I guess I'd better check in and let the universe know how our family is doing. WE'RE DOING FINE, UNIVERSE. BUT I'D LIKE IT IF THE KIDS WOULD STOP FIGHTING.
We bought a Christmas tree this year, from the nursery, because my parents are going to be in Australia for half of December, and didn't want the hassle and mess, and we figured if they weren't going to harvest a tree, neither were we. I didn't like paying almost fifty bucks for something I could have chopped down myself, but I did like not having to go into the woods and harvest it myself, because when you say, "Let's go cut down our Christmas tree," all I hear is "Let's go somewhere cold where there are no bathrooms."
John is wearing all nice clothes to work today because he's doing an interview with a DJ to get Voice Male's music on the Sunday program on her station. He looks very nice when he dresses up. I tease him, but I will say that he understands when he needs to look nice, so I don't really mind if he looks like a pig the rest of the time. I look like a pig, why shouldn't he? Tit for tat, as they say.
Grant is done with one league of basketball and about to start two more, as well as indoor soccer. I didn't think this one through very clearly. But a tired dog is a good dog, as they say. I guess I can drive him all over creation if it keeps him out of mischief. It's winter--what else am I going to do? I HATE WINTER.
Emmett has started swim team and has his first meet on Saturday. We bought him one of those fancy suits that look like compression shorts. He wore them to practice the other night and says he can tell he's much faster with them on. He plays "The Little Drummer Boy" about a hundred times a day.
Ike is a full-fledged stuffed animal hoarder, and I am an enabler. It makes gift-giving so easy! He buried Willa's dead rabbit the other day, digging the hole all by himself. Last night at our ward party he went up and sat down next to an older woman and had quite a lengthy conversation with her. He is such an interesting child.
Willa had pinkeye and was a total pain in the butt about the eye drops. She decorated most of the Christmas tree by herself, which made me happy and the boys angry. She can finally give the proper answers to those brutal rhyming questions on her worksheets, and she can read a fair number of sight words. When Grant was in kindergarten and I was even more of a parenting ignoramus than I am now, I was irritated that the learn-to-read books had pictures of the words they were learning. "They'll just look at the picture and know that it says 'fox'!" But now I think maybe they put the pictures there on purpose, so that in the future when the child encounters that assortment of letters they have a mental picture to refer to, and they will know, "Oh! That assortment of letters means 'fox'." I could be wrong.
I am going to bake twenty dozen ginger lemon sandwich cookies today.
