Sunny Saturday June 8

Today Merinda announced that Tom and his sister would be coming.  At first, I did not know who she was talking about and I had to think for a minute or two and when it came to me, I realized it should have been obvious who Tom was and I felt a little ashamed.  Later, Merinda asked why I had not been excited when she had said he was coming and I explained that I had to think before I remembered who he was and she laughed at that.  I guess Tom and I had not seen each other for too long.

When Tom finally came, he brought a deck of cards.  It was definitely not a trick deck (I know because he let me sift through it) and he had short sleeves so he could not have slipped a card up his sleeve.  How then, was he able to pull off such amazing card tricks!  He made cards disappear, he made them switch places, he even pulled a money joker off the top and put it in the middle, then shuffled it twice and let me shuffle three times.  Then I held the cards out face down and he chose one and guess what?  It was the money joker!!!  It was incredible!  I even searched the deck but found no other money joker.  How he did it, I might never know.

After the Amazing Magic Man Tom, we worked on the house frame that Jörg, Synja, Kyra and I started several weeks ago.  Tom seemed to have a fair amount of experience with tools we used.  We were able to replace the skinny posts holding up the roof for bigger, stronger beams.  We also fit an opening where the door would go.  However, we still have a long way to go.  We still need to cut the bamboo in their yard for the walls of the playhouse.  Our work was made short because it started to rain so we all went in.

Inside, Merinda had set out origami papers and books so we could do origami while the rain slowly cleared.  Tom seemed to know every model in the book and he even turned a house into a with a few swift folds.  Kyra was intrigued by the models and tried a couple herself.  She got her folds of her first few models better than I did on my first time ever.  Finally the rain stopped and we went outside to work again.  We got a little more done but then Tom's mom came to pick him and his sister up.  I hope Tom and I can hang out again sometime soon because we really had a ton of fun.