Concentration

It's not often I catch you concentrating on your homework.

 

It's a funny thing, you hate it, but you can get it done lickety-split when you aren't distracted.

But you'll find anything to distract you--helping the girls, sneaking off to another room, playing with your pencil, finding a snack, fighting with your brother, basic fidgeting, making up songs with your brother. 

 

Or, um, noticing that I'm noticing you aren't distracted.

 

Yep, that blew it.

 

Now you say you'll refuse to do your homework.

 

My fault.

And so we were faced with another morning where we were finishing it as we ran out the door...

Love These

 

Had I asked them to recreate the one below, I wouldn't have got much better than their own spontaneity.

 

Four years ago now!

 

 

Someday soon though, I will be trying to get them to re-create this moment. 

Missing Trash Day

 

Here, it usually results in garbage triage of sorts.

All that can be burned, will be burned.

We'll wind up with compost heap before it's over, not because we're going green but because it's easier than remembering trash day

Double Take

"Well, they seem quite optimistic," Patric says as we both double take at the mantle.

 

The mantle where the children have replaced their stockings (the size of mom and dad's now seemingly smallish ones there), for these that they had found earlier, used for a potato sack race, and then snuck up there very quietly.  I still haven't found the four that were replaced.

A Christmas Carol

At the Alabama Shakespeare Festival (perhaps the only reason left to ever enter Montgomery).

 

At intermission, a woman stopped and remarked that she was so pleased to see such a lovely group of children.  It turns out that she and her husband had watched us at the restaurant we'd been to just before the show.  We had been their dinner entertainment.  The children looked her in the eye and said hello.  Ben even got up unprompted and shook her hand, said "I'm pleased to meet you."  What a lovely family she said, and we were so proud.

 

And then during the ride home, the children wouldn't stop cackling at themselves while they made jokes about body functions.

 

(Sigh)

 

This is always amazing to me when I run across it.

It wasn't even a scary sort of Goosebumps evening we were watching.

 

But then I run across this from time to time, and melt at the three of them there watching White Christmas instead of Red Dawn for change.

 

Next I'm going to try The Sound of Music

We have a little game on Doe Lane

I run across them while I'm walking around.

And they generally take the time to act alert for a little while.

 

Sometimes they take the time to amble off.

 

Mostly we just kind of stare at each other.

 

Sometimes they disregard me altogether and just go on about eating.

 

Even the babies are becoming friendly.

I'm really going to have to start carrying a real camera around with me instead of my phone.

Happy Birthday Boys!

Ha, I thought I was tired that day.

 

Then here you were.

I thought I was ready to go home from the hospital that day.

 

Then you were one.

We thought it was right to encourage you to be mobile.

 

Then you were two.

Enough said.

 

Then you were three.

And you were busy.

I really was tired.

 

And then you were four.

And, dang if you weren't cute.

 

And then you turned five.

That fateful birthday where I must not have felt too tired because I made those dang cakes.

 

And then you were six.

I think this is the last time that beautiful hair was really clean because I think we turned you over to self-bathing soon after this.

 

 

Seven, I have real little boys.

 

Real little boys who take soft stones into the car and spend two hour road trips making them into loose chalk for drawing on the windows.

 

Eight.

I must not have been so very tired because I made it out of bed to have breakfast with you that morning.

 

Nine.

I'm so incredibly taken back by nine.

Puh-leez

 

Don't look at me like I am a slave driver.

You begged me to let you do this, even though I just needed to get dinner ready.

 

That's more like it.

Ah, Nicholas

 

You did a little too well when I told you to pose for your mug shot.

 

 

But you couldn't stop laughing during the side pose.

 

 

 

And then you are just charming when you bring home books from the library that have recipes, and you ask me if we can make them together.

 

Of course we can, any and every time for as long as I can.



Thank You Grandma and Grandpa!

 

Grandpa and grandma at Thanksgiving lunch at school with the kids.

 

 

Alida doing the dishes.

 

 

At church with grandpa on Sunday.

 

 

Roasting hot dogs.

 

 

All while Patric and I managed to both have business away in the same city (not our own) for a few days.

 

 

You amaze us with your ability to keep up with them!

We Must Be in the Well Behaved Portion of the Season

Happy Birthday Old Man

 

We love you.