and mature into something that he then had no use for in the kitchen - so they weren't harvested. I believe that they are a yellow squash crossed with a pumpkin but look rather like a gourd. They'll make fruit even if the vines are in compacted soil and only make 12 inches or so of growth. This is about the 3rd or 4th year that they have been scattered around both gardens . . . . I'm witnessing the creation of a self-inflicted weed. Steve

Your black cat looks JUST like my B.C. (Bad Cat). And your Mr. Muscle Cat looks an awful lot like my sister's 22 pound behemoth cat Indy. I really love my cats! We're working on Noah's ark: father, mother, two kids, two cats, two parakeets, two goldfish. . . . Oh, yeah, and Speedie the snail, in with the fish. Gotta love having pets (especially now that the kids are old enough to start helping to do the dirty work taking care of them). Now the kids want a dog - perhaps next year, when we're feeling brave and/or slightly insane. Laurel

My daughter begged for a tattoo,I always said NO. The day after her 18th BDay, she went to a tattoo parlor and got a tattoo, a small black heart outline on her left hip. Her best friend Steohanie got an identical tat the same day on her right hip. Actually quite cute, and would be hidden if they wore normal clothes. I asked her if she wanted another one. Oh no, it hurt soooo much! I'm glad she found out they're painful. I know at the tattoo parlor they are verey sanitary, change needles between customers, and advise customers to wash with antiseptic cleanser for a week. They gave her a brochure. But there was no anesthesia, nothing to kill the pain. And they did "proof" her age. I would hate to see a small child with a real tattoo.

I think Ashley has zeroed in on the essence of the issue: an opportunity to teach a lesson about 'hearsay', or 'gossip', as opposed to eavesdropping. In reading all the responses that go back & forth on trying to determine exactly what constitutes 'eavesdropping' or who should be blamed, I agree that it's a very ambiguous issue. We all, as fully grown adults, basically 'know' when we're straining to overhear something, and even if it's technically 'wrong', we all know we *sometimes* do it anyway. Or we *have* done it, at least once, even as fully-grown adults. So it's really hard to guarantee that you will be able to do anything to 100% fully prevent a kid from listening in... especially if you have a conversation where you know he's around and could possibly walk in at any second or perhaps overhear. So I agree that in Ceph's case, it wasn't really anyone's fault ---neither Ceph for not fully realizing at that moment how utterly fascinating & tantalizing adult discussions can be to a kid or A____ for being a curious kid--- but that adults should be a bit more careful, and kids should have it explained to them that they may at times overhear things out of context that they are best not to repeat because they can accidentally distort the truth and end up really hurting someone without meaning to. And that they wouldn't like it one little bit if the tables were turned and it happened to them! Maybe make up a hypothetical scenario, using some humorously exaggerated details, wherein A_____ becomes the unfortunate victim of an unchecked rumor spread by mis-heard hearsay. Like for example: "A_____, let's say after I dropped you off one morning at school I *just so happened* to overhear some very cute girls saying 'A____ looks like such a STEAMBOAT in his red-and-white sweater!" And then what if I told some other kids, and soon everyone at school thought that? Then what if I much later found out that those girls had REALLY said "A_____ looks like such a DREAMBOAT in his red-and-white sweater!"? Wouldn't YOU prefer that I'd made sure I'd checked with the girls before I told a bunch of other people that you resemble a big, slow, square-ish BOAT?" So that he gets the point but in a non-harsh way and you both can giggle about it at the end.