...there's more...

Heard from the bathroom this morning:

Tate: "Oh no! The wipie's gone." (referring to toilet paper)

and

"Avery, your zipper's down."

Upon hearing these words, I think of XYZPDQ! You know from elementary years: eXamine Your Zipper Pretty Darn Quick =) It made me laugh because it was just the zipper up by her neck on her footie pajamas was zipped down about half an inch.

smarty pants

Tate spends a lot of time with his letter fridge magnets.

Today he said, "I spelled your name mom!"

Me: "Did you spell 'Shelly'? or 'mom'?"

Tate: "I spelled 'mom'."

I noticed some funky spelling so I let him know it is as simple as m-o-m.

To which he replied, "No, it's spelled 'XNPJEV'."

I don't think I'll be homeschooling my children =) I love spending time with them dearly, but they might respond better to somebody other than me. This conversation reminded me of a friend's facebook post that went something like this:

I must be the best teacher in the world because my kids know everything!

I must also note, that even when Tate occasionally insists he's right, sometimes when I correct him, he does say, "Oh" and accepts it, which is very nice.

Dance Party!

Kelsey and Erica were married last week in Southern California. Teresa and her family got to spend the holidays at Disneyland and enjoyed the fabulous temperatures of that region. Tonight was the wedding reception in Pendleton and they hired Mark Gilbert's band, who were awesome. I wish we had done a dance at our reception. I also wish we had the opportunity to dance more often. I spoke with the very sweet Renee Bishop, who said that when her husband and her were young, they used to dance every weekend. I was so excited when Eric asked me to dance tonight. Fun stuff.

I thought Tate might be shy about dancing, but he and the other munchkins had a good time and entertained us adults =) Mom took these cute pictures. It might appear that they're dancing solo, but I promise there were other free-spirited children twirling and falling and thoroughly enjoying themselves, too!

Nana and Papa spent Christmas relaxing in Hawaii. Let's all do that someday. Seriously. Best idea ever. They brought back Hawaii shirts and necklaces.

Don't you hate it when you've got a booger in the middle of a modelling session?

That darn nose was still buggin' her =)

Aloha!

Avery really enjoys her pudding.

I broke out the kids' Christmas plates tonight. They're boy and girl faces on which to arrange food for hair, earring, etc. They still wouldn't touch the baked broccoli and chicken cacciatore I lovingly created with my own two hands from my new fun cookbook (thanks Debbie!). So, they knew there would be no sharing in the treats with the Webelos Scouts that come to our home Wednesday evenings.

I was impressed, however, and flattered =) when Tate calmly sat at the counter munching on grahm crackers and not even trying to sneak into the chocolate and mallows in front of his face. The flattery came in when he looked at me and said, "Good job mom. Good job on making s'mores for the scouts." First off, it seemed so mature for my little boy to say. Secondly, yes, thank you. I did do a good job =) Thanks, Tate, for reminding me to stop badgering myself about not doing scouts good enough and to remember that any effort I make is good. Right?!

Now there's a beautiful fire in our fireplace. First one since the move almost a year ago. (Nevermind that I bought a starter wood thing that does not allow for cooking in said fire. The microwave makes nice s'mores anyway.)

Quiz Master

Tate's taken to asking questions like the following:

"Ok. Are jammas for night or day?"

Me, "Night."

"Yes, good."

"Are clothes for day or night"

Me, "Day."

"Are you a lady or a gentleman?"

Me, "I'm a lady."

"Yes, right."

This probably stems from my questions like, "Do you want to leave now or in 10 minutes?" etc.