I want to see some boobies

So my sweet, innocent little 3-year-old walked up to me in the kitchen and announced:

"Mommy, I want see some boobies."

!?!?!? "What??"

"I want to see some boobies. Please can I see some boobies now?"

"Ummm... I don't know. What boobies do you mean?" (Eeek, what am I supposed to say here?)

"I want to see my Diego booby and Haley's Tinkerbell booby."

"Oh!! You want to see some MOVIES! MOVIES! Okay, yes, you can watch a movie. Say it with me - MOVIE."

=D

Christmas and Birthday

The week of Christmas is a busy one for us, with Haley's birthday falling just two days after Christmas. It was a great holiday and birthday. No one was sick. There were no family emergencies. Just a nice family holiday and birthday celebration.


The kids were thrilled to get to open one gift on Christmas Eve.

They each got a new set of pajamas to help them tuck in and go to sleep while waiting for Santa.

Such excitement to see what Santa brought!

They also enjoyed the presents from Mom & Dad and their Grandmas and Grandpa. The scooters for each of them have been a big hit, even though it has been too snowy to ride them outside yet. Hardwood floors will do in a pinch!

After Christmas, we proceeded to get ready for Haley's birthday. I made her cake - a butterfly as requested by the birthday girl. I think it turned out pretty good! Sure, it's nothing compared to my sister's cakes (she does this professionally and she's impressive!) But for only my 2nd attempt at cake decorating, I was pretty pleased with myself.

While I decorated the main cake, the kids decorated some cupcakes. Preston REALLY likes sprinkles, as you can tell from the thick layer on his cupcakes. =)

Haley opted not to have a party this year. Where her birthday falls during Christmas break, it's a little hard to have a party with her school friends until after the new year. She didn't want to wait that long to celebrate, so instead she decided to have a family party. She chose to go to Build-a-Bear workshop, where she and the boys each enjoyed making a new stuffed animal to take home. She also got to choose where we went for dinner that evening, and chose to go to the Yak & Yeti (an Indian buffet). She loves it mostly for the sliced oranges that she devours (8 or 9 big slices!), but enjoys the other items, too. When talking to Grandma on the phone, she listed off all the foods she ate: chicken tikka masala, samosas, lamb curry, mango custard, pakora, naan... there was probably even more. She ate a lot! (As did the rest of us - we love that place!)

After church on her birthday, she got to have cake and open presents. She loved everything she got. Especially the new clothes... between the two sets of grandparents she got enough new clothes to wear a new outfit every day next week when school starts again. Most of it pink, purple, lacy, sparkly or otherwise very girly. Just what she loves!

Happy birthday sweet Haley! I can't believe you're 6 already!

Camera Catch-Up

I got all of the pictures off the camera - I had to empty it out so as to have room for all the upcoming Christmas pictures. :) So I thought I'd share a few moments from the last couple of months.

When we went to Utah for Thanksgiving, we took the kids to see the dinosaur museum in Vernal. I've visited the old museum many times - it seems like we had a couple of field trips there every year when I was in school. But a couple of years ago they moved the museum into a fancy new building and I hadn't been there since the move. And I'd never taken my kids. (*gasp* As a former resident of Dinosaurland, that's almost unforgiveable!) ;)

There's a brontosaurus skeleton in the main lobby.


The kids are dwarfed by the giant skeleton.

They enjoyed searching for "fossils" in the interactive exhibits.

This is the first year that the kids really got into decorating the tree with me. Usually it's just been me by myself. (Aaron is also not into decorating the tree.) It was fun to have them help me this time. Amazingly, no one has bothered the presents under the tree. I really thought I would have problems with Brekken trying to tear into everything.

Apropos of nothing... I just found it amusing that Brekken insisted on using a spoon to eat his toast. :D

The Nutcracker

Last Friday I took Haley to see the Nutcracker. I hadn't seen in it a lot of years myself, so I was looking forward to it, too. We both enjoyed it very much - though we both agreed we wished it was just a little shorter. ;) It had been a long day of school and work for us, so we were tired and ready to go home to bed by the end.

She spotted the Nutcracker statue as soon as we walked in the door and wanted her picture with it.

The best part of the whole evening (for both of us) was after the ballet ended. The director of the ballet company invited any of the kids who were interested to come up to the front by the stage. They got a quick lesson in some ballet basics and got a chance to talk to and ask questions of some of the stars of the show. Then some of the dancers taught them all a little dance. Haley loved it - especially the chance to be up on the stage! They all looked adorable up there dancing.

Christmas Lights

Growing up, we always went on a drive around town to look at all the Christmas lights. We usually did it on Christmas Eve. I've tried to implement this as a family tradition with my family, but Aaron has never been very interested. So instead, I usually just drive around in the evenings with the kids after I pick everyone up from daycare. That's fun, too. We really enjoy it.

But last week, I came across an article in the Denver Post that listed some great houses in the area to check out for really spectacular Christmas Light displays. (If you're in Denver and want to check it out, here's a link to the list online.) I convinced Aaron to map out a route to go see some of the houses in our area (or kind of close to our area, anyway). We fed the kids and headed out around 5:30, thinking 2 hours should be plenty, and would put us home for bedtime and in time to watch a show Aaron and I really wanted to see. As we started, Aaron informed us all that the schedule allowed no time for stopping and looking at the houses, so we all had to be prepared to look quickly as he drove by. =D Luckily, he didn't hold us to that!

We saw great light displays! I can't believe the amount of time and effort it must have taken to set up some of these displays.

1188 Clubhouse Dr., Broomfield, Colorado, 80020

Some of our favorites were the ones that had music playing with the lights blinking on and off synchronized to the music. So much fun to watch! I really could have sat and watched that for a long time, it was so cool.

6330 W. 110th Place, Westminster, CO, 80020

I think everyone's favorite was the Christmas Train house. This place had all kinds of regular and motorized decorations. Snowmen, gingerbread houses, gingerbread men, a moving ferris wheel filled with snowmen and elves, a ski lift taking various characters up onto the roof to ski, so much! But the highlight, was the train. This is a real train! On tracks! Driving around the yard! It's about 5 feet tall, and Santa is driving it. When it comes to the sidewalk (that people would have to cross to get to the front door) there is actually a train gate, complete with flashing lights and arm that lowers to block the sidewalk until after the train has gone by. Preston loved that! We were there for quite a while walking around to see all the decorations and watching the train come around again and again. It was definitely a hit!

7645 Hooker St., Westminster, CO

One of my favorite things overall was how nice all the people were. A couple of different times random people (also out looking at the lights) came up to us and suggested other houses we should go see. Everyone just wanted to share the joy of the season and the fun of looking at these over-the-top decorations.

We ended up visiting 20 different houses! We spent about 4 hours at it - we missed bedtime, we missed our TV show, but I'm so glad we did it. It was tons of fun for me and the kids... and I think Aaron enjoyed it at least a little bit. ;) I might just talk him into seeing some more houses on the list on Christmas Eve!

I can't believe I just did that!

I read Tera's rules for going through the check-out line at the store, and I thought that I usually do pretty well by those standards. But tonight I believe I added a new rule:

#35 - If you have a cart full (I mean FULL) of groceries, don't wait until after the cashier has rung up everything in the cart to realize that you can't pay for any of it!

Yep, that was me tonight. I went home after the ward Christmas party, got the kids settled in bed, and left Aaron there with them so I could make a more peaceful trip to the store. It was a pretty big shopping trip, since I needed snacks for the kids, a few things for regular meals, everything for a big Christmas dinner, etc. So I had a very full cart. Of course, the only lane they had open for my overflowing cart was the express lane. So as the cashier is ringing up all my purchases, the line is stacking up behind me. Two, then three, then four and five people all waiting (more and less patiently) to check out with their one or two items. None of them even had a basket, let alone a cart full of groceries.

So trying to be proactive and do my part to finish this transaction quickly, I swiped my club card and my debit card, keyed in the PIN and was ready to go as soon as she handed over my receipt. I even had my coupons ready and handed them over ahead of time in accordance with rule #25. Of course, I had completely forgotten the fact that I had to cancel my debit card yesterday.

In looking at my bank account online, I'd seen that someone had hacked my card number and made a couple of donations to DNCBARACKOBAMA.com. Who knows if this was a politically-minded hacker who was actually stealing my money to give to Barack Obama, or someone who had set it up to look like the money was going to Barack Obama (presumably in the hope that I would think that was something I'd donated myself?). But at any rate, I knew I hadn't donated that money to Obama, so I called the bank and they cancelled my debit card.

I knew they'd done it. I'd thought it through earlier in the day and knew I would have to write a check at the grocery store. In retrospect, I should have removed the card from my wallet right away. But when it came time to actually go to the store, the whole situation completely slipped my mind. I just went on as usual until the card denied notice flashed across the screen.

Oh how embarrassing! I tried a fumbling explanation, but I could tell that the cashier 1) didn't really care, and 2) probably didn't believe me. (See rules 20-24) However she graciously agreed to put my full cart aside and hold it for me while I ran home to get my checkbook. I really wanted to explain to all those people behind me that I was not a deadbeat. I really did have the money to pay. I was just the victim of a faulty memory! But I think that they also didn't really care, other than to be annoyed that after waiting all that time for my cart to be rung up, now I didn't even have a way to pay. "What an idiot!" I could just feel them all thinking that in my direction.

I went home and back as quickly as possible. And I was still completely embarrassed when I got there with my checkbook. I apologized about ten times for my mistake. But I still feel like an idiot!

I couldn't help but laugh...

You know how sometimes you're surfing the Internet for no real reason at an insane hour? Stuff seems really funny at that point. I wonder if these will strike me so funny in the light of day...

see more deMotivational Posters


see more deMotivational Posters

Zoo Lights

On impulse, we decided to take the kids to see Zoo Lights at the Denver Zoo. It was a school night and we hadn't eaten dinner yet, but we didn't care. We loaded up the kids, swung through a drive-through for chicken nuggets (easy to eat in the car) and were on our way.

It was a LOT more crowded than we thought it would be - you know, being a school night and all. Apparently the other parents were letting things slide, too. =) But it was lots of fun. Haley and Preston loved all the lights, especially the moving animal light sculptures. Brekken really didn't seem to care, so he mostly just rode in the stroller and seemed a little bored.

We saw some people making ice sculptures - that was pretty cool to watch. We saw Santa from a distance but decided not to wait in the long line to sit on his lap (since the kids already saw him on Saturday). Some of the animal exhibits were open, too, so we saw elephants, rhinos, hippos, giraffes, lizards, snakes, fish... All of the kids seemed to enjoy that part.

We took a ride on the zoo train. We figured it would take us to see some light displays we wouldn't be able to see otherwise. We also figured it would last longer than 2 minutes. So we forked out the $2/person to ride the train. We were wrong on both cases. Plus the train seats are made of metal. When it's around 30 degrees outside, metal seats are COLD. Just a little FYI - if you go to Zoo Lights, don't bother with the train!

I had also told the kids we could buy hot chocolate. But it turned out to cost $5 for a cup of hot chocolate! For one cup! We just couldn't bring ourselved to do it. Luckily the kids agreed that a cup of hot chocolate at home before bed would work just as well.

The lights were beautiful. I wish I had remembered to take my camera, but in the flurry of suddenly rushing to be out the door, I forgot it. I did get some pictures on my phone. Unfortunately, most of the photos looked like this...

A couple of them kind of turned out okay. Really, you just need to go see it for yourselves! =)