What Kids Must Think

During FHE on Monday, we were having a lesson on eating healthy / Word of Wisdom and how Daniel and his friends refused to eat the king's meat (from Daniel 1). To start off the lesson, Megan showed the kids the illustration of this story and asked them who it was in the picture.



"Jesus? John the Baptist?" said Alison. Nope.

"Peter? James?! John?!?" Alison tried with increasing urgency. Sorry player, you're incorrect.

Then the light looked like it went off in Kaitlyn's head and she blurted out what seemed like the obvious answer to her: "Aladdin!" she exclaimed.

I've read the Old Testament a couple of times but I don't remember Aladdin being in there. Maybe it's in the Jive version of the Bible?

Shortly thereafter, Megan tried to explain that these principles of eating the right things has been around for a long, long time--even a long time ago when Daniel was on the earth. Kaitlyn asked, "A long time ago...you mean like 1998?"

Then, yesterday as we were pulling into Wal-Mart to get a Colts cap for Max (he needed more male / sports influence in his life after suffering a brutal and gruesome toenail painting at the hands of his 4-year cousin Gabrielle), Alison asked Max where he wanted to work when he grew up.

His answer? "Work in the basement like Nathan."

(Although he later amended his answer to "doctor", and I'm not sure why he said "Nathan" instead of "Dad" or "Mr. Awesome" I can tell that I need to explain more to the kids what it is that I actually do besides make pretty PowerPoint slides and that my current situation working in the basement in my Snuggie and slippers is only temporary until we sell the house.)

Make A Huge Giant Mess--The Game

Tonight I inno-vented a new game with the kids, aptly named the "Make a Huge Giant Mess Game."

I went down in the basement to play with Alison, Kaitlyn and Max for a little bit before our hometeachers were scheduled to come over. When I went downstairs, I remembered / discovered that the basement was fairly 'trashed' with toys all over the place. There were a select few bins of toys that still had their contents in place; everything else was on the floor. So, I said to the kids, "Let's play a game! It's called Make a Huge Giant Mess!" Then I took one of the remaining buckets of toys and turned it completely upside down and dumped the whole thing onto the floor. I can't remember if I did or didn't laugh maniacally.

At first, they looked at me in a very puzzled, almost confused way with eyebrows raised. However, being the quick learners they are, they quickly caught on. Within nano-seconds, they were marching around the room 'destroying' everything they could get their hands on while chanting "Make a Huge Giant Mess!" Alison really took it to the next level and made sure to empty the Nerf bullets one-by-one from all 3 of her 18-bullet Nerf gun clips and threw each and every bullet onto the floor (or at me) to ensure that the whole mess was literally as big as it could be--leaving no piece unthrown, no play table or Smart Shopper unturned. Kaitlyn found the bin that was full of empty Easter eggs and proudly walked out to the middle of the room and dumped the whole thing. For the next several minutes we had a blast throwing eggs (and more Nerf bullets) at each other while dodging these projectiles incoming.

Max, however, was appalled by the whole thing and fell to the floor sobbing "I don't want to make a big huge mess!"--which seemed strange because he never seemed to have a problem before.

(A Clearly Distraught Maxwell)

Once the basement looked like aftermath of one of the official 52 F5-level tornados, I let Kaitlyn choose an alarm sound from my iPhone and we guessed how quickly we could clean the whole thing up. We guessed 10 minutes. (It actually took us about 12 or 14 minutes.) Then we started a new game called "Super Speedy Clean Up Game!"--also aptly named. We lined one wall with the now-empty buckets and put a placeholder item in each one (i.e. a lone Easter egg half, a single Nerf bullet, one Barbie head, one Lego, etc.) Then, we counted down and started running around like chicken sans-heads picking up items by categories. First, we attacked the Easter eggs, followed by anything having to do with Nerf. By the time we got to the Lego's Max didn't want to miss out on the fun we were having and starting pitching in and saying, "I found a Lego. Ha ha!" By the time we were done, I think we had the whole basement toy collection much more organized than it was before the whole ordeal even started--and we had a blast doing it to boot.

(12-14 Minutes Later)

In other news, Alison and I today started a Book of Mormon Challenge--reading 2 pages per day until the end of the year to finish by the end of the year. Yesterday at her Stake Activity Girls event they gave the girls a Book of Mormon reading chart and said they could do it with their families. Since Megan was already pre-occupied herself with the 7-Page-per-Day Challenge (to read the entire standard works--Old Testament, New Testament, Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Pearl of Great Price--by the end of the year), I decided that it fell to me to support Ali in the challenge. Unfortunately, I'm already getting smoked! She's several chapters ahead of me.

Also, He's Handsome Max--Now Featuring New Glasses

A few weeks ago we finally found a resolution for Max's looking at us cross-eyed all the time. It turns he couldn't see and was going cross-eyed just trying to get us into focus. At first we thought he was just playing around so we'd tell him, rather sternly, not to cross his eyes (which he would repeat back to us at random moments, whether our eyes were crossed or not). But, as he never seemed to stop doing it, we decided an opthamologist appointment was in order.

Since he's still only learning his ABC's, the traditional eye chart was of only limited use. Instead, they had him read on a more age appropriate chart:

They dilated his eyes and were able to look into them with the magic eye scope thingy which is also used to examine diamonds and a clear ruler of some kind and discern what his prescription needed to be since the traditional "Which is better #1 or #2?" was also of limited value on a nervous, and silent, 3-year-old.

He's going to have to wear his glasses for several years, but they say that he may grow out of needing to wear them when his super vision kicks in...or something like that.

Here are some nice pics of Mr. Max and how handsome he looks with his new glasses:

(By the way, this counts as my blog post for next Sunday, so I'm taking the week off!)

Baby Blessing

Back in December, we had Avery's baby blessing. Megan's parents traveled all the way from 3.7 miles away to be able to attend. My parents, on the other hand, had a slightly longer distance to travel and made the 1,749 mile journey from Tucson to be able to meet the newest grand-baby.

On Ava's big Sunday, she deliberated long and hard, but wisely elected to wear her new white, long blessing dress, complete with white headband and honkin' flower bow (for which her mother was very grateful). She looked absolutely precious!

Dad was only able to stay for the weekend, so we did our best to entertain at all times by putting him to work, with activities such as:

• changing the lightbulbs 18+ feet off the ground in our family room
• figuring out why the closet doors in the scrapbook room kept skipping off the track
• replacing the broken guide from the closet doors that skipped off the track
• figuring out how to put the doors back on once we had taken them off
• buying a new floor guide for the closet doors (which I have yet to install). (Megan, do you know where I put that thing?)

We also challenged Dad and Mary Lee to a contest on Wii Sports Resort. Naturally, we assumed that their inquisitions on the proper pronunciation of "Wii" were indicative of their skill level, and, counting on our prior Wii experience, we assumed that their inexperience would be no match for our virtual sport prowess. We made sure to encourage them before the games even started with comments and phrases like, "It sometimes takes a little bit of getting used to" and "we've been able to play quite a bit" so that they wouldn't feel upset by the trouncing we were about to administer.

Unfortunately, we were wrong. Dad's 3-point shooting technique set an amazing record--which we still haven't broken--and Mary Lee found something "very satisfying" about the Speed Slice game and the ninja-like reflexes she unleashed on us.

Mary Lee was able to stay for a week after Dad left and was a wonderful help, taking the baby, making bread, cooking dinners, playing with the kids and hanging out.

Ava loved every minute of the whole experience...

...except for 2-seconds later when she didn't.

We're so lucky to have Avery in our home. For days and weeks after she was born, each of the other children would say in their prayers, "...we're so grateful that Ava was able to join our family."

We agree.

Now...if we could just do something about that sleeping through the night...

Back When We Liked Snow

My hands and back are still recovering from digging out from the storm from this last week that encased our house, driveway, basketball hoop, mailbox--even individual blades of grass--in inches of ice. One of our neighbors took advantage and ice skated around the neighborhood. I spent Friday night clearing 1 to 2 inches of frozen ice off of our driveway. Then, I spent some time again on Saturday afternoon doing the same thing for the sidewalks at church with the other elders from the quorum.

So, in keeping with my November 14, 2010 stance on blogging "about any event during the year (or any subsequent years) in any order that I please" I thought a nice post with some photos of a wonderous winter time before backbreaking ice picking might help alleviate some of my wrist, hand and back pain.

Photo #1: "I am Max, and I have conquered this Mt. Everest of a snow pile by the mailbox!"

Photo #2: "Oh...were you taking pictures? I hadn't noticed."

Photo #3: "Dad, take a picture of me sitting down."

Photo #D: "Dad take a picture of me being fabulous by the mailbox."

Photo #5: "Dad, I'm Freezing" / "Just Strike a Pose and Smile"

Glitz and Glamour

Imagine, for a moment, that you are a five almost-six year-old girl. Your aspiration in life is to become a fashion designer. You love the color pink. You asked for a hair salon station for Christmas. When large gatherings are taking place in your home, you stand up on a chair and loudly announce, "I am a great person and I have a great personality" for all to hear. When you walk from room to room (whether people are watching you or not), you pause every so often to spin and twirl, as if the world is your runway.

You would surely wonder, "Is there such a place in this world where I can take a friend or have a birthday party where our innate fashion sensibilities will be recognized--even celebrated?" "Is there a place that will charge my parents a hefty premium to provide me with this experience?"

There is.

It's called "Glitz and Glamour" and it is Kaitlyn's dream. And, for her birthday "party" this year, she took a friend there for a visit.

They start off setting the girls in movie director chairs and give them princess magazines to read, while serving them their choice of water or fruit punch served in pink goblets.



After getting the girls all settled in, they give their feet a soak and do some sort of mini-pedicure. (I'm not exactly sure what that means. To me it looked like they got their feet wet in epsom salt water and then dried and painted toe nails, but what do I know?)


After getting nails (fingers and toes) painted, they then paint the girls' faces in what must have been some sort of Native American war paint because I've never seen a woman, girl or child anywhere with so much make-up on her face.


With the war paint dry, they then take the girls to the back part of the room which is completely decked out with all kinds of sparkly and shiny dresses, hats, gloves and costumes which the girls are able to choose from in order to walk up and down a runway complete with microphones, blaring music from High School Musical and a large flatscreen TV which projects the view from the end of the runway.





When you leave the locale, for your convenience you realize that your retinae are burned in pink so that is the only color you are capable of seeing.


Happy Birthday Kaitlyn! We love you!

Progenitor-Offspring Dictionary

Fourteen years ago when I first went to Argentina, I found myself surrounded by a large number of people that I couldn't understand very well. I had studied Spanish for some time, but my book learning was different from actually being on the street. There was, however, one little tool which I found most handy, and which I carried with me for the first several months--until everyone started speaking intelligibly: the Spanish-English Dictionary.

Now that I have a "whole big huge massive family", as one friend of mine recently observed, I thought all other parents might benefit from some of the key words and phrases which may too often be "lost in translation" with their children. Yes, I'm providing the Progenitor-Offspring Dictionary.

For 8-year old girls:
Word: Living Room Wall
Translation: Something to practice shooting a basketball against when it's too cold to go outside.

Word: Carolina Panthers Football
Translation: "Who cares? I like basketball!"

Word: T-shirt
Translation: It's called a jersey if it has a number on it somewhere.

Word: Softball
Translation: Basketball

Word: Nerf ball
Translation: Basketball

Word: Dinner
Translation: Basketball

Word: Father
Translation: Wallet

For 5 (almost 6) year old girls:
Word: Dinner
Translation: Ice Cream, Fruit Snacks, Peanut Butter Crackers, Candy

Phrase: "You're the worst dad ever."
Translation: "I'm too young to comprehend why it's unreasonable to consume ice cream, fruit snacks, peanut butter crackers and candy as my sole source of sustenance at meal time."

Phrase: "I never get to do anything I want."
Translation: "It has been approximately 3 minutes since we spent 60 minutes doing something that interests me."

Phrase: "I don't have any clothes!"
Translation: "Going all the way to the laundry room to check the laundry basket or dryer for clean clothes myself feels like 26.2 miles away for my little feet."

Word: Bed Time
Translation: Dinner Time

Word: Father
Translation: Wallet

For 3-year old boys:
Word: Furniture
Translation: Trampoline (see also Gymnasium)

Word: Baby Sister
Translation: "Plastic action figure whose arms don't stay where I position them."

Word: Big boy underwear
Translation: Diaper

Phrase: Family Scripture Study before bedtime
Translation: Recess!

Word: Big Sister
Translation: Master

Word: Hammer
Translation: Hammer

Word: Fork
Translation: Hammer

Word: Toy truck
Translation: Hammer

Word: Building blocks
Translation: Hammers

Word: Kitchen table
Translation: Trash can

For 2-month old girls:
Word: Sudden, blood-curdling scream
Translation: "Get the one they call 'Max' off of me!"

Word: Loud cry
Translation: "I hear the one they call 'Max' approaching...!"

Word: Sudden whimper
Translation: "Whose little hands keep knocking my plastic sucking plug out of my mouth?! (I'm outraged that you insinuate that the hands were mine.)"

Word: Constant cry
Translation: "It's been 20 minutes. Don't you guys ever eat around here?"

Word: Unconsolable cry
Translation: "It's 2:00 a.m. and I noticed that you were trying to sleep."


Hopefully, you will find these translations useful, and now that you are able to speak the language of your offspring, your parenting skills will be able to rise to a whole new level.