Once a month

This is too funny and I don't want to forget it. But, I think it may be TMI for facebook.  M was having a stomach ache.  She sometimes gets these when she has to go to the bathroom.  I was asking her if she was ok and she said yes, it't the same stomach ache she gets, you know, about once a month.  The way she said it, and yes we were in a public place, was hilarious.  If she only knew about the stomach aches (cramps) she will start to get once a month in a few years.

Ice Skating

Wow-it is like having your own private rink.  It's nice having an ice rink just around the corner-now if we could only get both kids to skate.

Christmas

No matter what is going on, kids make it hard to not smile on Christmas.  Some of the funniest/most heartwarming things.

When Josh came out to get his toys from Santa, he went into the other room.  I wasn't sure what he was doing, but he was looking for the present for his dad.  He wanted to make sure he gave it to him first.

When J opened his bow and arrow:  "Santa gave me a weapon!  I can't believe I actually have a weapon!"

I heard "Best Christmas Ever" several times!

On Christmas Eve I put Simon out about 12:30.  He was barking and I went out to hear what it was all about.  As I looked around, I was about a half dozen 'rein'deer.  What was cool was that there were then footprints in the snow so the kids could see the marks.  Then, they even saw the sled marks.  Too bad they aren't smart enough to figure out that the sled marks were from there own sledding adventures the day before.

This demonstrates it all:

Christmas Prep?

I want this to be positive and I guess that is why I don't post as much as I could.  I don't want to be a Debbie Downer.  November/December is always a busy month and I always feel like I am more behind than ever.  At least Dan took the kids for a few hours yesterday and all the Santa presents are wrapped.  I still have to wrap other presents and clean.  Right now I'm feeling sort of miserable--I'm hoping that will pass but I need to get moving quickly while I can still move in case I have a dreaded flu.  It doesn't help that my back/hip are in so much pain and I have problems moving.  Oh, and water is not draining in the kitchen.  So, no washing dishes or clothes until we get a plumber out here and figure out what is going on.  We are going to try to wait until the day after Christmas since it's not really an emergency.  We can still take showers and use the restroom.  But, things could always be worse  In fact, they are quite good this year.

Sad

It is so sad to hear about the shooting in CT.  I keep picturing M's school and superimposing the events at her school.  How could anyone do that to little kids?  How could this happen?  Security has amped up at M's school but is it really that secure?  I don't know if anything could have stopped this.  I hate that my kids know that there are bad people out there like this.  M's first response was at least all those kids are in heaven. I find comfort in that but the rest is just sick.

Yellow Belt

Today was J's first belt testing for Tae Kwon Do.  He was excited and nervous and I was just nervous he'd be OK and not fall asleep or walk off or something else weird.  In the hour before, we were doing the typical last minute running around.  J picked up his board and was demonstrating what he would do when it came his time to break it and.... broke it.   I had been guarding it so carefully but had it sitting out so we would have it ready when it was time to go.

I was in a panic. What do we do now?  I tried gluing it together and that didn't work.  Then I did the next best sensible thing--posted it on facebook.  Luckily two friends posted right away and basically said they would probably have other boards that I could pick up.  So, this calmed me down.  We went and I asked right away and I got a new board-crisis averted.

The testing took forever, of course.  He did fine.  There were somethings he just glided through but I don't think he did worse than anyone else--attention spans of 5 year olds are so limited.

My favorite quote of the day:  I told J I was proud of him.  He said:  It's not my fault, it's God's-you should thank him.  Amen!

Let's record a tv show

J surprised me every day.  This morning he was watching tv and looking at a catalog that had Halloween costumes in it.  I wasn't totally paying attention but then I realized that he had recorded a bunch of shows.  I wasn't sure how he had done this because you have to type out the names of the shows.  Then, I realized what he had done.  He copied the names from the catalog and then typed it in. The things he figures out are crazy.