The Kid:

My baby brother came to stay with me last week.  I love this kid!

Joseph is a big ole 12 year old.  I say big...because he is to me.  We are now the same height and we stopped being able to share shoes about 4 years ago. Kids are funny.  One minute you love them, the next you are ready to pull your hair out!  Joseph is a super sweet kid, but he is a 12 year old boy.  I am not sure if it is just him or if all 12 year old boys, but this kid thinks he knows EVERYTHING!

For instance...last Tuesday our internet service started acting screwy.  From Tuesday to Friday I was on the phone with AT&T's "tech support" for over 6 hours.  Needless to say, I was a little peeved. Tuesday night, at around 9 o'clock-when I was finally wrapping up my first phone call with tech support-Joseph came up to me and said, "Let me talk to them.  I will get them to fix it." Even though I was shaking my head and trying to get him to hush so that I could hear what the tech was saying, he kept trying to get me to allow him to speak with the chick.  I finally just told the lady that I was done talking for that night.  When I hung up with the lady Joseph was right behind me.  He immediately said, "Cindy, you need to tell these people that you don't want their crappy internet.  Call Media Com. That what we have and we always have internet.  They are really good."

I gave AT&T another couple of days instead of canceling the service after a few hours of frustrating troubleshooting. (I wasn't ready to cancel until Friday...) Luckily, Meredith came to the rescue and finally they sent a guy out to our house.  Interesting side note-the problem was evidently wiring...wiring that had been giving us perfect DSL for over 2 years... I am still unsure how the wiring all of a sudden became a problem, but it is fixed now!

I am always amazed at how easy Joseph is to keep entertained/busy.  He is fine with just playing Super Smash Brothers Brawl or just laying in the floor watching our cats, which, per our landlord (father), are illegal.  As evidenced by the picture of Joseph and Nion up there , ^ he became fast friends with Nion and Gus!  On Saturday I had grand plans to show the kid a good time.  We instead had to stay home and wait on the AT&T guy.  Even though I only had time to take him out to a Chinese buffet (where he only ate a mounded plate of meat) and run a few errands he had a great time.  He said he did anyway.

I think my favorite part of Joseph's visits has to be when he randomly says things like,  "You are so cool" just because I have a kind of juice he likes, or "your house is perfect" just because he likes my couch.  I just love him and he makes me super happy!!

**Just for reference-this is a picture of the kid when he was about four.**