Nonconventional Christmas list

Love came down at Christmas,

Love all lovely, Love Divine;

Love was born at Christmas;

Star and angels gave the sign.

~Christina Rossetti

This year is the first one that Alex has really "gotten" Christmas.  He has been so excited - to get our tree, to put up the Christmas lights, to play with the manger scene, etc, etc.  Today the first presents appeared under the tree and it has been TORTURE for him.  I'm totally convinced that you don't really appreciate Christmas until you have kids.  But this post isn't about all that...

I asked Alex what he wanted for Christmas.  He told me that he wanted "a toy".  I'm pretty sure this will be the last year presents for him are so easy.  Next year I'm sure he will have a long, very specific list.  And if he's anything like his mother, it will be color-coded and sortable by several columns and available in a variety of media.  And if he's anything like his father, it will include a price-comparison analysis of several major retailers and detailed specifications regarding why it has to be THIS EXACT MODEL.

On a side note, Alex did volunteer that Mark wants a little donkey for Christmas.  (I'm not sure where he comes up with this stuff except that we've been reading the Christmas story and singing this song which I link to mainly because the camel cracks me up.)  Conveniently, a while back, I saw a Craigslist ad for a "Real Nice Donkey" that I could purchase for $500 or trade for something worth $500.  I'm sure the donkey will fit in nicely in the backyard with the dog and stegosaurus.

Because my son was not specific about what he wants for Christmas, I have created a Christmas list for him.  He didn't mention any of these items but, because of the amount of time he spends playing with these types of things, I know he would be totally delighted to receive any of them.

1. Box - any size
2. Rock - again any size
3. Stick - preferably large
4. Cooking tongs
5. Laundry basket - preferably large enough to get in
6. Vegetable steamer basket
7. Rolling pin
8. Tupperware or Gladware - any sizes, with or without lids

I provide this list as a joke but it occurs to me that there are those (Nancy, Michael, I'm looking at you) who would actually give these things to my son.  And, while he'll be delighted, I'm going to think it's a little strange.

Have a terrific Christmas!

Stegosaurus-related conversations with Alex

“Man, I so sick of dinosaurs. They wasn't extinct, I'd go out an' kill 'em myself.”   ~Lawrence Block
 

Alex: Quick, quick, we gotta hide.  A stegosaurus is coming!
Me: Really?  Where is it?
Alex: Oh, that's not a stegosaurus, that's Doggie.
Me: What a relief!

Alex: Mommy, there's a stegosaurus under my bed!!
Me: I can say with reasonable certainty, there's not.  Go to sleep.

Alex: Quick, quick, we gotta hide.  A stegosaurus is coming!
Me: If there is, in fact, a stegosaurus roaming along Mill Plain Boulevard tonight, I'm taking it's picture.
Jeff:  If there's a stegosaurus around here, we're taking it home.  And we're not turning it in or anything like that.  We're going to keep it and make a million dollars.
Me: Who would you turn a stegosaurus in to?  The Humane Society?  Animal control?
Jeff: It doesn't matter.  We're not turning it in.
Me: We have enough trouble picking up dog poop.  You really think a stegosaurus is a good idea?
Jeff: That's a good point.

Me: Quick, quick, get out of the tub.  A stegosaurus is coming!
Alex: No, Mommy, there's not.

Ambiguous Acronyms

“brb, ttyl ok? wow, i saved a 'ton' of time with those acronyms.”   ~Stephen Colbert

I picked up this flyer at play school recently:

Apparently FISH is an acronym (though no one seems to know what it stands for) for a charitable organization that collects food.  I'm glad I checked because this is what I was going to donate:

I picked this up at Kahneeta last weekend:

There were two of these originally.  I used one, liked it and brought the other one home.  But then I began to wonder: "Is it LA Fresh, the letters L and A like Los Angeles or La Fresh like La Pine or La Center?"  It's not a big deal but if I'm going to ask if Target carries this brand of makeup remover, I don't want to sound like an idiot.

And, while I'm on the subject, I don't begin to understand why those towns are called "La Pine" and "La Center".  How does it make sense to combine the Spanish feminine word for "the" with "pine" and "center"?  I would really like to know what the people who named these towns were thinking.

And again, while I'm on the subject, where do you stand on the toiletries provided by hotels?  I am usually of the "use some while I'm there but leave it all behind when I leave" school of thinking (the obvious exception being the recent makeup remover wipes).  Jeff, on the other hand, is of the "use the bare minimum so we can pack it all up and drag it back home with us" school.  It's not a point of friction in our marriage or anything, I just think he's crazy.

Finally, here is a recent Facebook conversation that took place between some of my friends and I that seemed to fit in nicely with the theme of this post.  "TCC" for those of you not aware stands for "The Country Church."

Major shout-out to my Mom: you're the best!

Hot Water, Family and Clean Clothes

“There is profundity to explore, but also laundry to do.” ~Bruce Feiler, The Council of Dads: My Daughters, My Illness, and the Men Who Could Be Me

This past weekend we actually had plans.  We rarely have plans but, since we did, there was, of course, a major catastrophe.  Last Wednesday my washer died.  I thought it was a small, fixable injury but it wasn't.  And, of course, there were no clean clothes.  So on Thursday I did a massive amount of laundry at my neighbor's house (God bless her).  And on Friday we took off to Eastern Oregon.

We went to Kahneeta, swam and played and had a very good time.  Here's a picture of Alex at Kahneeta:

Then we went to my Uncle's house.  My cousin Dennis leaves for the Navy at the end of the month.  Here is a picture of him with my Uncle John (his Dad) and our Great Uncle Bill.  My beautiful Great Aunt Joyce is in the background:

Here's a picture of Alex playing with corn cobs (gross, gross, gross).  You had to hold onto your corn because he would take it away before you were done if you weren't watching:

Here's a picture of Mom and Mark and me that I like because we're all smiling:

And here's a picture of the whole family (everyone who counts that is, there are others but they didn't show up for the festivities so I've crossed them off my Christmas list):

No, I'm not crying.  I don't know why it looks that way.

And, finally, here's a picture of the new washer we bought when we got home:

A trip down Highway 99

"If you still persist in writing, "Good food at it's best", you deserve to be struck by lightning, hacked up on the spot and buried in an unmarked grave."     ~Lynne Truss, Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation

The Grammatically Correct Tagger loaded her offspring and camera into the car earlier this week to take care of some things that had been bothering her:

I choose to believe that the "U R" is due to a lack of letters rather than laziness or the bringing of text-speak to signage.  I'm probably wrong but thinking this way makes me feel better.  After taking care of business at this establishment, I drove away quickly to avoid the salesperson who was rushing toward my car.  That seemed simpler than trying to explain what I was doing there.

Let me preface the next picture by saying that we eat regularly at the restaurant to which this sign belongs.  The waitresses recognize us; in fact, one waved to me as I drove in to their parking lot to take this picture. 

Because I like this restaurant's breakfasts, I will acknowledge the possibility that this sign's creator meant to say "Best Pie Is In the County" and is correctly using "Pie's", a contraction of the words "Pie" and "Is".  Because the phrase appears in quotation marks on the sign, there is also the possibility that it is a quote.  Perhaps this restaurant was reviewed in a newspaper and the journalist writing the article misplaced the apostrophe.  I would like to think that journalists, or at least their editors, would know about proper apostrophe positioning but, it's possible, they don't.  While these are valid options, the most likely scenario is that the apostrophe was incorrectly placed in a plural word which is why the sign has drawn the attention of the GCT.

Is that a wildebeast?

“I would be most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.”   ~Anna Quindlen

One of my original ideas when I started this blog was to do regular "What are you reading" posts which would include reviews of the books I was reading and, hopefully, comments from readers about books they recommended.  I was feeling a little bad about this because the only books I've talked about in my blog, so far, have been children's books.  Then I realized that is because the majority of the reading I've been doing lately has been kid's books.  I did recently read 2 books age-appropriate for me which hopefully I'll be able to review soon but, for now, more children's "literature":

Dinosaur Roar! used to be Alex's favorite book.  (He has since moved on to The Cat in the Hat.)  For months we read it every night before bed.

The last page of this book looks like this:

When we got to this page, Alex would point to each dinosaur and asks "What's dat?"  At first I would answer, "It's a dinosaur," "It's a dinosaur," "It's a dinosaur"...but that soon got old (keep in mind we read this book EVERY NIGHT).  So, I started answering like this: "I think it's a cow," "Is that a chicken?" "Maybe it's a horse."  To which Alex would respond every time: "No, dat's not a <<insert appropriate farm animal here>>, dat's a dinosaur."  (It's impressive to me that he can pronounce "dinosaur" but has trouble with "that".) 

Soon, however, the speculation regarding farm animals grew boring to me (again, it was EVERY FREAKING NIGHT).  So I started coming up with more and more obscure animals and intentionally choosing words I knew he would struggle to pronounce: "I think it's a wildebeast," "Is that a platypus?" "Maybe it's a wallabee."  And my sweet boy, every time would answer, "No, dat's not a <<insert obscure, mispronounced animal here>>, dat's a dinosaur."

And so, for your entertainment and mine, I had Jeff film us reading this book.  (God bless my husband for keeping me mostly out of the video.)  Alex is humoring me here because he really wants to watch a show on TV so I zip through most of the book to get to the last page.  For your amusement:

The Wiley Rinonsaskwintz and Quaker Wake

"There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children."   ~Julian Barnes

We took a crazy road trip with two small children.  It started Thursday late afternoon and ended in the very early hours of Saturday morning.  Here's a map of our route:

We drove from home (point 1) to Roseburg (point 2) Thursday evening.  Friday morning we left our hotel, visited Wildlife Safari (point 3), drove around Crater Lake (point 4) and returned home.  It was about a 600 mile trip and fortunately we had the rest of the weekend to recover.  Here's a recap:

Friday morning we met my parents for breakfast in Roseburg and then, with them, went to the Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon.  It was far and away the best animal-related venue I've ever been to. 

When I quizzed Alex about the animals we saw, he told me we saw big, stinky cows (yes) and big pigs (no) and a "rinonsaskwintz" (I'm not sure what that is).  Here is a mosaic of what we actually did see:

There were also lions, tigers, rhinoceroses (rhinoceri?), wildebeasts, cheetahs, several different kinds of antelope and many other species that I've forgotten.  Sadly no rinonsaskwintz. 

After leaving Wildlife Safari and saying goodbye to my parents, my husband decided that we should drive to Crater Lake.  According to the map he'd found online this would add about 30 minutes to our total drive.  The map lied.  We did get there eventually though and Crater Lake was amazing.  Alex kept calling it "Quaker Wake".  Jeff, who feels like proper pronunciation is tied with cleanliness in the pursuit of godliness, kept correcting him but it cracked me up and made me think of this:

I didn't see a water skiing Quaker however.  Here's what I did see.  The photos look almost fake but it really is that beautiful:

Please note: Jeff's and my cheesy grins are a result of wondering when the camera was going to stop flashing and take our picture.  It was the 1st time we'd experimented with the delay feature on our camera.

We got home around 12:45am Saturday morning.  My boys were great travelers which is encouraging because I've been thinking about Yellowstone for next summer...