Mom and Dad

Last night we stopped by my parents house. Two funny things happened:

1 - My mom finished the dishes as I had a glass of milk. I went to put the glass in the dishwasher but they were clean. So I set it in the sink and then looked at my mother.
"You want me to wash this?"
A stare in return.
"You do. I will. If I leave it you'll be upset and say, 'I can never have anything nice because of you kids.' - - - Which if you think about it, that's a horrible thing for a mother to say to her children."
We both laughed, because she has said this more than once. I don't remember her saying it, though, until middle school. I think that's when we started having enough money to have nice things.

2 - Travis and I walked around the yard to see the work my parents had done. They sat on the patio and watched us. Then I noticed that they had gotten rid of the sasafras stumps.
But first I should explain:
When I was a little girl we had three sasafras trees that grew up together in our backyard, right at the edge, next to the field. In the middle of the three was a little platform and next to it was a hole. I was confident that this was used by the fairies and gnomes as their well.
When my parents decided to chop down the trees a few years ago I begged them to keep the stumps so my little girls could pretend the same things. It was at that time my brothers told me they were the ones filling the well up, as they used the hole for target practice in peeing contests.
When I cried out that the stumps were no more my dad yelled back across the yard, "That's right! The pee trees are gone! No more fairy water!"