God Jul and Lycklig Lucia! (Merry Christmas and a happy Lucia Day!)

Happy Sankta Lucia Day! What? You didn't know it is Sankta Lucia day? Well it is. So hope it was a happy one. It was a happy one in our house for two reasons. Reason #1 - SNOW! Finally - a serious storm and we love it. Reason #2 - although we were unable to attend the Swedish heritage society's annual Lucia celebration - we were able to hold our own celebration thanks to our great friends the Blums. We got a mysterious package yesterday. After determining it was not ticking and therefore not a bomb we opened it to find an awesome Lucia crown.

I won't go into the historical aspects of Lucia because you can read that elsewhere (like here) but I will tell you that for families, the tradition goes like this. First, the oldest daughter of the family dresses up like Lucia in the morning and wakes the rest of her family with Saffron Buns and Lucia songs. School usually ends early on that day and neighbors gather for songs, food, and fun that night. (night starts about 2:00 in the winter in Sweden so I don't actually have any idea what time they gather. I just remember it was dark which is why the light brought by Sankta Lucia is so important.)

Right on schedule this morning, Lainey woke us up at 5:45! Unfortunately she forgot the costume and she didn't even OFFER us anything to eat which was pretty rude I thought. Since she didn't have all the elements right we told her to go back to bed. Sheesh. Some people's children.

Later however she did come up with her own costume and asked if I would video her signing the Lucia song. Sure, I said (desperately curious to see how she would do with the Swedish lyrics that I'm sure she does not know.) It was pretty awesome. Actually, I'm pretty sure this is just what I look like when we go to the Messiah sing in, minus the crown of course. Here it is....





The video takes forever to upload so while I'm waiting I might as well include a few other funny things. Last week Romney dressed up as his favorite superhero for a few days straight. I'm not sure if it is Fighter-man or Spiderman (I think he is saying Fighter-man personally but after many attempts to interpret I'm still stumped.) Romney can't decide if he is a good guy or a bad guy so it changes from minute to minute. He did a lot of dancing on the table this day in addition to his other superhero good deeds.

Lainey really likes smoothies and they tend to make her look just like the Joker. So who knows, maybe she is really the bad guy.












Other fun things leading up to Christmas.....

Christmas Tree Hunting in Wayne County. I know what you are thinking. What? The Jacksons? I heard they were democrat tree hugging environment lovers. They cut down trees!?! Well get over it - we do. Plus, this year we did it without a permit! Okay, that was actually an accident. The permit place was closed when they told us they would be open. We'd driven the three and a half hours from Salt Lake so we couldn't exactly go home empty handed. This would be our 5th year or so getting trees in this area and we've always been legal and we've NEVER seen a ranger....until this year. Luckily, it was a nice ranger and she didn't give us the nearly $1000 ticket that we technically deserved and let us off with a warning and directions for how to pay for the trees we got (we had 6 trees for various people when we were stopped!) So anyway - the ranger we met in Salina assured us that we were helping him by removing the "weeds" from his forest. He said, "we pay crews to burn them, teams to spray them with poison, and then we charge YOU to go cut one down. Isn't America great?" He was a pretty funny guy. And luckily not in the mood to throw us in the slammer. So now we don't even have to feel guilty about having a live tree! They were going to kill it anyway. Now it gets to have a few weeks of love, lights, and ornaments before it dies. That is how I want to go out. Family Home Evening with the Christmas lights. (These are the only two pictures where someone was not crying. I don't know what it is but going to the lights makes my kids unable to walk and/or gives them great desires to roll around on the sidewalk.) Lainey had a really itchy leg as well which led to this funny picture. (suit unzipped, coat unzipped, pajamas unzipped, hand satisfying the itchy thigh. Goofy girl.)

Analytics

Wombat and the Hurricane is just over a year old now. Happy birthday! (3 months belated)

Okay - so google analytics is pretty stinking cool. if you don't know what it is then let me explain. If you are a business (or a random dude who blogs sometimes because you can't scrapbook to save your life) then it will track your website for you for free. it will tell you how many people have visited the site each day, month etc. it will tell you where those people live (state and/or country of origin,) how long they stay on the site etc.

The truth is that we started the blog for ourselves and we continue to write in order to preserve our own memories. On the other hand, it would be a lie if we did not admit that we enjoy sharing our life's adventures with the other four people that read this as well. So here is to those that have made these statistics possible! Namely, my mom, my wife, and myself. We usually click on the blog a few times a day to see if we have written anything new. I maybe should thank my brother also who may be using mirrored computers or some other sort of tech geek thing to make me think someone in Africa and South America are actually getting to our blog somehow. For the four of us - this post is for you! The Readers!

tracking the site for exactly 6 months now.....

Highest traffic day - November 3rd, 2008 55 visitors. two different posts on the evening of Nov 2nd - November Begining and October Ending

Number of states who have viewed - 40! (well, 39 I guess and a few that it couldn't tell where they were coming from) I really should stop this post at this point. If you are a betting person the you may want to put some money on my wife reading this and then password protecting the blog. This is the only disadvantage to analytics.

We have NOT been viewed in - AK (it is because we are anti-Palin), LA, MS, SC, KY, WV, VT, ME, NE, ND, and RI. Come on Rhode Island people! Help us out!

Maybe once we get to all 50 states we'll start selling something along with our humorous anecdotes.

Number of countries who have viewed - 10

USA, Japan (Hi Sachie!), Ireland, Brazil, Trinidad and Tobago (what the?), Canada, Nigeria, UK, Austria, Germany. (jer - could you get someone in Australia to click on my blog so we can be on every continent?)

Mr./Ms. Trinidad and Tobago - could you please make yourself known to us so we know if we need to password protect our blog or not? Thanks so much. if you can't remember - here is the link to what you read.

Most viewed post - Red Neck Funeral has far and away been the most viewed (122 times.) It helped that a few of my cousins linked to it. (this also brought some international traffic as well I think.)

For us the blog has always been about documenting and I think it is interesting to see how the blogging world continues to grow and change and it thought these statisics were interesting to note as part of our documenation.

I know there are others out there that track your sites. What do they look like? I'm curious.

what am I teaching this boy??

Romney and I were driving home in the car today and he asked if he could watch a movie.

NO. We're almost home. We only watch movies on long drives.

Long, long pause. I thought we'd moved on.

and then:

"Mom, if I scream and fuss at you and then take a big breath can I watch a movie?"

oh help me.

at least he still has enough innocence to not know better than to show me the inner workings of his maneuvering. may that last a very long time!

Laine the Hurricane - famous quotes from this month

(warning - this post contains excessive use of potty words. I didn't realize this until I had written the post but feel now that I must give you fair warning.)

So we have had a couple of great lines come out of the Hurricane's mouth lately. From the minute she could talk she has said the funniest things. Here are a few highlights from our 5 year old.

Laine has a hard time understanding "personal time" and often likes company while going to the bathroom. She comes up with all king of excuses to get us in the room. (DAD, come fold the toilet paper for me. DAD, There is a giant spider in the bathtub! DAD, my poop turned florescent blue from that wierd ice cream I ate. Come see! [this really did happen], DAD, Will you come in and make sure I don't fall in the toilet again?)

The other day she was taking care of business and she asked me to come into the bathroom. As I came around the corner where she could see me she started glaring at me and said, "DAD!"

"What?" I said.

At this point she pointed her head down, but then looked up at me with her eyes in a very judgmental way.....

"Dad, why are you wearing that beautiful shirt?"

I was stumped. She has an amazing (as well as interesting) fashion sense. To me it was a plain old black button up shirt that I don't wear very often. To her it was a silk shirt and she could tell I had not purchased it at a concert which is where most of my other shirts come from.

Laine has also been having a hard time sleeping lately. The simple hour change from daylight savings is still messing with her and it has led to some ridiculously early mornings. Because of this we have been trying to get her to nap on the weekends. Last weekend she was exhausted and she agreed that a nap was a good idea. We offered some sort of sugar laced something to reward her after she woke up. At this she informed us that although she agreed to take a nap she did not intend to actually sleep.

"Dad, I'm not going to take a nap. I'm just going to TRY to take a nap."

"Is is possible you will fall asleep if you try?"

"No dad (exasperated sigh here) I'm just going to try to sleep. I'm NOT going to SLEEP. I DON'T have to and YOU can't make me! I'm just going to try."

Last night I set myself up again. First, I need to give some background: we blame all the bad things that happen in our house on a naughty little Swedish forest troll that Laine has told us is named Truck. Truck the Tomten (Tomten is Swedish for troll - Santa, for example, is Jul Tomten or the Christmas Troll.)

So anyway, the kids were desperate to help Marie stir the meatloaf she was making last night. She wouldn't let them but everytime she turned her back they tried anyway and raw meat would go flying. Nasty. After dinner was over I noticed a lump-o-something on the floor. Honestly it looked a little like a TERD. Gross. Given my lack of ability to be quiet sometimes, I asked Marie is someone had pooped on the floor or if we had just had some meat go missing. She was not amused at all, but Laine the Hurricane was. By this time I was already working on cleaning it up but she was shouting - LET ME SEE, LET ME SEE! I knew I was in trouble, and in trying to make it better I said maybe it was just tomten poop. (what was I thinking?) She gave her vote that someone had definitely pooped on the floor and that it was probably Truck. So now I realized I was in even MORE trouble, and I told her it must be meat and not poop, and I was pretty sure that tomten poop looked a lot different, a lot more colorful. (again, what was I thinking?)

"Really, Dad? Will you show me?"

"What do you mean will I show you? How am I going to do that?"

"Dad - lets go look it up on the internet!"

Busted. There was no way I was going to do a google image search for troll poop.