Sunday, December 14, 2008

The latest Jackisms and other business

Tonight Jack is EXHAUSTED and lost the privelege of his bedtime story because he was misbehaving. Then, when I was reading Sammy's, he kept asking a million questions and I kept saying if he would listen and stop talking he would hear the answer. Finally, the answer to his biggest question was coming on that page and I could tell he wasn't listening. When I said "Are you listening, Jack?" he stuck his tongue out at me and so I sent him to bed without hearing the rest of Sam's story. He immediately went into his usual dramatics, crying and writhing on the bed, but instead of going directly into the "Everybody hates me," routine he said "I'm a stupid little boy." We have a rule in our family that we don't say the word stupid, and it's about as close to a swear as our kids have ever really gotten. My sister's kids, however, aged 9, 7, and 2, say it a million times a day. I can only imagine that since they spent the night last night, he heard it a bunch of times. For some reason it cracked Ryan and me up!
Yesterday morning I got up early and baked pans of homemade cinnamon rolls to take to all the neighbors. When I got home from my delivery route, we started to eat the pan I kept for us, and Jack took a bite and said "Oh, Mom, these taste DELIGHTFUL!" Heehee! Ryan nearly fainted! I guess it's not enough that he loves pink!!!

In other news, things are plugging right along towards the holidays! I think I'm just about done with everything, and we only have one more holiday dinner to attend before we head to my mom's on Christmas Eve. Last night my sister came to spend the night and babysit so we could attend Ryan's work party and then a fabulous catered party that some friends host each year. I think for posterity I should say that Ryan was pulled over on the parkway on our way from party 1 downtown to party 2 on the southside. I had JUST said to slow down, and our Garmin GPS was showing that the speed limit was 55 and Ryan was going 75. So after I nagged for a second he slowed his pace. Then, there's a split in the highway where an exit takes two lanes, and he had to make a sorta quick lane change to keep from taking the exit we didn't want, and the blue lights began flashing behind us. When the cop (from the unmarked car- ugh) came up the window he said he had pulled us for 2 reasons, but first, did we know what the speed limit was? Ryan said "Yes, 55." He said that no, actually there is a brief period where it drops to 45. I said "REALLY? Cause our Garmin said it was 55 and I had just told him it was 55 and that's REALLY tricky" in a pleading, semi-whiney voice. He then said Ryan had also made an unsafe lane change and failed to use a signal. Right before he left, I pleaded with him again and said "Is there ANY way you can give us a warning? We NEVER get out of the house and we have a sitter tonight and that was really tricky and we would just REALLY appreciate it..." He looked torn but then just said "I'm going back to write your summons. I'll be back in a minute."
When he came back he said "Well, you should thank your wife because I can relate to the never getting out thing and I decided to let you go with a warning for the speeding and the lane change. I'm just writing a ticket for the failure to use a signal, and that's a very minor infraction." I was SOOO happy and immediately said "Oh, thank you SOOO much! We have three kids and our oldest is four, so we really never get to do anything!"
He was really nice and I can't help but feel it was a little something of a Christmas miracle! Heehee!
We spent the morning playing with their cousins, and I made some hairbows for the girls, did makeup and gave them haircuts, complete with a blowout and rollers. They were some stylin' cuties! After they left, the boys and I did some online games to decorate Christmas trees and Gingerbread men, watched the Charlie Brown Christmas special, and made a few crafts: paper snowflakes, glitter paint window snowflakes that should be window clings when they dry, and styrofoam (recycled take out container) airplanes to fly off our balcony.
Then this evening, we went to our friend Ainsley's fourth birthday party today which was a really cute Gingerbread house decorating party. There were whole houses for the 4 year olds, and large Gingerbread men for the younger siblings like Sam and Liv. The decorations were adorable, as were the chocolate Gingerbread man-shaped cake, the homemade apron the mother and two daughters were wearing, and the stenciled Gingerbread shirt on her teenager. Too cute, and the kids had a ball! Then we grabbed a fast food dinner on the road so we could take the kids to see some more of the great Christmas lights in our area. The "dancing" lights that are set to certain radio stations are still their absolute fav, but we saw some other doozies!
All in all, it was a great weekend. Packed, but so much fun and definitely memorable. I love that.

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