Please buy some girl scout cookies by January 15, 2009.  Puh-leeeeeeze? J

Along with toys, we try to get the kids gifts that their reflect their current non-toy interests.  Brody, for example, received some items that will help him make movies.  Mo has expressed a lot of interest in cooking (not sure why, she doesn’t really see us do that much, unless shake and bake is considered ‘cooking’).

I got her a pink chef’s hat and a cute apron with her name sewn on it.  She also received a lot of ‘real’ (can actually be used to cook, not pretend…) cooking supplies.

Last night she started off with cupcakes and small cakes.

Maura has recently begun pointing to things with her middle finger.  I realize that it is longer, and as such, may seem a more appropriate choice to direct one’s attention; especially given the attention its use commands.

So we’ve been working to re-direct her back to the appropriate appendage.

Let’s add to that, shall we?

Last night we are out to eat.  Mo is incredibly impatient at restaurants and after having asked where the food was several times; we let her know that we didn’t want to hear her say ‘food’ again!

So then she asked ‘Where is the ‘f’ word?’

We’re raising a trucker!

Yesterday, the kids and I were supposed to go to the Charles H. Wright museum of African American History.  They have an exhibit of replicas from King Tut’s tomb.

Brody LOVES King Tut and is fascinated by ancient Egypt.

As you may recall, we got about a foot of snow yesterday and driving was pretty treacherous (or ‘fun’ if you were in an empty parking lot with an emergency brake!).  So, we skipped on the museum and just went to my folks to exchange xmas gifts.

One of the books that Mom and Dad got Brody was one about the artifacts found in King Tuts tomb.  It’s not a kids book, it is something you’d pick up in a museum gift shop, very nice, and meant for grown ups.

So this morning, feeling restless as my body is pretty sore from all the shoveling, I got up early.  No surprise, Brody was already up.  I went in his room expecting to see him playing with his DS or his legos.

Nope.  He was reading this book.  He then asked for a globe to find Cairo and started asking about the Egyptian Museum of Cairo.  We came to the computer (as I planned to blog anyway) and using google earth looked at Cairo, the Egyptian Museum of Cairo and then found videos of both at you tube.

He even recognized items from the video’s and then showed them to me in the book.

How cool is that!

I just wanted to brag about my wife, the next Rachel Ray (I’d say Paula Dean, but my wife is hot, RR is hot, so ERGO…).

We recently hosted cards.  We always end up with the xmas event and this year was another success.  We all sat around, ate, talked, did the gift exchange and just kibitzed till 1 a.m.

Dayna did a make your own taco theme, but for the coup de resistance, she made Mexican fried ice cream.  She had to boil tons of Crisco, put pitas in there really quick (and then Mo would ‘cinnamonize’ them) and after making ice cream balls, she had to cover them in crusty stuff, corn flakes and things – it was like shake and bake for ice cream – and then flash fry them.

The ice cream was a HIT.

We only lost too pans to nasty Crisco residue.

An there was only one small fire.

My wife rocks!

For Christmas my Mom had her piano moved to our home.  It’s a very nice piano, they paid thousands for it new in the 70’s, I’m certain it would be quite expensive to purchase a similar one today (such that if we had that money lying around, it would end up being a Ducati Sport Classic GT1000.

So first…our sincere thanks to Mom for the gift. 

Mo was very excited.  She really wants to learn and take lessons.  Dayna placed some post-its on the keys and gave her some simple songs in tablature.   Mo is getting darn good at ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ and ‘Flight of the Bumblebee.’

Dayna, who is an excellent pianist, is also glad to have it.  I’ve never really seen her play outside of videos from the 80’s, so it is neat to see her play in ‘real life’.

Once we got it however, the big question was where to put it.  Also, it arrived three days before we hosted the monthly card party.  So with less than 24 hours till our party, our front room was a mess! 

I would say kudos to my wife at this point, who was incredibly relaxed considering all we had to do.

Long story short, we were able to use almost all of our antique pieces, rearrange the room a bit, a created a very nice little room, that has a very 1920’s feel, complimented by a new wooden lamp.  

I can’t stop commenting on how I like the new, little space.  Once we get that piano tuned, we are all set!

When we recently received the gift of a piano from my parents, we had a real tetris game to play in our front room. 

I was having trouble getting a bump start on options and sat at the dinner table visualizing what to do.  Apparently, when I do this I close my eyes.

Mo noticed and said, ‘What HELL are you doing Dad’

NOOOO she didn’t say that!  Kidding!

She did ask ‘Why are your eyes closed.’

After I told her she said ‘Remember when we were at Thanksgiving, and everyone was saying the pledge with their eyes closed; I kept my open and peeked!’

Every year you get one of those annoying forwards that tell you what life has been like for kids graduating from high school that year. 

‘They’ve never owned a record player.’

‘They were born after Elvis died.’

‘They never paid a reasonable price for their tennis shoes.’

I experienced a future comment that will soon by on that list, ‘they always recycled’.

I was recently in Mo’s classroom, and all we parents were helping with a project.  I hate working on projects when surrounded by clutter (‘clutter’ being pretty prevalent in a kindergarten classroom) so as we cut paper I took some to the trash can.

When I came back Mo looked disappointed. 

She grabbed my hand and took me out to the hallway.  She pointed at a box and said ‘This is where the recycling goes Dad.  We don’t throw paper in the trash.  I won’t tell Ms. Bouk because you didn’t know.’

In addition to reading, writing and spelling, Mo has again surprised us.

She recently asked if she could join the Girl (Daisy) Scouts.  Dayna had mentioned it to me, I saw a recruiting poster with a number about town, Dayna called, and yesterday she (Mo) attended her first meeting.

(Hmmm…blonde hair; blue eyes; likes to socialize with people?   I gotta check out the UPS guy!)

Anyway, she came home from her first meeting and informed us that she had to fill up the flower petals on her construction paper daisy with things she’s done around the house; things she did voluntarily and was not asked or told to do.

Leave it to a kid to figure this one out:  So we gave a few suggestions (good ones, that she could do, but would also help) and she said ‘No!  Since you told me I can’t do that’.   So, the rest of the night, whenever we’d ask for assistance she decline saying she had to come up with stuff on her own! 

‘Be nice to your Brother.’ 

‘Since you told me to, I can’t.  So I have to keep pissing him off…Good job Dad!’

However, she did an excellent job of finding stuff to do and we were really proud of her.

Sadly, I don’t think she quite gets that she doesn’t get paid for ringing the bell for Salvation Army tomorrow. 

All parents think their kids are adorable.  Whether it is a genetic feature of evolution so we choose to care for our young (rather than eat or abandon them) or just an enhanced aptitude for denial, it keeps us seeing our kids as fashion models and other's kids as being living incarnations of beings who have had their images comically altered via photoshop (see below):

Regardless, you don’t want to admit that you’re kids are unattractive.  Sadly, we were recently faced with a test.  Both of the kids got their school pics back.

Plainly…the looked awful!

It was actually difficult to hide our discontent when the kids were showing them to us.

It was even more difficult to politely explain why on ‘re-take day’ we were returning the photos and doubling that day’s preening efforts!

‘I’m sorry honey; it is just that you look like ass in this picture…love you!’  Yeah, that’d go over well.

We did get the re-takes back today.  They are far better and we’re convinced that any issues reside with the forced, I’m modeling for the Sears catalog poses they tried to put them in, and not on their appearance!

So I’m sitting in a chair.

Mo comes up to me, holding a tennis shoe, and she has a big grin on her face.

Like all exceptional parents I look at her, stare for a second and then kindly say…

‘Put that in the garage, will ya?!’

She then informs me that she just tied her shoe!

Poppykosh (or some 21^st century equivalent) I say!  Brody didn’t learn till first grade.

She then counters, ‘You’re gonna eat that kosh of the poppy Bucko!’  She then sits, places her shoe on and ties it.

We go downstairs, where for the next 30 minutes she is constantly taking off, putting on and tying shoes.

Kudos to Dayna for teaching her!

Brody has expressed in interest in movie making (which presently allows him to incorporate his other passion, Legos).  I think he may also have some potential in marketing.

This is a card he drew for me.  I’m only showing the inside; it also had a cover and a logo for ‘BrodyCards’ on the back.

For those of you who are nerd-deficient or do not have male children, Anakin Skywalker starts off as a good guy, but events eventually drive him to evil and he becomes the evil Lord Darth Vader. 

I like how Brody encapsulates the dichotomy.  Heck, this is a better poster than the one they did for Episode I which had the little boy with a large Vader shadow behind him (it doesn’t look anywhere as good as it sounds).

As you may be aware, there was a presidential election recently.   At stately Britton manor, we tend to talk pretty openly and grown uppy on a wide range of topics: that could be religion, evolution, personal decisions (smoking, alcohol, drugs), facial hair (what can I say…Mo wants the beard back…I kinda do too) and of course politics.

I haven’t written much about that here as I once did.  I think after reading ‘Wicked’, which to me is a tale on the dangers of fanaticism (even when one’s cause is just), I’ve laid off getting to preachy (except with my Dad and Brother – deal with it!) and focused on the kids.  This is a venue for me to remember all the little anecdotes that might otherwise be lost in the ether.

And again, I digress.

So, Brody and Mo were pretty clear on where we stood politically and why were stood there. 

In Brody’s class, the election was perfect for their social studies work.  They learned about the electoral college, voting, elections, the (more-or-less) two party system and elected officials.  They did have an election in their room, however, knowing that the kids would simply mimick their parents, they had an election between stuffed animals (each with a running mate…I don’t know if they had MILF Glasses or not) for class mascot.

As an aside, one of the kids he worked with informed him that Obama was a terrorist.  See, they even learned about negative campaigning. :)~

One of the projects was to write what you would do as President (I believe I referenced this before).  Scanned below, is his work.  I think it’s pretty darn good.

(click to enlarge)

We recently went to parent-teacher conferences.  One component which I found very impressive was the self assessment. 

Basically, Brody was given a report card to fill out on himself.  I greatly enjoyed reading it and it was obvious that he put some thought into it.  We also think he was pretty accurate.

I’m just surprised to see a third grader use the term ‘so-so’.   J

(click to enlarge)