Archives for December 2005

I was reminded of Karli’s post about surprises yesterday when DY Dad and Laylee got back from shopping for my Christmas presents.

In the past, I have enjoyed giving him a hard time by asking Laylee what they bought me as soon as they got back from buying my birthday and Christmas surprises. She was always too young to respond accurately. She’d mumble something in toddler-ese, he’d say, “Don’t tell. It’s a surprise,” and we’d all laugh. Ha ha ha.

Well yesterday, the first thing he said when he walked in was, “Don’t ask her this time.”

Me: Okay.

D: I drilled her repeatedly at the store on what she should say if you asked her. Things didn’t go so well. So, don’t ask, okay?

Me: Okay. (I do like surprises)

Me (to Laylee): Hey sweet girl. Did you and Daddy have a fun time together?

Laylee: We got you a tea pot!

This afternoon on the way home from church, she asked me if I wanted her to go get me the tea pot so I could use it. No thank you, I want to wait and be surprised.

A while back, before I was banned from watching Oprah unless “it’s a show about kitties and fluffy bunnies,” she did an episode where snobby-ish etiquette experts answered all our burning questions about decorum. The consensus was that it is unacceptably tacky to “re-gift.”

Note to my friends — I am unacceptably tacky and you will occasionally reap the benefits because my re-gifts are often much nicer than things I would have purchased myself. (The actual re-gifting has slowed since we used up the last of our wedding gift duplicates. Man, we got a lot of George Foreman Grills a few years ago.)

As we were leaving church today, we overheard this from a speaker in the other congregation that meets in our building:

“So at this wonderful time of year, I hope we will all ‘re-gift’ the greatest gift that we have ever received.”

I’m not sure who was speaking but it made me smile.

James Wallingford wrote the following:

Christmas is not a day or a season, but a condition of heart and mind.
If we love our neighbors as ourselves;
if in our riches we are poor in spirit and in our poverty we are rich in grace;
if our charity vaunteth not itself, but suffereth long and is kind;
if when our brother asks for a loaf, we give ourselves instead;
if each day dawns in opportunity and sets in achievement, however small-
then every day is Christ’s day and Christmas is always near.

Hey everybody, unite to re-gift the love, the joy, the gratitude, the service, the true spirit of Christmas. We all need it. It’s there for the taking. Spread it around.

We could all use more compassion, more dedication, more kindness, more forgiveness, more quiet holiness in our lives (whatever our religion). Breathe. Think before you speak. Determine each day to share the best part of yourself and you will be surprised at what will come of it.

I’m determined that there is more good in each of us than we have yet discovered or can even imagine. There is so much joy to be had in this world. Let’s have it!

BlackBird, please don’t give me a tardy!

I don’t remember when I got hooked on Show and Tell, probably 2nd grade, but I love it and I can’t stop. It is my bedtime, but I couldn’t go to sleep until I posted this. I don’t want to get in trouble. Here are my ordaments (second grade pronunciation).

Purchased in a shop outside Westminster Abbey, this Buckingham Palace guard guy is a favorite. My mom and I were crazy enough to go on a girls week to England with Laylee when she was 7 months old, stay in a TEENY hotel room, eat fish and chips and trek around London and Bath. What an adventure! (shout out to Dan and Uncle Bill for sponsoring the trip) This actually belongs to Laylee. Mine is a Beefeater. So as not to offend the vegetarians, I posted this instead….

This is the new ornament I bought this week to start Karen’s tradition (see comments section) where the parents hang up the first ornament on the tree and then force the children to watch as they passionately follow the misletoe mandate.

Legend has it that my first Christmas coincided with this angel’s first Christmas and she conveniently has my name tatooed accross her skirt so I got to keep her when the family ornaments were doled out.

So, if you want more info on the Un-Scrapbooks, contact my friend Carrie by email. They’re selling in several countries right now but only in a few cities here in the US. The brand name is Baysics and the website should be up soon. I’ll let you know. Carrie can send you a catalog if you want to order or are just curious. I LOVE them.

You know how sometimes you let your car make a weird noise for a while before you get around to taking it in to the mechanic? You think, maybe it’s nothing or maybe it will just go away on its own. Then when you’re planning a big road trip, you think, “Maybe I should at least get the oil changed and see if it’s anything worth worrying about.”

Well, Magoo’s had a bad cough for a few weeks now but it’s the kind of cough the doctors always say is no big deal so I haven’t worried about taking him in. Now we’re getting ready for some Christmas travel so I thought I’d take him in to the pediatrician for an LOF.

I planned poorly, deciding to start feeding him solids at breakfast for the first time the morning of his appointment was not a good idea. Traffic was worse than usual, a stalled car on the side of the freeway causing no end of excitement and rubber-necking.

I arrived…dun..dun..dun….19 MINUTES LATE to my appointment. I think lateness is rude and shows disrespect for the other person and their time. I was embarrassed. I apologized to the receptionist.

Then they sent the nurse in to give me “the talk.” They allow 15 minutes lee-way but 19 minutes is just too much. The doctor would see me but they would put a note on my chart. My tardiness was not acceptable.

I felt awful, like a 2-year-old getting kicked out of nursery school for biting (or maybe the 2-year-old’s mom. The two year old probably wouldn’t care all that much and on the ride home, he’d just ask for a snack and then fall asleep with graham cracker drool all over his face). I apologized profusely.

When I told Heather, she asked if 3 tardies would equal an un-excused absence. Karen IMd that maybe there would be cute boys in detention. I’ll have to ask on my next visit to their office when I’m sitting in the waiting room, 20 minutes early.

Oh, and the doctor said, “It’s a cold.”

But when you open the heavy-duty (but not too hard to open) gripper/snaps:

They are albums:

They come in several sizes:

I bought small ones that hold 2 4×6 photos per sheet to use as gifts and the really big ones that hold 12×12 sheets for our family.

You can use just about any configuration of photos in them. Most of the sheets I bought just hold scads and scads of 4×6 photos but a few are full 12×12 sheets or split sheets so I can get creative here and there if I want, but I don’t have to.

They even have kits to make the little scrapbooky pages if you want them. They are super heavy-duty fabric or bonded leather, reasonably priced (if you don’t buy one million of them), they’re gorgeous and durable.

You add the photos from the inside of a two-sided sheet, sideways so the pictures won’t come out if you shake the book around and your kids can’t figure out how to get them out. Heck, I couldn’t figure it out until she showed me.

I am so excited for my new project for after Christmas and it will mostly involve shoving all of our old photos in at a rapid pace, periodically pausing to add a caption, a colored paper background or a picture of my face, cut out in the shape of an armadillo. I’m sure they have punches for that somewhere, right mom?

I haven’t done laundry in a while. I usually have a regular laundry day but the problem is, we have way too much underwear lately so I’ve been able to put it off a little longer than usual.

We’re down to the almost-too-tight jeans, the makes-me-look-fat t-shirts (not because I am, just because they’re poorly designed, of course), the beach towels, and the really really small bibs.

I just put one of them on Magoo for his midnight carrot snack and handed him to DY Dad for the feeding.

Magoo: Heh heh heh
Dan: That’s not a BIB! That’s like a Victoria’s Secret bib. It’s like a string around his neck!

Note to self: Do laundry tomorrow.

In other news, Jack has passed away. We had a small funeral for him and a serious, look-me-in-the-eyes-when-I’m-being-this-serious, talk about death with Laylee, explaining that it’s just his body now and that his spirit has left. Then we sang a song about the beauty of God’s creations and flushed him.

Her response?

“Can we get another one?”

Haaahhhhhhhhh (loud breath out).

The next day when her little friends, the 4 Moseses (Mosesus? Mosesi? Mosi?), asked where the fishy was, I told them we flushed him down the toilet so he could live with Nemo and Marlin. THIS, they could grasp onto. THIS made sense.

Here are a few of my favorite Holiday Traditions:

Thanksgiving — Get a big white tablecloth and have everyone use fabric markers to write or draw a picture of a few things they’re thankful for each year. Then, every time you sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, you get to read the things people have written in years past. I wish I were the genius who thought of this one.

“You Are Special” Day — For a date night a few months ago, Dan and I made a “you are special” dinner plate. The plate gets pulled out when someone either does something really special (gets a great test score, shows heroic kindness, has a birthday, learns how to balance their 2 year old brother on their nose like a seal) or needs some special love and attention. It’s a big deal to use the “you are special plate.”

It’s only been used one time in our house, Mega Corp bonus time this year. DY Dad got a decent bonus and we got to chuck it on the mortgage. Can you hear the ping sound it made as it dropped in the bucket? Yeah, neither could we.

Veteran’s Day/Remembrance Day — In Canada, there’s something special, almost sacred about November 11th. It is a solemn day of remembrance and respect for those who give their lives for our freedom. Up there it is called Remembrance Day and it occurs on the same day as Veteran’s Day here in the US. Everyone wears a red poppy on their lapel for about a week leading up to the Holiday. Schools hold solemn assemblies and everyone with a uniform wears it. I remember wearing my Brownie and Girl Guide uniform to school.

At 11:11am, people all across the country observe a moment of silence. I still maintain this tradition with my kids and recite the poem In Flanders Fields, with my thumbs tucked in every November 11th. (When we stood at attention or had to do any recitation in my elementary school, they told us to do it with arms at our sides and our thumbs tucked into our hands. I think this was to keep us from poking each other or picking our noses, but I still do it today when I recite poetry.)

Christmas — My favorite tradition growing up was putting hay in the manger. My mom told us the story of the first Christmas and then she put out a small empty wooden manger near the Christmas tree. Every time we did a secret good deed, we could put one piece of hay in the manger. On Christmas morning, “Baby Jesus” (usually a well-swaddled baldish cabbage-patch kid) would appear in the manger if there was enough hay for Him to rest comfortably there.

I can still remember my mom encouraging us to keep up the kind deeds, “You don’t want that sweet baby to clunk his little head on the bottom of an empty manger, do you?”

We had so much fun doing kind things for each other and then waiting until no one was looking to deposit our one piece of hay. The manger was always full by Christmas Eve.

Tip Day Tuesday — This is a tradition where you get to share your thoughts and ideas so everyone else can steal them. Please observe it. 🙂

I’ve had requests to publish my Dad’s Seven Sevens and he kindly gave me permission. He is the best dad in the world and I love him dearly. (Interspersed are pictures of a few of the things he’s made for our family in his workshop.)

Seven Things I want to do before I die:
1. Have a stand alone, dedicated workshop of sufficient size to keep and use all of my tools in their own place, without having to move them around on wheels.
2. Learn to turn stuff on a lathe — bowls, spindles, pens, etc.
3. Build a Grandfather Clock (the case, not the mechanism)
4. Retire
5. Be able to spend 2 consecutive weeks at the beach in the summer, 2 weeks (not necessarily consecutive) camping and hiking in the mountains, and 1 week cruising, each year.
6. Weigh less than 180 pounds, and feel physically fit.
7. Be a professional Santa with my own full beard, and long hair for at least one Christmas season.
8. Go to Hawaii, New Zealand, and Fiji.
9. Go to Adam Ondi Ahman.
10. Learn to play the guitar using the Travis picking method.
11. Grow a big garden and preserve enough vegetables (bottled and root cellar) to last the winter.
12. Have a solar powered house that generates enough electricity back to the power company to zero out my power bill for the whole year.
13. Take Heather’s Hub, and any other in-laws and their spouses who would like to, backpacking for a week in the Canadian Rockies.
14. Read Don Quijote de la Mancha in the original Spanish in its entirety.

Seven Things I cannot do:
1. Count (see the 1st seven above)
2. Stop loving your mom.
3. Stop loving my children or being concerned for their happiness.
4. Play any sport with any degree of competence.
5. Watch an emotional or touching scene in a movie without getting choked up.
6. Sleep through the night without getting up at least once to go to the bathroom.
7. Fly (under my own power).
8. Remember things when I want to (it’s usually more like random recall) (this one is legal, cause # 1 was a joke — I really can count).

Seven Things That Attract Me to My Spouse:
1. She’s gorgeous.
2. She loves me.
3. She laughs at me (usually only when I’m trying to be funny).
4. She cares about others.
5. She’s a great cook.
6. She likes to be with me.
7. She’s smart.

Seven Things I say often:
1. The older I get, the sooner I can retire.
2. Did you hear about….. (usually followed by some joke or other)
3. I love you.
4. Honey, have you seen…….? (whatever it is that I’ve currently lost).
5. Drive Safe!!!
6. Thank You. (probably not enough, but, yeah quite a lot).
7. Hey Honey, come look at this….. (wood working project)

Seven Books of Book Series I love:
1. The scriptures.
2. Battle Cry — Leon Uris.
3. The Lord of the Rings (and The Hobbit).
4. Harry Potter
5. The Work and the Glory
6. Most James Michener books.
7. My leather bound copy of Don Quijote de la Mancha, in the original Spanish. I’ve never read it all the way through yet, but someday I will.

Seven Movies I could watch over and over:
1. The Lord of the Rings.
2. Home Alone (I and II).
3. The Princess Bride.
4. Undercover Blues.
5. The Frisco Kid.
6. Pirates of the Caribbean.
7. A Knight’s Tale

Lately I’ve been misty around the eyes from all the kind comments and emails I’ve been getting regarding a certain Blog Award mishap. I think I responded to everyone individually but if I somehow missed you, thanks to everyone who has taken the time to send me well wishes and support.

Catez Stevens was a frequent commenter on my recent post about the controversy. I know some people were concerned that she was attacking me in some way but the two of us have been emailing and commenting back and forth and it’s been a great exercise in resolving differences calmly, while remaining firm in our own beliefs. I want to thank her publicly for taking such a serious interest in my little problem.

She posted about me this morning and offered me an Award that I am proud to accept. It is an Aroha Award, an award that she has created to honor blogs with a unique feature that deserves acknowledgement. Aroha is the Maori word for love and I’m feeling a lot of it coming from Catez and many others of you who have been kind enough to drop me a line. Thank you so much for the sweetness.

The award in my sidebar is also a link to her site (It’s a beautiful graphic, yes?). Please check her out and feel free to vote for her in this year’s Weblog Awards. She’s up for best New Zealand Blog.

DYDad is wet from doing dishes and taking Laylee to the park in the Seattle winter. He’s kept the tears to a minimum.

Laylee is crying because of the “consequences.” Sheeeeee’s been testing the limits this week and we’re trying to get more creative. Yesterday she refused to put on clothes to go to the park in freezing weather. After repeated attempts to reason with her, Dan let her go outside in nuthin’ but a pull-up so she could decide whether wearing clothes was a good idea. She quickly renounced her fervent nudity and bundled up. Why does she have to act so childish and immature all the time? Oh…wait….

Magoo cries because he’s eating a ton of carrots but none are coming out. Hmm….I’d cry too.

In other precipitation news, I have been laughing so hard I’m crying since taking the new quiz my sister and our mutual friend came up with. They are so funny, I can’t even write about it without laughing out loud.

Please go take the quiz if you’ve read any of the Harry Potter books, ever taken a silly internet personality quiz, or ever thought you might like to try laughing so hard that liquid squirted from every orifice of your body.

You scored as Argus Filch. Congrats! You are most like Argus Filch. You torment the dickens out of the students under your care. You also flunked out of magic school. Your precious cat is the only one who loves you.

Harry Potter Mania
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