What? You Didn't Get This Post Last Week?

Thought you missed last week's post? Thought that I was too lazy last Sunday night at 10:30 p.m. when I decided it was too late to post--that I'd just do it the next day (which, then, of course, I never got around to until a week later). Well, look at the date of this post. Clearly, someone else must be to blame. It couldn't be me.

Ali brought home some of the stories that she wrote at school. They are so classic, I thought they should be shared.

The Limericks, by Ali

Once opan a time there was a mose and a cat and a dog[.] thay waer best firends!! Once time they Got in a fite!! They wear tired so later they hard [heard] adet [about] a contest went on to them[.] they won!! the end

[This one didn't have a title], by Ali

onece Opon a time ther was a little girl[.] her name was, oh no! she did not have a name! one day someone asked her what her name was and she sed that she Did not have a name! The porsen sed you coud make a name up. Yeh she sed and her name was Ali.

[Another one without a title], Ali

I woud love to be a giant couse I woud be able to step on evrething and that woud be fun!

Three Up A Tree, by Ali

ones thar was a monster and a doll. they wher best frends. one day they fot over a toy! then thay sherd! the End.

[Yet another untitled], Alison

If I coud trick a leprechaun I woud like to set a trap that would spill of[f] a door paint!!

The Dragen Hunt, by Ali

There Once was a Dragen. The Dragen herd abut the Dragen hunt! It seownded fun! so the Dragen went to the hunt! He won!

Once Upon a Mokey [monkey]! by Alison

Once ther was a mokey[.] it was a silley go[o]se! the mokeys name was Ali. she was verry nice[.] one day Ali went Out to play[.] she got lost[.] she was skerd! she fowd her mommy! she was Happy! They had ice crem for diner!!

Clara and the Bookwagon, Alison

In the old days when you whor [were] on a farm you coud not go to school. You had to go out to and holp. clara loved Books like Mrs. R. she helped feed the chickens.

Clearly, we have a future Newbery Award winner in-training on our hands.

A Non-Video Posting Week

Let's start off with Max: He's sitting up on his own.

Moving on.

This was the week of the Easter egg hunts. The first hunt took place at my school on Thursday evening. It started at 5:00 p.m. and was served with Chic-Fil-A dinner for the families of students (and faculty) with of-age children. Unfortunately, I was in class until 6:00 p.m. and although I came hungry, I was left to pick through discolored carrots and fried nugget breading. So, I ended up just asking the girls if they wanted to share some of their delectables with their poor old dad so he wouldn't starve. Ali got her face painted, and Kaitlyn filled her basket so full that it was a balancing act just to keep the eggs in the basket.


Then, on Friday, a bunch of people from church got together during the day for another egg hunt in which about two dozen or more kids ran hog wild through a field in search of more candy-filled eggs.


Saturday was supposed to be yet another church-friend hunt, but we felt that the kids were getting a little candied out, and opted out. We received a wonderful Easter package replete with treats from my parents --so the girls really didn't miss out on anything.

Today we colored and painted our Easter eggs after church. Kaitlyn was playing with the little metal dipper before we finished getting everything out and was successfully able to lose it right before we got started. So, we ended up having to use tongs and spoons. Well...that was the plan anyway. Ali thought that by using her fingers she would be able realize her mental egg designs with much greater precision.

So, to my surprise, it turns out the egg coloring stuff really stains well, especially if you had added some lemon juice to it, per the instructions on the box. It looks like Ali's fingertips are just going to be green and blue for a couple of days; 5 minutes of washing with every soap imaginable didn't do very much.

However, the girls definitely enjoyed being able to color their eggs.


We tried to take advantage of the family time around the table to talk about the real reason we celebrate Easter since Kaitlyn's answer earlier in the week to the question, "Why do we have Easter?" was "So that we can have fun."

Of course, Easter wouldn't be quite complete without the traditional new Easter Sunday dresses. Here's the best picture we could get of the girls in their cute pink dresses:

In other news, Megan has been feeling a bit under the weather the last couple of days, so I've tried extra hard to step up and fill her shoes so she could rest--but they're big shoes to fill! (I'm not afraid to admit that we ended up just ordering pizza for dinner on Saturday night.)

In closing, here are some other hilarious quotes from the week:

Megan: I've wanted to find a recipe with garbanzo beans for a long time.
Ali: And this is the only thing you could find? (Referring to our spinach and garbanzo bean soup.

Ali: I've been up marking my scriptures for hours!
Nathan (or was it Megan?): That's so great! Do you mark the verses you like before your read them, or after you read them?
Ali: Before.

Nathan: Ali, I'm a magician.
Ali: You're a mathematician? Vertices!
Nathan (puzzled): Did you say "vertices"?
Ali: Yes. A triangle has three vertices.

Mr. Awesome and the Queen of the Castle

Since the girls and Max had nicknames, I thought it was high time that Megan and I got our own nicknames as well. I asked Ali what she thought our names should be since she was "Super Ali", Kaitlyn was "Princess Kaitlyn" and Max was "Mr. Max." Ali responded that Megan should be "Queen of the Castle." I lobbied for "Mr. Awesome" for me, but somehow it didn't seem to catch; plain old "Dad" just seems to have become too ingrained.

As far as Megan's name goes though, you can see why she's the queen, and how lucky I am to be associated with her excellency:


Earlier this week, Ali worked on building some houses with blocks. She insisted that we take pictures of her creation from every angle so that her design wouldn't be lost once we cleaned up the blocks. Rather than show you the 12 pictures of her building, I thought you'd enjoy this one shot:

Speaking of Ali, she's been working on measurements at school, and apparently it's transferring to home because I've found at least two full sheets of her paper completed with the following three columns: one column naming an object (i.e. "ball" or "cup" or "book"), one with the length of the object in inches, and a third column with the length of the object in centimeters. I'm pretty sure she's not going to stop until she's measured everything in the house.

She also likes getting really close to the camera when I'm trying to take a picture of Max doing something interesting.

Max is not only improving his getting-things-into-his-mouth skills, but he's also becoming more adept at multi-tasking. For example, we've already known that he's able to cry and sleep at the same time, but this week he was shoving a foam snowflake into his mouth while simultaneously playing with another toy; he used his belly to hold the snowflake in place at the perfect height to be able to suck on it and still keep both hands free for shaking and throwing the toy from his high chair.

Yep. He's pretty talented.

Kaitlyn is just a doll. The other day Megan asked Kaitlyn what "love" was. Kaitlyn walked over to Megan, gently wrapped her arms around Megan's neck and said quietly, "This, is love." If she's able to replicate the cuteness of that when she's older, she's going to have amazing powers of persuasion in getting to use the car and the credit card. Should I be worried?

Kaitlyn is also able to leap off of stools into the kitchen with a single bound all the while wearing a new dress that she insisted on keeping even though Megan had it in the "take-back-to-the-store" pile.

And, speaking of videos...

This week in my Integrated Marketing Communications class, we had to make an advertising plan for a product we were assigned to. (Our group was assigned to Levi's.) We were supposed to present very rough sketches of what our ad campaigns might look like. However, I saw a great opportunity for shameless band promotion, and couldn't pass up the opportunity. Using the song I just wrote (and played on) as the background track, we created the following commercial:

I thought that was cool enough to share.

Ali and Kaitlyn are also working on memorizing the Primary scripture of the month, complete with sign language signs to help them remember. At bedtime tonight Kaitlyn was doing it so well, but then refused to be filmed in action--probably because her hair wasn't done anymore. In any case, Ali did a great job with it, and here's a video of her doing it (complete with Kaitlyn trying to escape bedtime at the end):

Weekend "Strike"

We had a great weekend with Eric and Lacey and their family. They drove 7 hours on Friday to come down and visit us, and we had a blast.

I would love to wow you by recounting various tales of hilarity, however, I have a sinus infection, and a one-week course starting tomorrow morning, so instead, I'll leave it to you to fill in the details with a small pop quiz.

1) True or False: Max (and Nathan) together bowled a strike.



Answer: True.


2) This picture was taken by:

• a) Kaitlyn


• b) Ali's little sister


• c) Megan's youngest daugther
  

Answer: All of the above.

3) True or False: I am the luckiest man in the whole world with such cute girls as these in my family.


Answer: 100% true.

4) True or False: Ali bowled a strike and a spare (although not in this video):

Answer: True--on her last 2 attempts on the 10th frame!



5) True or False: Kaitlyn is wearing a hat she made, and still looks adorable.

Answer: True.

6) True or false: We went out to eat at Outback and Megan jokingly asked the hostess for 2 tables--one for the big kids, and one for the little kids. The hostess took her seriously and set the kids at their own table.

Answer: True. And it was totally adorable when we had each of the kids personally give a tip of a $1 bill to the server.

5¢ Bags

Yesterday we took a trip to Washington D.C. to go the temple. We had an arrangement with Nick and Nadine wherein they would drop off their kids early in the morning at our house and then immediately leave for D.C. They were to call us when they pulled into the temple parking lot at which point we would leave--and hopefully arrive just as they were walking out from their temple session. We hoped that this plan would make it easier on all of the children (and the parents) since it wouldn't require that the children spend 4 hours inside the visitor's center trying to find something to do.

Megan and I had envisioned making it in time for the 1:00 p.m. session, and then running an errand from 3:00 p.m. until 4:00 p.m. Alison had an interest in seeing the Lincoln Memorial since she learned all about Lincoln ("famous people are on coins") on President's Day. We thought we'd leave D.C. around 5:00 p.m. and make it home in time for bathtime and bedtime, and a relaxing evening at home.

This is what our car looked like as we were pulling away over an hour behind schedule:

Clearly, our visions of the day were a bit optimistic! So, how did the day actually turn out?

• We made the 2:30 p.m. session, not the 1:00 p.m. session.
• After the temple, everyone was uncomfortably hungry so I suggested that we blow some of our upcoming tax refund and go to the Cheesecake Factory. Had I known that we would spend one hour waiting for a table and then spend 2 more hours there eating, taking kids to the restroom, eating more, crying, talking to doctors about Kaitlyn's possible ear infection, and taking kids back to the restroom, I probably would have just suggested McDonald's!
• Since we didn't leave the restaurant until almost 8:00 p.m. seeing the Lincoln Memorial got cut.
• We did, however, decide to still run our errand...

Megan has been wanting to go to IKEA to get some matching kids plates, utensils, and cups so that we could throw away our random assortment of free plastic restaurant cups that we've been using. While Megan went into the store, I circled the parking lot waiting for the closest space to the door to open up. When I found the perfect spot, I took it and waited. I called Megan to tell her "I've got the closest spot so it will be easy to find us when you get out." It turns out that I got the closest spot to the entrance--which is about a quarter of a mile away from the exit. As Megan briskly walked up to the car, I noticed that her arms were completely full. I opened the car door and she yelled, "They charge you for bags!" I agreed that that was pretty lame, but then I discovered an interesting fact: the bags cost 5 cents. That's right; 5 cents. Megan was so frustrated with her day that she wasn't going to spend even 5 more cents on anything unnecessary!

We finally made it home at about 11:30 p.m. completely exhausted (yet 5¢ better off).

I can tell that you're exhausted from just reading all that, so in an attempt to inject some family cheer into your now bleak view of our weekend, here is Mr. Max sitting with with us today at family dinner for the first time, as well as my first attempt at uploading a video (Kaitlyn's puppet show).

"This little puppet was Ali, and this little puppet was Kaitlyn."

One more thing I really ought to mention: Megan ran 6 miles on Saturday morning! She's really quite inspiring with her half-marathon training.

Glue Sticks

Max is developing faster than even I had expected. After church this afternoon, I brought Max into the house in his car seat and set him in the front room while I went to go put everything else away that we had taken to church. While I was busying myself with things like making lunch for the girls, Max must have seen an opportunity to act. He unbuckled his seatbelt, climbed out of his seat, and then somehow managed to find the lone glue stick which was left out after last night (more on that later). Incredibly, he then climbed back into his seat and got his buckle back on, so he could start gnawing on this forsaken sticky treasure. Either that, or Kaitlyn thought Max should have it for some reason and gave it to him.


So, as you can see, Max's biggest challenge in life isn't the cradle cap--which must itch like crazy because he has learned to stratch it incessantly--but rather, it's surviving his older sister Kaitlyn's "love." Today at church, for example, Kaitlyn was characteristically in Max's face pretending to be a lion and growling at him. ("It's OK Max, I'm not a real lion. I'm just pretending to be a lion.") Suddenly, she had the urge to cough and coughed squarely into Max's face with the full brunt and force of her open mouthed cough. According to Megan, "the whole ward saw and cringed."

Here's another picture from this week of Kaitlyn loving Max and Max looking up, as if to say, "Ugh...could you please take her away from me for just a couple of minutes?"


Aah...Kaitlyn is a wonderful girl; she just needs to learn how to tone back her loving a little bit. But, she is quite perceptive. She carefully explained to Megan the other day when to utilize different common English phrases:

When you smile, you say "cheese." And, when you "toot" you say "excuse me."

Now, on to last night: "Estrogen Night", as I like to call it. I was still reeling from the postponing of Friday's Van Halen concert, and was trying to console myself in a book. As I cruised through "The Little Book That Beats The Market" (which I would actually recommend as a sort of a 2-hour summary of what every non-MBA really should know), I got to hear Megan, Sarah, Sarah, Amy, Karie (not Underwood) and Christine using those pesky glue sticks, hole-punching and stamping cards while talking about labor, pregnancy, girl-stuff, estrogen, etc. It didn't really bother me as long as there were enough chocolate chip cookies around. I think they all had a great time, and I got an excuse to eat cookies while reading about buying good companies at bargain prices.

Ali had a great time this week. First of all, she enjoyed pretending to be the Statue of Liberty with a strawberry.

Next, she enjoyed playing YMCA basketball at her school on Saturday morning. The coaches made the kindergarten participants go through dribbling and passing drills, and then finally turned them loose to play a game. Ali has been practicing dribbling the basketball since Christmas in Indiana, so they tried to have Ali dribble the ball down the court. As she dribbled the ball down the court (and pretty well for a 5-year old I might add), she was literally tackled by about 7 other kids who were trying to get the ball. As she was finally able to climb out from under the dogpile, she came running in tears to me on the sideline. I wasn't sure if it was her legs that were hurt from being tackled, or if was her feelings that were hurt because they dared to try to take the ball away from her. Come to think of it, the coaches never ran any drills explaining the concept of "fouls." So, it was a good "no call."

Super Ali and Princess Kaitlyn

Even before our son was born, we pretty much decided that his pet name would be "Mr. Max." And, since October 3rd, I've probably called him "Mr. Max" at least once per day, if not more. Well, this afternoon I thought, "We really ought to have a superlative for each of the children." At first, I suggested "Super Kate" but it didn't get any sort of reaction from either Alison or Kaitlyn. So, I thought about it a little longer and announced "Super Ali" and "Princess Kaitlyn." Ali immediately started running around the room making webslinging actions with her hands and telling me that she was using her super powers to freeze me. Kaitlyn beamed from ear to ear and started nodding her head in agreement. I think I got it right.

Ali told me an interesting joke through the door this afternoon:

"Knock knock."
"Who's there?"
"Me."
"Me who?"
"Me going to tackle you."

I could hear her jumping on the bed while she told me the joke. Sensing, perhaps, that she had given away her devious plan, she immediately said, "Don't remember that."

It was an interesting Valentine's Day this week. Ali has been looking forward to Valentine's Day for almost a whole month. Not because of the treats or because of boys--but rather because she has been stamping individualized Valentine packages for each person in her class. She started by asking each person his or her favorite color. She then made an envelope out of that color construction paper and wrote each person's name on the outside. Then, she cut, mounted die-cuts and stamped (with Megan's help) a "coloring" page for each person. Each person also received 2 crayons for coloring. Ali kept track of everything on a big sheet of paper on her clipboard. It's almost like she's witnessed Megan's party planning for 5+ years.



It was more than her whole backpack to take all of these things to school!

Now, here's the difference between Ali and Kaitlyn. By 4:00 p.m. on the 14th, Kaitlyn had already plowed through the Valentine's Day candy we had given her. All that was left was a couple of sucked-on Kit Kat bars. Ali, on the other hand, hadn't touched it because she really like the crafty, decorated can that Megan had made for them and put it all in.

Both girls got new shoes this week. (Don't get Megan started on how her kindergartener had to have Sketchers-brand shoes that light up when you walk.) Kaitlyn wanted to be like Ali and have shoes that lit up--but she wanted them to be more dressy. What she ended up getting were shoes that look like white buckle Sunday shoes, but that have a sole more like tennis shoes.

This evening it seemed like there was an overabundance of noise. Kaitlyn was walking around banging a metal dishing spoon and a plastic stirring spoon together. She was also yelling or singing something, probably. I asked her what on earth she was doing. Her response? "I'm making music."

Also this evening, I walked into my bedroom and found Ali sitting in front of Microsoft Outlook on my laptop that I had left up. I walked in as she was scrolling up or down. I asked her was she was doing. She answered, "I'm reading your email." Sure enough--she was reading an email from Mary Lee summarizing Grandpa's talk at his ward over Christmas. She said she picked out that one to read because she knew who it was from.

Now, I just hope I can remember to call them by their "appropriate" names.