Cathie's other birthday gift

While Cathie was at lunch with Dana, we tried to get a bunch of stuff done around the house for her. While Nate mowed the lawn, I power-washed the deck and then tried to fix the toilet. "Fix the toilet?" you ask. "How did it break?" Now this part is funny:

While Cathie was cleaning the toilet, she was also replacing the toilet paper roll. Just as the toilet was in mid-flush, the spring-loaded toilet paper holder popped out and flew into the toilet and was flushed down. Being spring-loaded, it got wedged inside the toilet and the toilet wouldn't flush right. I tried to snake and plunge the toilet with no luck. I ended up having to take the toilet off (which was a nasty, nasty job) and still couldn't get it out of the toilet. I took the toilet onto the lawn where I could try and get the TP roll out and as I was moving the toilet, the lid slammed onto the tank and cracked the tank. We couldn't replace the tank because this was not a low-flow toilet, so we had to buy a brand-stinkin-new-toilet.

They put all of the toilets up high on the shelves, so you can't even sit on them and make sure they're comfortable. We asked about the different models and features and ended up picking out a swell new toilet without even one cool new feature. No remote flush, no automatic wiping or computer screen. Nothing.

What made it funnier was my kids excitement to having a toilet on our front lawn. They all wanted to sit on it, and of course we needed to take a picture of ourselves on it.

Needless to say, Cathie was very excited about her additional birthday gift.