“Charlie, what happened to your Mickey Mouse shoes?”

“With the fronts cut off now my toes are free to roam!”

“Oh, boy, now you’ve got some ventilation!”

“Yeah, Papa says that soon it will be Easter and when it’s Easter we get to go to Hosemelia. So I’m thinkin’ of all the things we can do to make it even better. I painted the pointer finger on my left-hand red. I got a little bit of a white stripe around it like it’s a candy cane. The president asked, ‘Can I get a haircut?’ He’s so funny!”

“We’re lucky to have him on our team.”

“He makes me laugh. You can’t find anybody who won’t see a finger that’s red.”

“Why did you paint your finger?”

“We want to do some hang glidering and I want to guide people in. I don’t want to hold the flashlight like they do when they are guiding airplanes. I just want to use my one finger to direct. I think it’s important to have someone on the ground. Everything we do is all for a reason and the reason is to play and have fun. Papa said that is our biggest job.”

“He’s right!”

Charlie’s teeth are back to normal size today. The last time I was at the council he’d had Liponie make them extra-large and hollow so he could store powdered candy in them. He’d just take out a tooth, pour the candy on his tongue and put the tooth back. This gave me the creeps; plus, he could hardly talk the teeth were so large.

“Papa told me that Mr. Kennedy told him there was something called Pixy Stix when he was president. He said if I had those, I could just put them in my pocket and I wouldn’t have to keep taking my teeth out. I got a whole bunch of Pixy Stix. The green ones are the best, Mommy. I think I like a lot the stuff that’s a little tart.”

“Me, too. My mouth is watering.”

The kids’ tentative plans for Tonas’s birthday, which falls on Easter this year, is to have Liponie make me the size of a fairy and hide me in an Easter egg. Charlie is excited about the idea of me flying out of an egg. Another plan is to have me come out of a cake that looks like an Easter bunny. I think the cake might be a better idea. I’ve never had a chance to pop out of one of those!