Grandpa Jonesy to the Rescue!

Yea! Grandpa Jonesy!
Brannen and I are so glad that Grampa is willing to help get us out of any pickle that we seem to be in. You know - when my car gets stuck in the snow, when I lock myself out of my house, when I need a ride home from Afton, when Brannen flushes a ball down my toilet!!! What a boy!
Here's the scoop.
Brannen is in the bathtub and I'm watching him play. I decided to be ambitious while I'm sitting there, and get busy cleaning the bathroom. I just finish the toilet with a final flush - and Brannen - the new starter for the Jazz- launches a buzzer shot and SWOOSH! He makes it - despite my slow motion "NNNOOOOOOO" and desperate shot block. Yep. He's done it. He even laughed sinisterly and rubbed his hands together. What a kid.
So I quickly do what every mom does - I plunge my hand into the toilet hole to see if I can possible retrieve the ball he has thrown in. I can feel it, but no. It's not coming out. Just big enough to fit - not small enough to grab and bring back. So then I do what every good girl does - call dad (husband is at work, of course) and say HELP! DAD! HELP!
So here comes grandpa Jonesy, armed with a tool kit ready to help.

Brannen is helping too. He's finally repented of his evil ways, and rolled up his sleeves ready to help. And what a helper he was!
So, try as we might, with every idea imaginable, we can't get the darn thing out. It is a hard plastic ball, and just rolls around in there, and has nothing to wedge against - so we can't do anything. We finally decide that we have to take the WHOLE toilet up and apart. This we do. We STILL can't get the ball out. It rolls around in there - but is a bit too big to come out the other end. Jonesy ponders the problem at hand.
Much pondering later - we are still working on it. Let me take a moment to interject that grampas are great! I think there is a certain age you have to be to spend the entire morning pulling a toilet up from the floor, and laugh about it the whole time.
Jonesy -- "This is somethin' . . . . " "Crazy baby . . . ." "What a kid . . . " "Come on in and help, Brannen" "Let that kid in here - he just wants to see what is going on" "What are we going to do now . . . . " "How a bout if we . . . "
Now if the husband were working on it, it probably would have gone more like this.
Husband -- "Darn kid" "Why didn't you watch him" "This stinks" "This can't be done!" "Call a plumber already" "Get that kids outta here" "Let's just break open the toilet already!"
*Note to wonderful husband who fixes plenty of kid messes - I'm not complaining. Just being realistic! And commenting that one has to be a mellow grandpa who has lived a lot of life before you can see the humor in the situation.

So here is the crazy solution we came up with - after much thought and trial and error. Jonesy found a bag of golf balls in Kelly's tool room. They were small enough to roll around inside the toilet and fairly heavy. Jonesy put about three of them in there and bouced that thing around - jumping up and down - trying to get one of them to knock the ball out.
Naahhh. It didn't work. But it sure was funny to watch. I'll bet my dad is still tired from jumping up and down while holding a toilet!
So then, we decided to fill the entire thing up with the golf balls - so as to hold that plastic ball still and then maybe we could stick something in the ball to pull it out.
WAALAAA! It worked. After all the balls were jammed in there - we stuck a grabber screw in THE ball and pulled that sucker out. FINALLY! How brilliant we are.
There it is - the culprit. The problem.
We've done it. Mission accomplished. Many hours later.
He even put the whole thing back! What a Jonesy! Saved the day! Thanks grampa!

The silver lining: I DID just clean the toilet. I had something to blog about. : )