Are you ready to bungle?

In the jungle??? Our first summer camp starts next week with a jungle theme.

I've been asked to display some student art in a financial services office. I spent part of the afternoon doing name labels for the giant papier mache frogs and butterflies for the exhibit. Loaded everything in my car since I'm setting up the display early tomorrow morning. When I went into Mardel's Christian Bookstore to laminate some information about the frogs for the show, I was magnetically drawn to a display of Vacation Bible School supplies. There were stacks of what appeared to be do-it-yourself coconut bra halves!

There's is nothing like a dame, nothing in the world. There is nothing you can name that is anything like a dame!

Anyway, the coconuts turned out to be halves that fit together like a plastic Easter egg, only much bigger. Can't you see it? The monkeys steal the explorers' map, and hide it in the secret coconut?? So I got two coconuts at $1.49 each. We can always make them into bras after camp ends.

Then, because I was really dreading going to the grocery store AGAIN, I turned into Half-Price Books. There were these fabulous plush elephant hobby-horses on clearance for $3 each. True, they used to sing with lip sync motion when you squeezed the ear, but that was easily surgically altered. I only got two, but I could go back. The store had 3-4 more. Imagine the drama possibilities for the jungle and Magic Carpet camps. Think of the fabulous entrance to the palace that Aladdin could make riding on an elephant. I can almost hear Robin Williams singing! No wait, I can hear Robin Williams singing because I am cuing the video to show the kids at the second camp.

So, here is the visual: I am driving around Plano, Texas, with "Carmen" blaring on my new cd player (that Mike installed. He's a good boy.). The Buick's backseat is packed with seven giant frogs on their lily pads, the big stepladder, and two singing elephants. In the front I've got two giant butterflies with two and a half foot wingspans. In the trunk I've got the wheely cart and six bags of groceries. I do wish I had been wearing face paint and bug antennas.

I bought Jeff a Longhorn burnt-orange baseball cap embroidered, "Keep Austin Weird". I do my best to make Plano weirder, too. My kids often depart with the phrase, "Keep it real, Mom." But why????