Party prep

Natalie's birthday invitations came today, and she's so excited to pass them out at school tomorrow. As I was snuggling her before bed tonight, we had the following conversation:

Me - "I'm going to go in a minute so I can address your invitations"
Natalie - "OK. Kevin Y has a lot of boogers in his nose. We're going to have to bring a lot of tissues"
Me - "OK, thanks for telling me"
Natalie - "It's really gross. You should see it. I'm just letting you know".

LOL

And as an extra bonus.... Just before I left her room, she asked what Mary's husband's name is. I told her Joseph. She said "Oh yeah. I'm pretty sure Joseph likes to play soccer".

It's the most wonderful time of the year!

My favorite time of year! We're going to start decorating the house today. I finally caved the other day, and bought an artificial tree. That was a really tough decision (and yes, when I called Jon from Walmart to tell him about a tree I found, I was crying), but we just can't keep a live tree alive in AZ. Even waiting until ten days before Christmas, turning off the heat vent near the tree, watering, preservatives, all that, the damn things die. So I sucked it up. Jon is quite happy, but God love him, he isn't gloating. :-) Anyway..... Here's our little piece of holiday magic from this morning.

Jon has the tree out of the box, and is starting to put it up. Natalie's looking for all the blue lights (we like multi lights on our tree), Oliver's in awe, pointing and saying "Tree! Tree!". And I'm hovering, bitching and still a little bitter about our fake tree. :-)

Me - "That looks really scrawny. The display didn't look like that in the store. It was more full. Are you sure it's going to look OK?"

Jon - "Yes, it's going to be fine. It isn't even halfway up"

Me - "I don't know. It's kind of scrawny"

Jon - *less patiently* "It's going to be FINE"

Me - "I don't know. It looks kind of Charlie Brown to me"

Natalie - "It's not BROWN. It's GREEN"

Me - "WHATEVER"
" Did you put her up to that?"

Natalie - *indignantly* "NO he DIDN'T. I put MYSELF up to that!".

For the record, it's looking better, and he's still not finished. Mitz says I'll adjust and be glad we did it, but I don't know. I am glad we can have a tree up for longer than usual, but this is just really hard for me. Silly, but it is.

Speaking of Natalie-isms... This made me laugh the other day. I bought a new carton of ice cream, and we were having it for dessert. I went to take some recycling out, and as I came back in, I heard some drama. I asked what was going on.

Natalie - "Daddy won't let me lick the lid!" I let her lick the lid if the ice cream is for family consumption only - wouldn't do it if we were serving to guests - but for us? Eh. She's only a kid once, let her lick the lid - it makes her so happy. Jon isn't thrilled with that.

Me - "Oh for God's sake. Let her lick the lid! She's only a kid once!"

Natalie - so earnestly - "Yeah, Daddy. I'm still learning!".

Irony

Natalie wanted to wear one of her new shirts. It's pretty much all white, with a big panda on the front of it. I just told her to be careful with it at school, because it would be hard to bleach; normally I don't sweat dirt on clothes.

So, she gets off the school bus, we're walking up our drive, and she says "Look Mommy, I didn't get my shirt dirty!"....

As she's dragging her sleeve across the back of Jon's filthy car.

LOL

Beginning reading

Natalie is starting to pick up a lot of sight words. She's also starting to read more and more, and it is so cool to see! She has one favorite book that she reads to us every night - Super Fly Guy. She can read more than 3/4 of it on her own - the rest she has memorized - but when we sense that she isn't actually reading, but relying on memory, we back up and have her actually read the words and sound out what she doesn't know. I love hearing her read - it's just the neatest thing in the world.

Also, finally got the pictures uploaded. September and October are combined, and I left Halloween in there as opposed to breaking it out. Lazy. And you'll notice in some of the last pictures, Oliver has an enormous pile of candy in front of him. Thank his big sis. Mitz, Jon and I were all talking about something, weren't paying attention, then I happened to notice how quiet the kids were (rarely a good sign). Yep. Natalie had emptied all that candy out in front of him, and Mr. Sweet Tooth was going to town. And she wonders why he idolizes her! :-)

Christmas Time

A Natalie original song -

"Christmas time
Christmas time
it's the greatest time
it's the greatest time.
You get ice cream
and Mommy makes a roast
which stinks up the house*
And Santa will poop in your stocking
if you have bad behavior.**

*she's referring to the poorly executed browning of the prime rib last year. AKA the Great Mesa Smoke-Out-the-House.

**Not one of my finer parenting moments.

Tardy

Natalie just informed us "if you are late to school, you need a tardy pass".

I said "Yes, but Mommy and Daddy work hard to make sure you are always on time for school".

Natalie said "Oh man. I want a tardy pass for the first time" - I believe she's referring to that as a "first", as in "first tooth, first day of school, etc..". Then goes on to tell us that "Kevin M gets lots of tardy passes, but not today". There's some logic in there somewhere, I'm sure of it, but damned if I can figure it out!

Halloween

Nothing like posting about Halloween well into November. :-)

We had a great time! Jon, Natalie and I were pirates, Oliver was a parrot. He loved his costume! And we found out that dude has quite the sweet tooth. He didn't meet a piece of candy he didn't like. Poor, deprived child hadn't had much candy prior to Halloween. Uncle Mike came over, and he and I took Natalie, Oliver and Natalie's friend Trinity out trick-or-treating. We met up with Natalie's other friend, Alicia, and her family, and had a great time walking around together. This year was a bit of a letdown, in that so many houses were dark in our neighborhood - last year there was a much more festive vibe. Our block was even deader than it was last year, but Trinity's street, which was the party street last year, was fairly quiet too. The kids got a lot of candy, but I was disappointed at how quiet it was overall. Jon went over to Trinity's house to hang out with her parents and pass out our candy, and it's a good thing. We were the only house on our half of our block that had candy - he would have been sitting out there in the dark with no one around.

Anyway, Oliver rode in the wagon for most of it, but towards the end, he got out and would trot up to people's doors with his bucket and hold it out for his candy - he got the hang of it pretty quickly. He tried to double-dip a couple of times, though. Good thing he's cute - no one got mad and he was indulged every time he tried, despite me trying to discourage it.

After that we went back to Trinity's house and hung out for a while. Everyone had a blast!

Pictures will be up at some point.

Student of the Week

And yeah, I'll get to Halloween tomorrow. Need to finish uploading pics... Anyway!

Natalie's teacher selects one student each week to be SOTW. The Friday prior to their week, they are sent home with a poster sized piece of paper that they can decorate however they want - pictures, etc. Then the student presents it to the class. There are a bunch of other activities that go along with it too - her teacher's intent is to get the students to really know each other - fosters friendships and a better classroom environment, and she found it discourages bullying when the students know more about each other. Anyway, one of the activities is each student draws a picture, and states something they like about the SOTW. Natalie's packet was sent home today - so cute. Most of the kids said things like "I like Natalie because she talks to me" or "she plays with me". My favorites were these -

"I like Natalie because she makes me feel better when I'm sad".

Then Lexi's - "I like Natalie because she likes to play at my house" - Natalie has never been to Lexi's house. They are good friends though - Lexi is very sweet.

And the best? Joey's. Natalie's "boyfriend".

"I like Natalie because she's cute".

I swear she swooned when I read that out loud.