A family that prays together

Danno and I were asked to give the prayers during sacrament meeting on Sunday. Of course during the opening hymn Seth decided he needed to go potty. I quickly husseled him out and got back just as the hymn was ending. Danno had already gone up to the stand and a lady from the ward was sitting with Caleb. Just as she stepped out of the pew Danno started speaking and Caleb flipped out. He ran down the asile crying loudly and calling for his dad. I ran after him but didn't catch up until he reached the front of the chapel. Danno ended his prayer and Caleb was reaching up to him so I lifted him up to Danno. As soon as Danno got him he of course started crying and reaching out for me. The bishopric member thanked our whole family for giving the opening prayer. How embarassing! Danno made sure to get the boys out to the lobby during the closing prayer and luckily they were so happy to leave neither noticed I wasn't following so we didn't have a repeat perforamnce for the closing prayer.

Busted

Seth and Caleb were doing so well at leaving our tree alone and then...

If you give a Seth a waffle

Thursday night we had waffles for dinner. As soon as Seth was done he hopped up and said "I want to take a bath." We thought that request was a little strange but we didn't have any plans that night so it was no big deal to give him a bath a bit early.

The next morning I took the boys to the library. Seth's preschool class is reading books by Laura Numeroff this month so I put a few on hold for us to read at home. As soon as Seth saw If you give a pig a pancake he asked me to read it to him. You can click on the link to see the few first pages. The text is:

"If you give a pig a pancake,
she'll want some syrup to go with it.
You'll give her some of your favourite maple syrup,
and she'll probably get all sticky,
so she'll want to take a bath."

A light bulb went off. It was suddenly clear why Seth wanted to take a bath last night. He wanted to be just like the pig! This is pretty much how I get all of my information about what goes on during preschool. It is good that I can at least get a little peak into what happens during the day. Though I am not sure I want to know the back story to Seth's latest gem, "It's okay to make a mess."

Hey everybody let's decorate the Christmas tree (cue the Ray Coniff Singers "ahh, ahh, ahh, ahh")

The door had hardly closed on our last Thanksgiving guest when I was ready to get out our Christmas tree. I had found it on Craigslist a few weeks earlier and was anxious to see how it looked. Once we finally got it up and all fluffed out it I thought it looked great. There was only one small problem. It is pre-lit with white lights, which I prefer, but Seth wanted "colorful Christmas lights." He said it over and over. In fact just last night as I was taking him to bed he was staring at the tree and sure enough as soon as we got to the top of the stairs he said, "I like colorful Christmas lights". Way to make me feel bad. Our old tree actually has multi-colored lights so I may have to break down and set it up in the loft for him.

On Friday morning we ran way too many errands in the morning so everybody was ready to just hang out at home for the afternoon. I thought it would be a great idea to string popcorn and cranberries to use as a garland for our tree. I put on my Christmas CDs, popped some popcorn and got busy. Seth and Caleb were both pretty intrigued. They couldn't quite figure out what the cranberries were; cherry tomatoes?, grapes?, something to squish with your hands? Seth kept asking about my "shiny thing" (the needle). I actually let him help me string a few of the cranberries. He liked sliding them down the thread. Then Seth started asking me what my list was. At first I thought he meant what I wanted for Christmas but when I answered that way he didn't seem satisfied. Finally I asked it back to him and he told me my list was "five popcorns and one cranberry" He had to come back several times and either ask me again or tell me himself. I strung, and strung and strung all afternoon. At one point I was taking a break and googled how much garland I would need and I found out most recommend between eight and nine feet per foot of tree. My tree is nine feet tall so that would mean I needed between 72 and 81 feet, yikes! I was a little discouraged but I had already spent so much time on this project that I decided to persevere. I am glad I did because it looks pretty nice and it was much cheaper than spending $7.99 a string for the garland at Target that I liked.

For the decorations we decided to steal an idea we got from my mom. When Seth was one we went to my parents house for Christmas. My parents were a little worried about Seth taking the ornaments off (I can't imagine why they would think he might do such a thing) so they had the great idea to hang Mother's cookies on the bottom part of the tree so he could take them off and eat them. We waited til after the kids went to bed and since I was still stringing popcorn (yes it took me that long) Danno tied ribbon on all the cookies. I suggested he put them in a Tupperware container we usually put cookies in after he finished. I forgot about one little detail. Caleb knows exactly what that container is for. As soon as he saw it on the kitchen island the next morning he wanted a cookie. Danno explained that they were for the tree and surprisingly he and Seth accepted that they weren't for eating and were pretty excited to hang them up. Danno told Seth to go wake me up so we could get started. He must have gotten a little distracted on the way upstairs because he burst into my room and shouted "I want to play Star Wars" Once I stumbled out of my room Danno straightened us out and we got started. The front two feet of the tree got very well covered by Seth and Caleb so we had to surreptitiously remove a few and help them reach a bit higher. The boys had a great time.

Our three day decorating project was finally complete. Now I need to get busy and get some presents to put under there.