Who's That Girl?!

And when did she grow up?

 (Quinn's School Picture)

Christmas Fun

Last Saturday we completely OD'd on Christmas.

We started out by going to Cheekwood to see a Holiday Magic Show.  I frankly don't know what was more entertaining, watching the magician (who by the way was pretty decent), or watching my children laugh and stare in awe when he turned a handkerchief into a dove or pulled giant underpants out of his magic bag.

Then it was off for the requisite visit to Santa's lap and the over priced picture of said event.  Though, I will have to admit isn't half bad....


Afterwards, a lunch out and then to cookie decorating.


(Exotic flower courtesy of my sweet boy)

 

Finally, home for a quick nap (well OK Raif and I fell asleep, Lord only knows what the kids did.).

Then out to see Chad's Christmas Light Extravaganza and pizza out.

I am feeling Christmas in the air.

Thanksgiving in Austin

This year we spent Thanksgiving in Austin to visit Page, Jamie and Hudson and to meet their latest addtion, Camden.

We spent the better part of a week doing nothing and it was glorious.  We let the kids roam wild (I admittedly was jealous with the 70 degree weather enabling the kids to spend most of the day outside) and just relaxed and caught up with old friends.  It is so nice to be able to do nothing and not feel the need to keep everyone entertained.

My kids spent most of their time vying for Hudson's attention, probably because they were sick of playing with each other.  Hudson must have felt he was the bell of the ball.



 

Meet Baby Camden.

After Hudson, my children's favorite person was Tio Robbie (Page's brother).  Do you remember back in college, that one guy that when he came into a party you knew it was about to be ratcheted up a notch? That people cheered as he entered the room:  that is Tio Robbie.  Whenever, he came over my kid's would chant "Tio Robbie" like he was Elvis or something.  And clearly you can tell from the picture below that Quinn thought he was the bees' knees.  Look at the girl, what a crush she has.



We were also able to have lunch with our friends Elissa and Steve and their daughters Reagan and Abbie.  And if will have to say that seriously, Abbie is the happiest baby EVER.  When she wasn't scarfing down rice, beans and flour tortillas she just sat there with the biggest grin on her face and just giggled.  Never a cross look or moment through all of lunch.  I wonder what they are putting in her bottle. :)

Thankful

(Yes, these next posts will be woefully out of order.  Too much to do and not enough time.  Just consider it reminiscing!)

For the first time we did a thankful tree for Thanksgiving.  I let the kids each day pick a leaf and write what they were thankful for and then hung them from the dining room chandelier.  It made a great Thanksgiving display and honestly it was quite interesting to see what they were thankful for.  Eventually, they were thankful for me, but that was only after LEGOs, bikes, food and a teacher or two.  But hey, at least I got on the list, right?

Chopping Down the Candy Cane

I think that most people feel their Christmas season starts when they put up their Christmas tree.  Normally we go to our local tree farm and cut it down the weekend right after Thanksgiving.  Now under normal circumstances I would be a tree on the first weekend of December kind of gal, however around here the grandparents that aren't coming for Christmas are usually here for Thanksgiving and it is nice to include them in at least one Christmas activity.  However, this year we were in Austin TX for Thanksgiving and the kids and I got home Sunday and Raif went straight on to a business conference in Chicago and so we had to wait until the actual first week of December.

So for that whole week the kids were getting more excited each day as they saw more and more houses with lights and trees.  And each day Quinn would ask when we were going to cut down our tree and squeal with excitement as the day got closer and closer.

"Mommy, are we going to the Christmas tree farm on Saturday?!"

"Absolutely."

"I can't wait!!  Yay!!!!"

"I know, isn't it so fun to walk through the rows of trees and find your very own Christmas tree that is just perfect and then bring it home?"

"That's allright."

(Huh, she was bouncing out of her seat a minute ago and now has the excitement of receiving melba toast for breakfast.)

"I thought you were excited."

"Oh, I am!!"

"You don't sound excited anymore."

"I am not excited about the tree.  I am excited about the candy cane and the hot apple cider."

So there you have it.  For the last three years I have attempted to create this wonderful Walton-esque family memory about cutting down our own tree and what does my daughter remember and get excited about?  The $0.15 candy cane and the free watered down hot apple cider mix they give away at the farm.  Sigh.

But regardless of the lack of excitement of the actual purpose of the event, at least from Quinn, off we went and found the perfect tree.

 (Here the kids are enjoying their watered down apple cider on the porch waiting for Raif to have the tree trimmed and tied to the car. They actually didn't have candy canes this year, much to my daughter's dismay)

 (The required hanging the first ornaments on the tree pictures.)

Greyson's "sweet spot" for his ornaments.  I think he put about 5 right on the lowest branch all together.

And the finished product...Ta Dah.....

Christmas, here we come....

The Great Holiday Mix-Up

Greyson's class is learning about holidays from all over the world this week.  They are doing a special emphasis on Chanukah because Quinn in Greyson's class (ah yes the irony of Greyson's best friend in school being a boy named Quinn) is Jewish (more on this later).  Every night he is so excited to tell me the different facts he has learned but I think he may be getting a couple of things mixed up.  Here is his description of Chanukah.

"This guy named Peter has this boat that he sails from England and goes to all of the countries around the world, except here because Santa comes here.  In his boat he has St. Nicholas and a helper who wears a purple coat and has dark skin.  They ram the boat up on the shore to deliver presents.  He can ram the boat up on shore because the front of his boat has this bulldozer thing that can help get it up on land.  After he gets out of the boat he puts on this pointy hat and gets on a white horse and goes off to deliver toys to all the Jewish boys and girls.  If they boys and girls are bad they don't get coal like we do, Peter's helper chases them around with a stick."

Now I am not a Jewish scholar by any stretch of the imagination but I don't think that a single syllable of that is actually true.

But what is even funnier is how excited Greyson is to learn about Chanukah because of his friend Quinn.  He has come home every day to tell me some of these odd tidbits about Chanukah he has learned from Quinn.

Today I happened to run into Quinn's mother while picking up my Quinn as her other son goes to the same preschool.

"Greyson is so excited to be learning about Chanukah this season and celebrate the holiday with Quinn."

At this point, Christina burst into laughter and promptly told me that they are, in fact, Catholic and she has no idea why Quinn is going around telling everyone he is Jewish.  And the only reason she knew about this was because their teacher happened to see her in the car pool lane one afternoon and told her they were doing a special section on Chanukah just for Quinn.

So now I don't know what parts of my son's crazy Chanukah stories have come from Quinn just making things up or getting confused with other holiday traditions.

What I do know is that he loves Chanukah and I can't wait to hear all about Kwanzaa.

The Great Tooth Tragedy of 2011

As most of you may recall, we held Greyson back last year.  One of the reasons, was that he was by far the youngest kid in his class.  There were many ways that being the youngest manifested itself into issues, some unknown to Greyson, but one way was very obvious.  He hadn't lost a tooth.  By the time school ended last year and EVERYONE had lost a tooth (well except Jessie but as Greyson pointed out between sobs, girls don't count) it was a major point to my son.

So at the start of this year, while I am sure all the other mothers were learning the new kids' names and which mother was attached to which child, I was surveying mouths to see where we stood in the lost tooth arena.  To my delight and relief, there was a handful of children who, like Greyson were hanging on tightly to their baby teeth.  Yes!!!

In September, we went to the dentist and after she reveiwed Greyson's dental x-rays I casually pulled her aside to see if she could give me a estimate of when that first tooth would fall out.  She gushed on for a full 5 minutes about what a wonderful root system Greyson had, even taking it so far as to turn the x-rays back on and show me on the film.  I really wanted to say that I didn't much care about a root system that was destined to fall out over the next few years but that she really needed to get to the actual answer to the question.  But when she finally got there, I was less than enthused.  "With such a wonderfully deep root structure, don't expect to lose any teeth for at least another 6 months."  Well crap.  Surely some other kids in Greyson's class have just as  magnificent root structures as he does.  One of them will hold on to their teeth longer, I mean he is the oldest kid in his class.  Surely, this tragedy will not befall the family again.  And thus far there are still kids in his class who have all their baby teeth.

What I didn't expect was this:

About two weeks ago I went to pick up Quinn after school (luckily Greyson elected to stay in the car and finish reading his book).  I was greeted at the door by an ecstatic Quinn "I have a loose tooth!!!"

I just shook my head in disbelief.  "No you don't really?!?!"

"Oh, yes" chimed her teacher.  "She noticed it at lunch today."

"No, it really isn't loose?!?!"

By this time Quinn was using her finger to show me that yes indeed it was loose.  Clearly my face was crestfallen and I could tell that her teacher thought I was crazy.

With all the fake enthusiasm I could muster I said I was excited for her as we gathered up her things to go.

By this time her teacher was giving me this look and I could tell exactly what was going through her mind "Crazy lady, don't you know that kids teeth are suppose to fall out??"

So I mouthed to her that Greyson hadn't lost a tooth yet and we headed out the door.

Drama ensued for the 20 minute drive home.  Greyson sobbed because Quinn was going to lose a tooth before him and Quinn cried because Greyson was mad at her and kept screaming "It isn't my fault, I can't help it is loose."  I just kept wondering if there was a liquor store between school and home.

The next few days were a roller coaster of emotions in the house and I had to perform a major balancing act.  Trying to be excited for Quinn because it was a big moment for her and I didn't want anything to take away from that and at the same time downplaying it for Greyson ("No one goes to high school with their baby teeth") so he wasn't constantly in dismay.  It also didn't help that Quinn carried around the little tooth container I bought her at all times.  "It may fall out any minute and I don't want to lose it."

And so we rolled into the weekend and a trip to see "Junie B. Jones: Jingle Bells, Batman Smells" at the Nashville Children's Theatre helped to lift Greyson's spirits a bit and afterwards we went out to lunch.

It was about halfway through lunch when Quinn proclaimed mid pizza bite that she had indeed lost her tooth.  And there it was, a little hole, where that tooth should be.  Her excitement was quickly extinguished by the recognition that she had not only lost her tooth but had also swallowed it.  It was at this point she burst into tears convinced that the tooth fairy was not going to come and she was going to have nothing to put in her little tooth box.  Moments later Greyson joined Quinn in the tear fest bemoaning the fact that Quinn had lost a tooth and he hadn't.  And well, since I didn't want them to cry alone, I followed suit realizing that I wouldn't be able to save the first tooth that Quinn ever lost.

So there we were, all 3 of us crying in the middle of the restaurant, with everyone staring at us and Raif completely stumped as to which of us to console first and proclaiming that we were all over reacting.

At the end of the day, everything had calmed down.  We wrote the tooth fairy a note and gave Greyson an extra story that night and all was well with the world. 

Who would have thought such a little piece of bone could cause such drama....