amusing convos

Wendy: Gift cards are THE BEST Christmas gift you can get a teacher.
Me: (excitedly) But how about an ornament with a picture of your kid's face in it??!
Wendy: Ugh NO!! They will throw that away! Gift cards!!
Me: (Quietly) Oh Okay

We usually have a stray kid or two hanging out at our house at any given time. We have a pretty awesome neighborhood. Poor Mari has like 5 kids that aren't hers most days. A few days ago, 8 year old Morgan was over for the afternoon, probably because Mari wasn't home.

I was making a word banner for a friend's birthday. It was a Greek word because my friend is Greek. I was explaining to Mya that my friend's family is from Greece so they speak Greek there. Like people from Japan speak Japanese and people from France speak French. Morgan chimed in, "Yeah, I'm lots of things like, Swedish... American... and Oregon!"

MYA - 

Mya: Mom, you shouldn't look at your phone while you're driving. It's like bald eagle or something.
Me: Ummm whattt?
Mya: You know, it's like breaking the rules...
Me: Uh... yeah... bald eagle?
Mya: Yeah, like against the law.
Me: Ooooohhh illegal? 
Mya: Yes! Illegal.

🌝 

Winter - Can we have a big breakfast?! Pancakes and eggs and sausages and fruit and orange juice?!!
Me: I made you a big dinner last night. I don't feel like making a big breakfast. Can't you just have cereal or something?
Mya: Actually I made dinner...

Me: Oh yeah... ugh fine I'll make breakfast

WINTER - 

Winter: (heading back to school after winter break) I hope Mrs. Gorski remembers my name... 

🌝 

I realized the other day that we don't take the girls inside fast food establishments very often. We really only take them to Max's, the local Mexican restaurant. So they are not very familiar with the process of ordering, paying and waiting for your food.

I noticed that Winter was drinking a cup of soda. "Where did you get that?!" I asked, terrified she just grabbed it off of some stranger's table. She just shrugged and said, "I just asked the guy for a cup and he gave me one and I filled it up over there." 


...makes sense. 

😊

Winter: Mom are red markers made outta blood?

ADDIE - 

Addie sees me eating a cookie. Excitedly asks: Oooooh Mommy did you go poopoo?!!

Me: Umm no... 

Addie: You has to go poopoo in the potty for a cookie!!

Me: Oh... Yeah I did.

Addie: No you didn't!! You has to go poopoo in the potty for a cookie mommy! 

Ugh potty training. 

🌝

Addie: We're home!!! I love home!!! Thanks for driving us home mom!!!

🌝

Out to breakfast at a restaurant. The waitress brought us extra plates for the little ones. 
Addie: Oooooh plates!! I love plates!!
I love her zest for life.

🌝

Addie: I can't wait to blow out the candles!!
Me: It's not your birthday. Only Rosie gets to blow out the candles. But Mari will give you a piece of cake! 
Addie: I LOVE her!!! She's my best friend EVER EVER!!

But then when Addie walked in, Mari asked her if she wanted pizza and she was very disappointed. She cried,  "NOOOOOO! Where's the caaaaaake???!!!!"

🙂

Addie knows so much more about life than Mya and Winter did at her age because she has big sisters.

Me: No more grapes or you guys will get diarrhea.
Addie: Yeah and then we'll be dead like dinosaurs and monsters and we'll lay on the ground like this (falls on floor) and not talk!!

🙂


Some kids tried to get into my minivan yesterday. They opened the door and started telling me something about their day then realized there were new kids in car seats in their car. Then they looked at me and backed up and looked at the van. "Hey this isn't the daycare van!" Said the older one. "Cute kids!" said the younger little girl. Then they walked away. After watching the whole thing, Addie commented, "That wasn't Mya and Winter, right mommy?!" 
Right Addie. =)

thankful thursday - my coozy brown blanket

Ever since Mya was a toddler she has pronounced cozy like cooozy, like jacuzzi. I love it. This is my coozy brown blanket. Yes. This Thursday I am thankful for a blanket. But, it's more than just a blanket. It's an experience.

In December, with all the Christmas gift exchanges, I was on the hunt for a new soft dark colored throw blanket. We have two black dogs and unfortunately dog hair is all over. So a light colored blanket just won't work. I don't want to see the hair on my blanket. If I can't see it, it doesn't exist. Soooo, I scored this dark brown super soft blanket at Dan's family's gift exchange. I felt guilty stealing it from Dan's sweet teenage cousin who played with my kids all afternoon. But that's the way the game is played. And this blanket was exactly what I was looking for. I am so glad I stole it. It's absolutely lovely. And the guilt has almost worn off completely.

snow day

Top reasons to take your family of six to the snow:

You feel guilty that they've never been.
It's 35 minutes away.
Your daughter wants to build a snowman.
You have friends with snow gear that are happy to lend you everything you need.
Everyone else on Facebook has been to the snow this year.
Your kids see the snow on the mountains daily and ask if we can go daily, sometimes twice a day.
Your husband agrees to go, finally.

So last week, we got the kids dressed in their snow gear and drove the 35 minutes to Mt. Baldy. It's not the most beautiful spot but it gets the job done. People leave trash and broken pieces of plastic sleds there but there's enough snow to do a little sledding and build some snowmen. Very icy ones but still technically snowmen. 

We parked the car, hiked about 5 minutes to a spot across a little river and I put Angus down and noticed he was missing a boot. Ugh. Dan went and fetched it. It was all the way back at the car of course. My hero =)

I've learned to take the family pic right away when everyone is happy to be there and no one is melting down yet. 

Some nice people offered to lend us their sleds. So we did a little sledding. We figured it would probably be better than our boogie board. 

Addie couldn't decide if she liked the snow or not. 

Angus didn't really say much. He just sat and observed the whole time. He couldn't really walk in his rain boots in the snow anyway.

Then we built some snowmen. 

The End. 

Knott`s

Knott's Berry Farm January came super quick like every other January has for the last few years. So we took the little ones and Uncle Bill, Dan's BFF, to our favorite amusement park where we get discount tickets, it's little kid friendly and it only takes 30 minutes to get there.

It was pretty fun taking the kids this year. Addie is close enough to the minimum height requirement for the camp snoopy rides so the workers let her go on all of them. She went on everything she was allowed to ride. She's pretty gutsy I must say. And the big girls still love all the little kid rides so it worked out well. Poor Angus was sick so he just sat in the stroller all day. But it was probably better than having an active toddler trying to explore the park on his time table. And Mya still runs away from Snoopy so we were only able to get a pic of Winter and Addie with the big friendly doggie. 

Bill rode the accelerater (AKA the ride that makes you feel like you're about to explode) with me because Dan's not really into the headache and upset stomach that follows taking a ride on a rollercoaster in your 40s. 

It was a good day.

Wedding oranges

3 minutes ago

Details

I left the younger 3 with a babysitter so I could take Mya to a birthday party where my presence was required and Dan was working that day.

I told winter she could make "lemonade" with the clementine oranges that were starting to look wrinkly. I don't know why they sell those things by the bag. We only need like 5. The rest always go bad. The babysitter texted me to make sure winter was telling the truth (always a good idea) about using all the oranges to make lemonade. I told her she could.

 I came home to a very excited winter who had made about  five bucks on what I assumed was 15 handsqueezed clementines, a cup of sugar and a gallon of water. Basically orange flavored sugar water. Yum. She said our next door neighbor didn't want any lemonade (smart lady) but gave her a dollar anyway. And her friend Kendall tried some and was not impressed. She said it was not lemonade but watered down orange juice.

Another neighbor, however, absolutely loved it. Winter said she even asked for the recipe. Awe how sweet, I thought. What a nice lady to make Winter feel so special.

I talked to that neighbor later that day and she actually loved the "lemonade." She asked me if it was a family recipe. She called it super refreshing and asked me if Winter used organic sugar.

Then she asked me about the special oranges we brought back from a ranch we visited when we attended a wedding recently. Winter told her that everyone at the wedding went orange picking afterward and we picked about 100 oranges. What a fabulous wedding that would be I have to admit.

Too bad it was purely fictional. I explained to her that I got the special oranges (AKA clementines) at Trader Joe's and the only other ingredients were water and sugar and I have no idea how much sugar she used because I didn't supervise this batch but she usually puts as much as I let her.

I had yet ANOTHER talk with Winter about stories and how it's not okay to trick people into believing your story when it's not true.

Part of me wishes I didn't have to correct her because it's pretty entertaining when grownups totally believe her tall tales. But I'm the mom... so I did.

black and white january

A couple of monkeys eating their bananas.

When you get a popsicle mold for Christmas, you try it out as soon as possible. 

Even if it's 50 degrees out.

Man she's getting big fast.

Eating cookies on their pillow/dog.

He loves the stupid dogs. At least someone does... =)

If something is pink like the car Angus is sitting in, the picture is best in black and white =)

I took this because it was 7:00AM and Mya came downstairs dressed like Cinderella then made a plate of worms out of play dough and then made a sign that read, "eat the worms!" 

Then she asked me if she could dye her hair yellow like Cinderella. I was still drinking my first cup of coffee.