The Story!

I got an email today that a little Christmas interview I recorded at the WUNC studios in Chapel Hill the other week will air on Dick Gordon's The Story TODAY (all over the country)!  Last year I heard a cute little story on his program about another mom's greatest achievement as Santa and it reminded me of our own Santa story involving a Christmas wish, a traffic cone, a Sharpie marker and a little imagination.  Listen to how Geof and I played Santa for our sweet little boy here:

The iCone

Here's a link to my original Christmas blog post from 2007. 

Tentacles

more from the mouth of my littlest one:

Child: "Mom, can we go to McDonald's for dinner?"
Me: "No." 
Child: "Why not?" Me: "Because their food is not so good for your body." 
Child: "Oh, is it because they put tentacles in it?" 
Me: "What?" 
Child: "Dad said they spray tentacles on the meat." 

Do you get it?  She overheard Geof telling Hi-Hat about parts of Food Inc. that revealed the use of meat filler and what that actually is.  She meant to say "they spray chemicals on it."  Chemicals/tentacles - what's the difference?  Both seem gross to me! 

Setting Priorities . . .

. . . of the aperture and shutter speed variety, that is!  Hi-Hat is a Cub Scout this year, and this week he has started working toward earning belt loops - rewards for learning about different subjects.  He and Geof looked over the list this week, and it turns out he already had a number of belt loops under his belt (horseback riding, thanks to the horse birthday party last weekend), ping pong (thanks to the ping pong table that is parked in our garage), and computers.  He's also working on a reading/writing loop and tomorrow he'll earn a bowling loop.  Today I had already planned to go on a photo walk with some ladies from church, so it was the perfect opportunity for me to teach Hi-Hat some of the photography basics he needed.  Armed with our DSLR cameras, we hit the ground at NC State.  He learned all about aperture and shutter speed and how they work together.  We practiced taking photos with blurred motion, stopped motion, short depth of field and long depth of field.  We over exposed and under exposed.  We zoomed in and zoomed way out.  He loved it!  I loved it, too.  We never once set the camera on Auto, and he was pretty quick to start figuring out how to change the camera's aperture or shutter speed settings.  I think it will be fun to keep working with him, even after the belt loop has long since been earned.  And what I loved most was just investing the time together - talking, learning and having some fun.  I'm so glad I didn't sell my little DSLR!

he was so cute walking around campus among all the college students - as he's approaching his 8th birthday and seeming so big around here, he seemed quite small once again this evening. :)

Here Comes the Sun

Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
for his compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion;
therefore I will wait for him.”

~ Lamentations 3:21-23

 

Busy Weekend!

We began our busy weekend with a much-anticipated visit down to southern NC for a birthday party for a sweet little family friend.  It was a little strange to be traveling along I-95 south, hitting some familiar landmarks, and not be heading to Disney!  It's a good thing we didn't scoot on past the party and keep going to Orlando - the kids would have missed a ton of fun on the horse farm! I think Hi-Hat and Rella would be just fine if I exchanged all their current extra-curricular activities for horseback riding lessons.  The were just so relaxed on those horses and they loved it!  We had a bright and warm day filled with sweet children, fun fellowship and relaxation.  I could have stayed all weekend.  But I didn't.  More on that to follow.  For now, here are 2 layouts from our day just horsin' around (which I had time to make because I am currently kid-free and relaxing...more to follow).

After the party we barreled up the road to Williamsburg, gave each of our kids a peck on the forehead, and then Geof and I jetted down to Ft. Lauderdale!  Nice afternoon walk on the beach, fun stroll through shopping and eating district, quiet and yummy delicious dinner for 2, decadent ice cream cones, lovely morning with a tall green tea overlooking the ocean, time all to myself with my picture files, and now I'm about to hit the beach!  Traveling with an actuary is not too shabby!  See ya!

In one ear...

...processed by a 3-year-old mind and out her mouth.  Today's garbldy-guk?  Favorite age old children's songs. And no, I won't correct her, because she's stinkin' cute and her older, rule-following sister will correct her as soon as she hears her sing them.  I relish in the cuteness for now.  Also, she's a gravely alto.

First off - Halelu, Halelu-La

Next, the lyrics to the Sunday School classic, Father Abraham

Father Waves-her-hand, had many sons

And many sun sets Father Waves-her-hand.

I am one of them, and so are  you,

So let's just praise the Lord! Left arm right leg.

(Repeat chorus over and over, adding in a new flapping, praising appendage with each chorus even though you only say left arm and right leg.)

And finally, The ABC Song.  Or something like that.  Look out public schools!

Halloween 2010

The kids are of the age now when Halloween is a much anticipated evening!  They have been counting down for days.  Fancy found her costume at Disney's Animal Kingdom this summer, so she has been ready for a while.  Rella has a fascination with cheerleaders (not sure where that came from), so when we found a sparkly blue cheer dress a couple months ago, she had to have it.  Hi-Hat is loving Calvin and Hobbs these days and he decided to dress as Calvin.  Hi-Hat is the one who ends up with a homemade costume each year, and what seemed like a simple costume this year turned out to be a little more complicated in the end.  We found the striped shirt, black pants, classic red sneakers, and hair spiking glue, but I thought it needed a little something more to make it more obvious who he was.  Here's what we came up with:

I poured over C&H cartoon strips and found a cute Halloween one, and then I had to spend an afternoon playing cartoonist to draw the cartoon onto foam board.  My artwork got Hi-Hat's seal of approval, so that was good enough for me!

And here are my girls:

It's funny how when you're not at Disney World, people mistake leopard-print Mickey ears for just plain leopard ears - "are you a leopard? are you a brownie? are you a leopard-keeping leopard?"

I suppose an Animak Kingdom trainer is a little less than obvious.

with the boys next door 

with the girls next next door

Chomping at the bit for 5:45 to get here!

I think they figured that if they just went out and got started, we would have to declare that trick-or-treating had begun 

 They hit a few houses together, but quickly split up with neighbors into boys and girls

buddies 

I had to check in a few times to be sure that Rella obeyed the signs and "only took 2."

our jack-o-lantern at dusk 

our jack-o-lantern in the dark 

Fancy being attacked by the "vampire slayer" from next door

I think more than anything my kids like coming back to the house and passing out candy for the rest of the evening.  This year they kept grabbing handfuls and meeting the kids on the sidewalk before they could even make it to our yard, so we pulled out a table and benches and let them set up the candy in the yard.  We are full roadside service around here!  I'm pretty sure we had more than 300 kids come by this year.