Its all in how you look at it

Evan and Brendan are playing on the couch, I see Brendan lean toward Evan's hand and then pull back quickly as Evan starts to wail.

Me: Oh! Did Brendan bite you?
Evan: crying No....
Me: Then why are you crying?
Evan: Cause he hurt me with his teeth!

Astronauts

It is so nice when the kids all play together. I was vaguely aware of some kind of game beginning to take form as the kids asked for various supplies -- the next thing I knew, we had 3 astronauts with helmets made out of pots and bowls and a spaceship made from folding chairs and a blanket. The moments when they all play together happily are so blissful, I was almost tempted to let them stay up a little later. But then I came to my senses.

Thnking outside the box

We drove up to the Christmas tree farm yesterday, deciding to look for our tree in a different field than we've looked in previous years. I commented, with some dismay, that there didn't appear to be any measuring sticks, so we wouldn't know how tall the trees were. Emily piped up from the back, with a line that is sure to become a family classic, ,"Well... we can use non-standard forms of measurement!" Sadly, we did find measuring sticks, so we didn't not have to measure how many Emilys tall the trees were.

Pie

My poor pies. They tend to have tragic fates. There was the pie I left on top of the car that shot across the windshield as we drove down our street. Last year, there was the pie that Dani STEPPED in. I've burned a few and forgotten important ingredients in others. This year, the pie came up against Brendan. It was a impressive fight... they were well matched -- the pie with its delicious gooeyness and Brendan with his stubborn singlemindedness and ability to climb anything to reach his goals. The pie ended up like this:





And Brendan ended up like this:





I believe Brendan considers himself the winner.

Live and Learn

I decided to venture into uncharted territory today and use the timer on my camera to get a picture of the whole family. I couldn't figure it out, so Jason messed with it and got it to work and set up the tripod and hit the button and ran to his seat and everyone smiled. After the flash, it crossed my mind that we should check the picture to make sure it turned, out, but we were tired of waiting to eat, so I didn't. I wish NOW that I had. Everyone looks real cute -- even the HALF of Jason that is in the picture. I'm going to post and put it in the scrapbooks anyway -- first, because I am actually in the picture and I'm NEVER in pictures becuase I'm usually taking them. And second, because this way, I'll always remember to check pictures after using the timer in the future!.

Helpers

Evan and Dani have developed a deep and abiding love for pumpkin pie this year. They were SO excited to have pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving, I decided I'd let the kids help with the pie this year. There was a great fuss over who got to crack the eggs -- and both Dani and Emily got shell in the eggs even though they both claimed they were GREAT egg crackers. They all took turns using my special new pastry cutter, purchased for the purpose of making pie crusts this year. Everyone rolled the crusts out, some more enthusiastically than others. Thin pie crusts and shell fragments notwithstanding, we got the pie crusts made and the pumpkin filling mixed and the pies baked up nicely the night before Thanksgiving.

They also helped me make the rolls again this year. Even Daddy got in on the act, which is why there are no pictures of it, becuase everyone was up to their elbows in flour and dough! Evan wasn't much help -- he perferred coating his hands in flour and them clapping them together to make "clouds." Poor Dani, standing next to him, was a sneezing mess.

Brendan kept watch on the turkey... watching it through the oven window.

Take a guess -- what bowl is Dani licking here? A cake? A pie? Some kind of dessert, right? Nope. Garlic mashed potatoes. She kept coming back over and over for more, telling me, "I just love this cassarole, Mom. I need some more." As dinnertime neared, she didn't ask me if the rolls were almost done, or if the turkey was almost done, or when we could have pie -- it was when are the potatoes coming out of the oven!!

His hair is coming back!

I'm happy to report that the previous shearing of Brendan's adorable spikes was not the end of the adorable spikes. Its growing back just as cowlicky as before. Hooray!

Christmas is coming!!!

And my children have become obsessed with toy catalogs. We have a special drawer that they are all kept in and they pour over them time and time again, circling the things they want and asking if they can have this thing or that thing. I swear there are a couple of catalogs that have every single item circled! Evan has the greatest enthusiam for this activity. He calls them his "books" and looks through 3 or 4 of them a day -- and gets marker all over the countertop and himself when he does it. This conversation illustrates the extent of his passion:

In the car
Me: What do you want for Christmas this year, Evan?
Evan: Um.... where's my book?
Me: Its at home, just tell me what you want.
Evan: But I need my book!
Me: No you don't -- you can just tell me what things you liked that were in the book.
Evan: I'll tell you at home when I have my book.


Maybe I should just give him catalogs for Christmas!

A present for Mom

Evan made this for me. It is a flower, apparently. And it spins. Evan was quite proud of his work and described, repeatedly, his formula for its amazing beauty, which is: blue goeso on blue, yellow goes on yellow, purple goes on purple, red goes on red and green goes on green. Genius, I tell you. And its really fun to spin the flowers too! What a thoughtful boy I have. Now if only he'd let me take it apart and put it in back in the toy closet!

Exploring

This is what happens when you leave a mountain of laundry next to your dryer when you have a one year old in the house... especially a one year old that likes to climb

A new twist on an old trick

Brendan has been able to climb up to the table for a long time now, but only recently has this trick started to be really messy. Frequently, the kids have snacks after school and don't clean up after themselves. Along comes dinner time, when Bren gets hungry and Mom gets busy.... you can see what kind of situation this creates.





It cracked me up that he was licking cocoa OFF the table! He wanted it really bad!




This one struck me becuase the yogurt and his clothes were so perfectly color coordinated!

Model Behavior

Scene: I am getting dressed for an inservice meeting at church. Evan is keeping me company -- i.e. following me around and talking incessantly.

Evan: What are you doing?
Me: Putting on pantyhose.
Evan: Why are you doing that?
Me: Becuase I have to go to a meeting
Evan: And then you're going to put on clothes?
Me: Yes
Evan: And then you look in the mirror and you don't like them so you take them off?




He's already beginning to figure out the female mind! I guess there's something to be said for being a Mama's boy.

Astounding

Jason spent some time sounding out words the other night. The exchange went something like this:

J: What are these letters, Dani?
Dani: P -I-N
J: Good. What sounds do they make:
Dani: puh - ih-nnnn
J: Good! Do them again faster and faster and tell me what the word is.
Dani: p-i-n...p-i-n...p-i-n...p-i-n....... CAR!!!
J: No, try again
Dani: p-i-n...p-i-n...p-i-n...p-i-n....... SAT!


On and on for a good 20 min, until she, clearly accidentally, came upon the right word. It is so frustrating to work with her! I don't know if she's just not paying attention, or if she has some kind of brain disconnection, but sometimes I feel totally helpless! She's not behind or struggling enough to qualify for special reading programs at school, so we are left on our own to continue working with her, obviously not finding the way to make it make sense to her. So far, luckily, she thinks its a game and brings the cards to us sometimes to play. All we can do is keep trying and hope it will click eventually.

Not 5 minutes after the sounding out activity, we were all heading upstairs to put the kids to bed and Dani starting telling me about dimes. I discovered in this kid, who can't sound out a word to save her life, a fountain of knowlege about coins. Pennies, she told me, have Abraham Lincoln on the front and a tails on the back. Not to bad, I thought. Dimes, she said, have George Roosevelt on them (chuckle), and on the back, an oak branch. And a olive branch. And they stand for strength and peace. Huh? I sent Emily in search of some coins to verify Dani's claims. Sure enough, there were two branches on the back, and the symbolism makes sense. There was a torch too, so I asked her what that was for and she told me it was for knowledge. The nickel has Thomas Jefferson on the front and his house on the back. She can't correctly identify the coins consistently, and she can't remember the songs that her kindergarten teacher taught her about the coins, but she can spout of these random facts that I have never heard before! How do we tap into that part of her brain and help her use it for reading? We have a parent/teacher conference tomorrow... I'll be very interested to see what her teacher might have to say about her.

Trick or Treat

The kids got a lot of milage out of their costumes this year. Besides just playing fireman and policeman, we went to our ward Trunk or Treat, Emily had a friend who had a Halloween party and the kids each had a school party in addtion to trick or treating on Halloween night. Halloween was darn cold this year so, we only went out for about an hour, but the kids still ended up with quite a lot of loot. Once again, Halloween has come and gone and we are already planning for next year. Dani wants to be a vampire.... "with those teeth."

Haircut

I cut the girls' hair last week. It was a little scary, but the thought of spending $30 on trims for two little girls drove me to it. It is probably a little shorter than I would have liked -- Emily's was crooked, so I had to keep cutting to even it up -- but both of them have shiny, bouncy, healthy hair again!

Pumpkins

I have loved carving pumpkins ever since I was a little kid... its just fun! There may be more fancy or artistic jack-o-lanterns out there, but I still like ours. Simple as they are. This was the first year that Emily designed her own, though Dad carved it for her. I did Evan's. Its pretty cute, I think



The jack-o-lanterns (l to r) Emily's, Dani's, Brendan's and Evan's.