Naughty Joel

Ellie LOVES her Uncle Joel!

He's the silly Uncle that has successfully taught Ellie how to:

stick her tongue out...

give "pound its"...

say some interesting words like Bomquesha (if that's even how you spell it!)...

show everyone the food in her mouth at the dinner table; "look, it's seafood, Ellie!"...

and they have a special nickname for Grammy that only the two of them use...which she is NOT too fond of!!

As you can tell, Joel is pretty fun!

Sometimes though, I have to tell Ellie that we can't do what Joel's doing when we are in front of other people! Nice, huh!

So when Joel does something that Ellie knows is wrong, she says, "Naughty Joel!"

The night of her birthday, something very naughty took place....

After her party, we went outside to take the trash out. And this is what we found.

Our poor Pittsburg Gorilla (that was quite expensive and breakable) was hanging from our house! At first I was really mad. I thought it was probably a student pulling a prank.
They had gone through a phase of ringing our door bell and running away during the night.
Not very funny either. I figured they must have upped their game a little.
Then I realized that Uncle Dave (Don's brother) had been holding the gorilla earlier that night, so I knew it must have been them.

After we realized who it was, we promptly cut him down and took him inside. What we didn't account for was Ellie's reaction.
She was MORTIFIED!
I just told her Uncle Joel and Uncle Dave were being funny.
She was not consoled by my explanation.
She got a huge pouty face and yelled "NAUGHTY JOEL!"

Ellie was so worried that we had to put the gorilla inside next to Matt's hippo he got from Africa. Matt told her the hippo would protect Mr. Gorilla.
We even had to pray for the gorilla at bedtime so that Naughty Joel wouldn't take him again!


*Ellie just walked up and saw the pictures again and said. Oh no! Poor Mr. Gorilla! That was a very Naughty Joel! Guess she's still not over it!*

After that traumatizing incident was over and Ellie was in bed, I started looking through all the pictures of the party. When I got to the end, I saw the hanging gorilla. They had even been thoughtful enough to document their little deed for us!

So...to get Joel back, here's some pictures I'm sure he thought I deleted...

Joel: Farmer by day, Model by night...

He's a natural isn't he!

Thanks for always keeping us on our toes and being such a good uncle, Joel!

Ellie sure does love being with you!