moving on...sort of

well, as much as I love those bowling pictures, I'm thinking it's time to post on the rest of our Thanksgiving weekend, which was awesome. we left the kids with Jim's parents (thanks Jacksons!) and had our own mini-vacation, which hasn't happened for WAY too long. so that was fun. we did have an almost tragic ending to our weekend when Jim got his head stuck in a shark's mouth, but miraculously he escaped. phew. he strikes a pretty convincing pose there being eaten by the shark, doesn't he? with his hand casually in his pocket... "oh no. aahhh. shark." good thing someone lassoed that sharks head just in time. so obviously, we went to universal studios. neither of us had been since we were kids - remember the E.T. ride where you sat on the bike and flew up over the town? gone. I was pretty disappointed. but don't worry, king kong still attacks the tram on the studio tour, so at least there's that. AND we got to meet curious george, which was really exciting for our kids. I'll spare you the picture of that one.

anyway, the other big highlight of the trip was going to see WICKED!!! holy cow. loved it. I've been listening to the music pretty much non-stop since we got back, to the point that even Lainey is starting to memorize the songs and asking when she gets to go see it. um...maybe when you're eight? really, seeing Wicked was only a small part of our music/musical filled week. we started the weekend before with both Skyline and Highland High's musicals, fine productions both, though I'm grateful Wicked was after those or it could have been rough making it through! THEN, when we came home we went to the Messiah sing-in at Abravanel Hall to kick off our Christmas season, and THEN a few days later went to see Billy Joel thanks to my brother, which was SO much fun. truly. he seriously rocks out on the piano. actually, I had to alternate between listening to Christmas music and Billy Joel while putting the lights on my Christmas tree - it was a break in tradition, but so good.

remember thanksgiving?

it turns out that blogging for me is mostly about what funny pictures we've taken lately, and so instead of telling you the details of our lovely thanksgiving dinners or the movie we saw that night (August Rush - loved it), today's belated blog is all about thanksgiving bowling. I thought that thanksgiving bowling was kind of an obscure tradition until we tried to just walk on to a couple of lanes up at Olympus Hills bowling on Thanksgiving morning, and they said, "we might be able to squeeze you in in about three hours." they weren't joking! the place was packed. not to give up our hopes of bowling so easily (none of us had dinner to prepare - what else were we going to do?) we drove and called around town, in search of other open and available bowling alleys. at long last, we settled on possibly the nastiest, most ghetto bowling alley in the valley which shall remain nameless to protect the innocent. but yuck.

you may not know, but jim descends from a bowling dynasty. don't mess.

laine is a die-hard. wanted to do it all herself, so she'd heft up those heavy balls with her little bird arms and hoist it up to the top of that thing and let 'er rip. she only dropped the ball and almost crushed her foot twice. very close. could have been ugly.
due to the children among us, they gave us one alley with bumpers and one alley without. I'm taking kids with me from now on when I bowl. I'm converted to bumpers. Lainey, Jim, and I all bowled strikes on our first frame - no ricocheting off the sides either (although the bumpers are really handy on those times too.) some of us only wished they had bumpers.

some of us legitimately don't need bumpers. this is ben doing the I'm-so-awesome-I-just-bowled-a-thanksgiving-turkey walk.

some of us were barely even aware that we were bowling. are they perfect together, or what? (I will note that ben scored higher just goofing around than I did. figures.)

some of us actually care what their score is, and manage to remain very focused on their scores despite all of the other shenanigans going on.
jane actually took most of these photos, but it was with my camera! so...sorry they're on my blog instead of yours janie! love your form, though.
Rom is working on his rock-star hair and went bowling mostly just hoping to see and be seen.


and me? I'm just grateful to have left my old bowling nickname from college behind. (Thunder, referring to the very loud thunk a bowling ball makes if you throw it more than roll it. not that I'd know, of course.)

Understanding, hide and seek, and trains

I have a lot of things to say today. Some pet peeves and some funny stories and even though I know you will quit reading halfway through this post I’m going to squish it all in anyway.

Chapter 1

I don’t understand anything going on in my house anymore. When we were having our first child and didn’t know if it was going to be a boy or a girl I admitted that I wanted a boy because I don’t understand girls. Who does really? No men that I know. So I thought I would understand a boy better…..we of course had a girl and I of course fell in love with her right away. Lainey is great and although she is pure girl, drama queen central, and all around crazy, I love her. (today we were having an interaction that was – I love you even though you don’t like football Lainey, to which she replied, I love you even though you do.)

I am encountering a problem understanding my daughter currently, but it's not at all the kind of problem I anticipated! Laine is a great communicator. Thanks to sign language as a baby and very advanced speech pretty early in life I’ve been able to understand everything she says. That has all changed now. I no longer understand anything she says to me. Why don’t I understand anything? Laine now only speaks to me in Spanish. We started Lainey in a Spanish immersion preschool that ONLY speaks Spanish. For three hours every day she hears absolutely no English and she thinks it is awesome. Marie also thinks this is great and has recently dug out her Spanish dictionaries from AP Spanish in high school and she and Lainey carry on and on in Spanish. The only problem is that I don’t speak any Spanish. One Spanish class in 7^th grade is just not cutting it. Lainey also has no patience or understanding for the fact that I don’t speak Spanish. The other day we were driving home and Lainey was in the back of the car munching down some chicken nuggets. “yo quiero mas catsup por favor papa?”

“What?” I said. “yo quiero mas catsup por favor papa, por mi pollo.”

I don’t speak Spanish but I’m not totally dumb so I could hear the word ketchup in there somewhere (not sure if she was using a real word or just spanishizing the word) but anyway – I knew she said something about either wanting or needing ketchup or NOT wanting or needing ketchup, I couldn’t tell for sure. So I asked –“Do you need more ketchup?” “si papa, gracias.”

This morning we were having breakfast together and Laine kept saying over and over something I couldn’t understand. I knew she was asking for something but EVERYONE knows I don’t speak Spanish so I assumed no response was expected from me. I assumed wrong. Finally Marie said , “Jim , will you please help her with that?” “sure,” I said, “but I have no idea what she is asking for.”

Marie started to laugh like she had just realized for the first time that I don’t speak Spanish and explained that Laine was requesting some juice. I’ve tried retaliating and only speaking Swedish to everyone but they just ignore me and act like I’m not there. Not very effective.

Chapter 2

We have been playing hide and seek a ton with the kids lately. It has been really fun. Rom has a couple of favorite hiding spots but the absolute best spot for him is in the pantry. He can stand in there in the dark for the longest time and think it is just great. So this morning this was what was going on in our house. A little pre-church, try not to get to dirty or mess too many things up round of hide and seek. Rom went straight into the pantry. Finally the game ended but he wouldn’t come out. He just kept shutting the door. I didn’t really care because it kept him occupied while Marie and I were trying to get ready for church. Finally I was about to walk out door with Laine, and Marie and Rom were going to follow a few minutes later. It occurred to me that Marie didn’t know Romney was in there so I let her know…”oh, hey, Romney is in the pantry if you are looking for him.” She laughed at the silliness of this statement and went to get him out. I was almost out the door when I heard Marie scream.

Obviously I had to go back to see what had happened and found Romney sitting on the floor of the pantry with both hands in the Crisco. I swear I had checked on him just minutes ago!

Chapter 3

The kids and I were on our own yesterday morning and decided to head out for a bike ride. Lainey has a new trail-a-bike that she FINALLY is willing to try and it turns out she LOVES it – which is awesome and will lead to great fun next summer I predict. Rom however still needs a spot and we only have a bike trailer for him. So how do we do this? BIKE TRAIN! We hooked up the trail-a-bike to me and then the trailer to Lainey. I was officially the engine, Laine the dining car, and Romney the caboose. They rode like this all the way to my parents house (3 or 4 miles) hung out for awhile, then rode back. Lainey was a super trooper. It was awesome.

I tried to find a Jerry Douglas song "We hide and seek" to add to the playlist in honor of this post.....but the service didn't have it - so go check it out and buy it. Great song.

We did add Besame Mucho (laine tells me this means kiss me a lot) for your spanish enjoyment

a contender

this picture brings back an old challenge of catherine's: funniest or ugliest picture on a blog.

game on. I dare you to beat it.

let us know in the comments where we can find your entries in this auspicious contest. can't wait!