The Things They Say, part II

The dry erase board is filled up again, so here's the post.

Dancy's use of the word 'ever' always leaves a smile on my face.
Playing hide-and-seek: "Don't EVER find me!"
Talking about Levi: "I love my Levi! He's da best Levi EVER!"
After falling down: "I hurt my butt. But it's better. Mom, don't ever kiss my butt." For the record, I wasn't going to!

After getting washed up after a meal, Katie wanted to make sure she'd done a good enough job.
Katie: "Does my face look clean? There's just a little bit of red because there's tiny invisible owwies."
Dancy: "Oh, cwap! Dat cannot be good."

Katie, trying to use the correct verb and verb tense: "I reached...I wretched...no, reached an apple."

First thing coming down the stairs one morning--
Dancy: "We can sit down and read a book!"
Shad: "But what about breakfast?"
Dancy: "But what about books?"

Dancy has a pink blankie with white polka dots. It is her "coconut blankie."

If you ever get a text from my kids, here's how to tell who sent it:
Tom and Katie write real messages and sign off with their names.
Dancy sends specific letters of the alphabet that she loves. Her texts look like "Lllloooobbbbddddzzzz." That's L for Levi, O just because, B for blankie, D for Dancy, and Z for zebra.
And Thora's messages are just finger smashes: asfjl;kdpowuiqaetnwtr02

Every time I put Dancy down for a nap or for bed:
"Hey guess what? After I wake up, after you wake up, after Thora wakes up, after Katie wakes up, after Tommy wakes up, after Dadda wakes up, we could have a TEA PARTY!" Verbatim. Every time.

And what finished off the dry erase board space was when I had to play stenographer for tonight's dinner conversation. We just got a beta fish from friends who are moving, and the beta was previously named Rainbow Dash.
Me: "What should we name our fish?"
Tommy: "Rainbow Beauty. Rainbow Stripe. Rainbow Fish."
Katie: "Butt. Butt water!"
Dancy: "Fart water!"
Katie: "Toilet water!"
Tommy: "Mom, are you writing this down?"
Shad: "You can't help if you're going to only say silly things."
Dancy: "And pooping and farting and peeing."
Me: "Yeah, that too. So let's think of human names."
Tom: "Tommy!"
Me: "We already have one Tommy in this house. We can't have two."
Shad: "It could be a planet name. Jupiter...Saturn...Mars..."
Katie: "Pluto!"
Shad: "But not Uranus."
Me: "No, because that falls into the previous train of thought."
Shad: "Jupiter? Everyone okay with Jupiter?"
Everyone agreed.
Katie: "And Pluto can be his Kendell name!" (that means last name)
Shad: "Megan, is that okay?"
Me: "Yeah, I'm fine with Jupiter. Just no Rainbow S-H-I-T."
Shad: "No, because we wouldn't want to name it that. That's ice cream, right?"
And thus we settled on Jupiter Pluto.

And if you don't know the ice cream reference, here's a happy video to watch:

Kid Pictures

Tom and Katie skipped naps one day and did fine until they sat down on the couch around 5 pm. Knocked. Out.

Here's a little glimpse of what it's like trying to take pictures with/of kids:

Dance and Katie decorating the tree. Yes, Dancy is only wearing a shirt. We do "free range" potty training.

This girl and pictures sometimes...

Cheering Thora up after a bath.

If she ever needs distracted from something, whip out a camera.

Bed time one night and Katie says, "Let's take pictures of the kids with Dad!"

And then they piled on me.

Sometimes they just don't know where to look.

She's smiling this time...

And now it's blurry because she didn't hold still.

(By the way, Katie is showing what she built at Lego Club at the library)

Tom by his Lego creation.

Shad's Birthday

Shad's birthday was on a Tuesday in November, and I decided spontaneously the weekend before that we needed to celebrate his birthday then, rather than hoping I had the energy and comfort to do so on Tuesday. We had just recently watched the stupid Frozen Fever short film on youtube, and were inspired by Elsa's use of a string to lead Anna through the castle to find all her gifts. The kids thought it was sooooo cool that we did the same thing, and Shad thought it was pretty fun, too.

Thora is a camera addict. She loves having her picture taken and then getting to see it. So while taking pictures of Shad on his wild lead through the house, I had to keep turning the camera around to snap Thora in my arms.

"Ohhhhhhh!"

Shad got dark Hershey kisses, Riesens, The Mentalist season 7, As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes, and Band of Brothers (the DVD series).

Dan's Promotion

We went to Denver the first weekend in November for Dan's promotion ceremony at Schreiver Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. Shad and I came down with congestion head colds on the Sunday preceding that weekend, and thought that surely it'd be gone by the time we left on Thursday. Oh gosh, were we wrong. The congestion lasted for 8 days and we were still blowing our noses for a week after that. It made for an uncomfortable road trip, but we love Dan.

We stayed at my sister Becky's house. She had just gotten a cat, Pirate, the week before, and Dancy and Thora were infatuated. Any time we were at Becky's house, Thora spent her time crawling around after the cat, saying, "Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!"

We took the kids to Bass Pro Shop for some entertainment. Thora loves having her picture taken.

So does Sundance.

"K, guys, hold still!"

"No really, hold still!" "What?" "Hold still!"

On Saturday we spent the whole day down in Colorado Springs. We toured the Olympic Training Center. Here's Katie, Ryan and Tommy in front of the building that houses the indoor shooting range.

Dan took us all to Star of India for dinner that night. Katie wanted us to take lots of pictures.

Vern (Bumpa), Katie and Jimmy

Thora and Momma

Pris (Nana), Dancy and Levi

Dan and Dancy

Visiting Jimmy

Saturday morning, we woke up and drove down to Grainfield an hour south to visit Shad's brother Jimmy for the day and deliver his Christmas present. We figured that for the effort of finding a box large enough and then paying to ship it to him, we'd rather go for a drive to visit him and deliver it ourselves. Tom and Dancy overreacted and freaked out over Jimmy's dogs' excited greetings, but they eventually calmed down and became friends with Blitzer and Daisy when I explained that they are our dog cousins. It was nice to see that turn around in Tommy and Sundance.


Here's the family date sign we made for Jimmy:

We all admired the elephant in Jimmy's living room, made by Dan. We decided to take a photo series of the kids riding the elephant for Dan. Here's what we got:

Everyone except Shad, who took the picture. Left to right: Thora, Megan, Tommy, Blitzer, Daisy, Jimmy, Dancy, Katie.

Quick Run-Down

We had Shad's parents, Levi, Dan and Ryan at our house for Thanksgiving weekend. We played several games of Assassin's Greed, which is something I have yet to write about. Assassin's Greed is a game Shad and I have been working on creating all year. The intellectual work has been in progress all year, but it wasn't until my bed rest in September that the game actually took form and began to materialize from our brains into reality. Shad needed something to keep his mind off the stress of my condition, and threw himself full force into this project. 

Anyway, I'm sure we did other stuff, but I don't really recall. We had honey mustard ham, sweet potato casserole, mashed potatoes, green bean casserole, homemade rolls, stuffing, chopped veggies and olives for Thanksgiving dinner, with pumpkin pie, failed lemon meringue pie, cherry pie, apple pie, and Rice Crispie treats for dessert (Ryan is allergic to so much, that was a dessert I could make for him to eat). The day after Thanksgiving, we decorated for Christmas. 

As much as I love one-year-old birthdays because they have no idea what's going on and why they're special that day, I love two-year-old Christmases because it's the first one the understand and will remember. It's the one they've been told about from books, siblings and friends, and finally get to see everything for themselves. That's how it was for Dancy. She flipped with excitement over the tree, ornaments, stockings, Santa's village at the courthouse, holding her fingers over the tree lights to see how her fingertips glow, etc. 

"Let me take your picture, Mom!" (It's her play phone)

Sister Youngberg got transferred.

Santa came to story time at the library. Good thing, because we were otherwise preoccupied with taking care of my body and other Christmas things.

Dancy has just been exhausted all month. I don't know what it is, but several times a week I find her like this, needing to sleep extra late in the morning or for her nap.

These three helpers and I managed to bake gingerbread cookies, chocolate chip cookies, Andes Mints cookies, sandies, orange cranberry cookies, and peanut butter kiss cookies. They had so much fun helping scoop, measure, dump, mix, and sample the dough and warm cookies. They loved getting to unwrap all the kisses for me, and they got their scissors out to open the Andes Mints. They weren't the normal foil-wrapped mints, but were sealed like candy bars. 

And then they said, "Take another one so we can smile for you!"

I had a long list of things I wanted to do with these kids for fun Christmas activities--visit Santa, decorate a gingerbread house, crafts for them to give to people, give our cookies to friends and neighbors, etc, etc. I'm just satisfied with what we got to do. I really can't manage doing much right now. The cookies while listening to Christmas music was good enough for them and for me.

Miss Sundance made cucumber teeth.

Tom and Katie wanted included in the picture, too, but their cucumbers were gone. They made do.

For Christmas Eve, we had our traditional international meal. This year was Middle Eastern. I made falafel (which failed again! I had trouble blending them, so added more oil, and then they didn't hold shape in the oven, but they still tasted fantastic!), chicken shawarma with yogurt sauce, Israeli salad (tomato and cucumber with olive oil and lemon juice), hummus, pita bread (store bought), and Persian cranberry rice pilaf. I skipped making the Ghraybeh shortbread cookies.

Thora grabbing for a falafel.

Sister Smith chopped the veggies for the Israeli salad.

Sister Hall helped, too...in her own special way.

She really did help though.

Christmas Day was a non-stop whirlwind, though great and enjoyable. Tommy came into our room at 6:50 am to wake us up and tell us that it's Christmas. Shad took him downstairs to open their stockings and I tried to go back to sleep, but gave up at 7:30. Katie had already joined the boys, and we woke Dancy up around 8, and Thora at 8:30. We opened all our stockings and presents, then had breakfast--strawberry oatmeal, as requested by the kids. We built Lego sets and played with toys until noon, when Shad and I began to clean up the kitchen and cook tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch. We Skyped Shad's parents and Levi at 2 before naps, then put the kids down just as the Sister Hall and Smith arrived to play games. We played games all afternoon, while I monitored the Corned Beef I had cooking on the stove. They left to have dinner elsewhere, and we ate ours. Paul and Mallory showed up for games as we were finishing eating. I was thinking we had said 7, but we said 6:30. That's pregnant brain for ya. So we played games with them until I left at 9 to work at the movie theater because Jeremy needed help with concessions for 45 minutes. I filled the van with gas on the way home, came home to put dinner away and clean up the kitchen a bit, then remembered at 10:45 that I needed to call Paul Jones because I told him I would. We talked for an hour, then I finally got to sit and do absolutely nothing but cuddle with my husband.

And even though this is a year and a half old, I was taking a picture of it today for Elder Thompson and his mom because he's home now. This is the mark of Elder Brian Thompson, left when he was painting our bathroom last summer, and singing a full Good Charlotte album. That's the inside of our toilet tank.