Weekly funny

Trust me on this one- it's worth it. Don't get caught up in the Star Wars- style words at the beginning. This video clip is a great funny to start your week! =D

Monks clip

Click on the "monks clip" above and it will take you to the video. When you're done watching the video, click your Back arrow to get back here. Enjoy!

Sickies

Let's hear some chatter out there. Both kids have these hacking coughs (along w/ every other kid we know right now...) and runny-then-stuffy noses. What do YOU do for miserable kids? This is where you all use the comment box so we can read each others' advice. Ready? Set? Go!

Doogie Howser

This morning I was staggering around while I attempted to get breakfast ready for the morning crew. Some of you are under the mistaken impression that I am a morning person. In fact, my mother bought me a coffee mug that says, "BEWARE! NOT a morning person!" I used it all throughout student teaching and use it the second it comes out of the dishwasher once it is clean. However, now that I am a mom, I've discovered to my horror (just kidding, Mommee) that if I get up and "get crackin'" that I can be very productive in the morning. Just doesn't mean I have to like it.

Having said all that to say this... this morning I'm in the kitchen, getting cereal & juice for these little buggers when I am approached from behind. It was Liam, wearing a plastic stethoscope. He then sticks the end of it on my left butt cheek. The conversation went like this:

Why are you sticking that on my bum?
Hold still. I have to check you.
Oh. Okay. You check me.
*makes listening sounds* Hmmm. Sounds good. *proceeds to my RIGHT butt cheek* Very good! Hmmm. Very good!
...

Yes. I'm so glad my bum sounded very good. *siiiiiiiiiiiiiiigh*

And while I'm typing this, the resident Her Royal Majesty is neglecting her oatmeal to ask what all the words mean with the red underline beneath them. "Those are the words it thinks I spelled wrong." "Wow. You spelled a lotta words wrong, Mama." Grrrr. "Perhaps if I didn't have to literally spoon oatmeal into a five year old, I'd be able to think clearly and spell better!"

Happy weekend, everyone!

Nonrelated news

This has nothing to do with the kids, but I wanted y'all to know that I started our Hawaii blog. There is a link to it down there on the right side under "From Aloha to Akaka"... you can also find it at http://alohakurths.blogspot.com so check that out in your spare time. It'll be a slow process as I sift through all the bazillions of photos, but it should give you a good idea of how much fun we had. Plus, seeing tropical weather in the middle of winter does everybody some good. Enjoy!

She's soooooo ticklish...

Care Bear cookin'

It amazes me how much she looks like her daddy. Unreal.

The many hats of Liam

And woah, check out that bedhead! ;)

Oatmeal mornings

This may have been a weekend, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was a school day. Notice he's dressed and ready to go, while the kid who needs to be on the bus is still in her robe!

Dead to the world

Isn't he breathtakingly beautiful? I know I'm biased, but that doesn't mean I'm not right. This was two Thursdays ago when I was trying to rouse him from break so we could go to gymnastics. He was so deeply asleep that I had to give him a few more minutes and try again later. He was out!

I love to watch him read

Tickling my boy

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves. Let's just say, he comes to me and says, "tickle ME!" I oblige:

Kids and dogs

Care Bear sings a song in music class about "driiiiving in my little blue truck, driiiiving in my little blue truck..." Well, while Rob & Jana were here, we heard Liam singing the song. We found him in the beagles' kennel, driving with a blue ring from those infant stacking ring toy sets. Singing his heart out in his little blue truck!

And here is Care Bear with those patient sweeties, Gilly and Louie. Such good boys! Louie is on the left, Gilmore is on the right.

Sights often seen...

Here is our proud boy on his potty. The reason I took this is because he was taking foreeeeeeeeeeeever and I couldn't figure out why. I checked on him, and here Dada had smuggled him a Reader's Digest. The kid is three! He can't read! But it was keeping him stalling anyway. Boys!

And if you're anywhere near ground level, Triskal thinks you're in her domain, so she comes and says hello. Up close and personal!

Happy Valentine's Day

The kids helped me make sugar cookies tonight. They worked really hard!

I thought it was sweet that they wanted to make trucks. So that there could be valentine deliveries. And bears, so Tino could have a cookie. And the usual hearts. And hands to give valentines, too. So creative! It helps to have over 100 cookie cutters....

I made some snowflakes and dusted them with blue and white sugar crystals. They look pretty and wintry =) Have a sweet Valentine's Day, everyone!

Built on the rock

You know the song about "the wise man built his house upon the rock... and the house on the rock stood firm"? That was running through my head this morning at the bus stop. Apparently it doesn't also hold true for petite children. Care Bear climbed up on top of one of the two big rocks in the landscaping. The wind (which is gusting pretty well still) grabbed her by the hood and literally lifted her off the rock. I laughed and laughed and laughed. She goes, "WOAH! It blew me right off!" I gotta get a camcorder to catch all these shenanigans at the bus stop... award winning material, I tell ya...

Mirror, mirror, on my... behind!?

Sorry that previous post is blue on blue. I know it's hard to see but it won't let me fix it =(

Dada picked Care Bear up from the bus at lunch time yesterday and spent half an hour or so with her before Liam and I made it home from moms' group. He said he remembered her climbing on him and playing with his belt loops. He called me in the middle of the afternoon to tell me the following story:

I had a conference call with Jeremy and Jeff and a couple other guys. We do the whole thing and then Jeremy comes up to me later and asks, "why do you have a mirror on your butt?" I am clueless and ask, "what are you talking about?" Jeremy repeats himself, "why do you have a mirror on your butt?" Lo and behold, and unbeknownst to me, Carrie had inserted a purple plastic mirror from our toy vet kit into his back belt loop. (It looks like a short, stubby dental mirror- the circular kind that is angled also- and it just so happened that Dada was wearing a deep purple dress shirt. She probably thought it was the perfect accessory.) I can't believe the guys let me go through the entire conference call before saying anything!

Then I told him that if I had seen it, that I would have told him. After he'd gone back to work ;)

Storms weathered

I know some of you guys keep an eye on our weather and just wanted to let you know that Dada and I camped out downstairs on the futon in the basement so we could keep an ear on the sump pump. It's only trickling now after gushing pretty good last night. Apparently we didn't get all of the rain we were supposed to. It's back down to 37 degrees and is much, much drier outside than it was last night. We did have some big wind, but the power only blinked out long enough to cause Dada to sit straight up out of a dead sleep, see the blinking clock radio, and start to panic. I reassured him that it had just happened. We reset the clock and spent an uneventful night. Just the way we like 'em! Then this morning we saw that we had indeed lost a few panels of siding way up near the roof, but not too bad for as much wind as we had. Just goes to show, if your basement doesn't flood, you can always count on the roof blowing off. Hehe! ;)

The following excerpt is from my friend Meredith. Her two boys know Care Bear from preschool and Jacob is now in her kindergarten class:


I had to laugh, as we were pulling into the Y on Monday, Zachary was wondering if Carrie was going to in the kid zone.

Jacob then proceeded to tell us that Carrie was now his girlfriend. I said since when? He said since today!!

They crack me up. So you will have to ask Carrie.....


So I did. She looked at me like, "what in the world are you talking about?" and then said, "well, IIIIIIIIIII didn't say so." And just like that, I suppose, he was history. Another storm weathered ;)

Money management

Care Bear has a small green crate (think milk crate but smaller) that we stuff all of her cards into. It holds her first birthday cards, Halloween cards, Valentines, you name it. She and Liam got their valentines and dollar bills from Grandma Barb and Pap already, so Carrie puts hers into her crate where it belongs. She then announces, "that crate is pretty full. Soon there won't be room for any more."

Which I answer with, "guess I'll have to tell everyone to stop sending you cards."

In case I misunderstood the look of alarm on her face for any other emotion, she replied, "then how will I get any money?"

Excuses

Okay everyone. I've changed some settings on here which means that anybody can leave me a comment. That means I shouldn't be able to scroll through all the previous entries and see "0 comments", because that makes me think nobody is reading it. Leave me some feedback, please, so I know you're paying attention!

We had a big melt this weekend. Now it's back to 25 and we have frozen grass. The sun is out, too! Even the birds have come back to the feeder for their sunflower seeds. Triskal had a wonderful time hosting Gilly and Louie, Rob and Jana's beagles this weekend. The three of them chased each other around and got loved on all weekend by the kids. We hosted Rob & Jana too, but they had a lot of friends to visit with, so the beagles stayed here. The kids are blue now that the crew is gone. Thanks for coming to play with us! We loved seeing you!

Have a great week. Off to go take care of all the Monday stuff. =)

When I Grow Up

This morning's conversation ran something like this:

When will I be done with school?
Do you mean after this year, or for forever?
For forever. When I'm done with all the grades. How many grades are there?
There are 12 grades. The maybe college after that.
So after 12 grades and college, then what will I do?
I don't know. What WILL do you?
I don't know. Maybe go get ice cream?

Hahahahaha =) That's my girl.

Grow like a teacher.

Recent happenings:

Liam's officially moved off of his crib mattress on the floor into a twin bed with a frame. It was a non- event, really. We took his crib mattress sheet off to wash it and he said, "my bed is broken." Which is true, as the mattress had tears in both sides and had sheets on both sides to hold the stuffing in. I'm certainly not sorry to see it go. And here's hoping it will lessen the THUMPTHUMPTHUMPDIVE that we would constantly hear at bedtime. Now he has to heave himself UP into the big bed =)

He's peeing and pooping on the potty, for those who keep track of that sort of thing. He's very, very proud. Mostly of his Batman underwear, but hey, everyone's gotta have something.

Carrie attended her first girls- only birthday party and had a wonderful time. She even received a thank you note for her gift of valentine pencils and construction paper. Bless you, Grace's mom.

While it hasn't snowed substantially (thank goodness for spell check- took me three tries to get that right) this week, we still have over a foot in places. Carrie has been commenting that she's like Jesus: He walked on water, but she walks on snow. It's true. She looks like Legolas on Caradhas when he walks on top of the snow. She doesn't weigh enough to crunch through it.

I have no explanation for the next one. When we encourage Liam to eat so he can grow big, or to sleep so he can grow, he usually replies, "yes! So I can grow like a teacher!" We used to tell Carrie to sit up tall like Shawn. Sometimes it's tall like Hinrew. For Liam, apparently it's tall like a teacher. Who knew?

Next week is the 100th day of school. That's a big deal around here. Carrie has already taken in to school a baggie filled with 100 minty circles (Wintogreen lifesavers to the rest of you) and a bag of 100 hair ties. I believe 100 day is Wednesday, so be sure to ask her about that if you call.

We hosted Nina & Bing on Tuesday night so their parents could have a date. Usually Liam is infatuated with those younger than him, but I was impressed at how helpful Care Bear was to Bing. She kept track of his sippy cup and brought him toys with buttons that made noise. It was nice to see her being tender-hearted. Liam was a bit louder than Bing was used to, I think. They all had a great time reading books, running around, hopping like frogs, eating Cheerios, and generally making each other and myself laugh all night. Fun times!

It was -4 when we left for the bus stop this morning. Poor Care Bear threw a grand mal tantrum when I insisted she wear tights under her pants. Apparently they were "bunchy" and were bugging her inside her shoes. That's her word for any type of clothing that she doesn't want to waer. It can be for cute, fitted T shirts in that they are too tight under her armpits. It can be the way a sock might scootch up around her toes or heels. It could be sleeves of a shirt once a coat has been put on over top. I'm sure she'll strip down with much relief once she gets home. Hey, I have tights on too. With socks on top. It could never drop below 70 again and I wouldn't be sorry. At this point, I don't think she would mind either.

Stay warm, everyone, and be well.