A Tatoo for Katie

I've decided that after answering Katie's question "What is my new Pokemon's name" a MINIMUM of fifty times, I would be very tempted to tatoo it to her forehead if I actually thought she could read it. The animal's name is "Picharisu", so I taught her to think of it as "peach" like a fruit. Then for the rest of the night she kept wanting to start it with "pear". It's like having the guy from the SNL skit "Mr. Short-term Memory" since she couldn't keep it in her brain for longer than 5 seconds. Let's just hope she never goes on a mission to Japan, since she doesn't seem to have a real knack for the language. And for the record, I have done all I could to keep Pokemon from invading our house. It has been without success, and I am conceding defeat.

Maher-shalal-hash-baz (Destruction is Imminent)

We've taught our kids a lot that you can pray and recieve answers to your prayers. So what do you do when you have a conversation like this:

Mason: I was praying last night, and I asked God a question.

Ryan: What was that?

Mason: When the second coming was going to be.

Ryan: Did you get an answer?

Mason: Yes. A voice said it would be tomorrow.

Are you prepared? It has been a few days since that conversation, and so far I haven't noticed anyone being taken up into heaven. Ryan had a good talk with him regarding a few signs of the times, so he's not expecting it to happen.

On the other hand, Katie was looking for a toy that she couldn't find and prayed about it, then came upstairs saying that she prayed about it and she knew it was in her room. Sure enough, she found it.

I guess one out of two isn't bad.

I Am Thankful For...

Well, first of all I'm thankful for all five of my faithful blog followers and your encouragement. I'm happy to know you care enought to harass me.

On to cute anecdotes.

We're back to Mason this week. I went in to volunteer at his school today. On the wall, the teacher posted some lists each child made of the things they were grateful for. I was scanning the lists and the names trying to find Mason's ("my mom" was sure to be first on his list). My eyes rested on a list that only one person in the room could have written:

my family

the earth

grandma

grandpa

cusins

Heavenly Mother

angels

Seriously. It's got to be a good day for Heavenly Mother. How often does she get a shout out on a list like this? Other people get lots of credit, and there she is always in the background. I'm kind of joking, kind of serious. I'm glad to know Mason isn't afraid to shine the light on a very unappreciated deity.

It did, of course, make me wonder how everything Mason says and does is interpreted by his teachers (who understand he is a deviation from the norm) and other students (who may or may not get that). He has brought his Book of Mormon in to share with his class, stopped his teacher and principal on the playground to sing "Jesus Says Love Everyone" to them, and has probably at some point in time tried to explain the intricacies of the Plan of Salvation to his bewildered classmates.

Not long after going over these thoughts, one of the teacher's aids that is in Mason's class to help with two autistic children came over to talk to me. She told me she was sending a note home for me, but she wanted to also tell me what she had to say in person. Just so I get the wording right, here's what she said:

"I wanted to share with you how thankful I am for your son. He glows with the love of the Holy Spirit. He is a natural born missionary. He shares his knowledge of the Lord and the 2nd coming. He is so pure and special. I just wanted to share with you how much he has touched my heart, and spirit and many others in the class!"

When she was talking to me, she had tears in her eyes. I was so moved by what she told me, and it made me really, really grateful for my sweet Mason. He's a great example to me in so many ways.

I am Yellow, and So Can You

The other night I organized a little girls' night with some friends. One of them asked me what "color" I was. As it was all the rage during my tenure at BYU, I thought back to what I had been labelled as. I remembered falling under the yellow label, but with a solid streak of red. She said that was what she would have guessed (I'm sure that the fact that I had planned a party might have helped in the diagnostic).

I checked it out online yesterday to see if I have changed now that I'm a little older. The problem is, they phrase all of the questions as "When I was a child, I was..." I guess the person I was at age 10 that I can only remember in the most vague way is the person I will always be. So I was still yellow (they just give you one label, not allowing for any nuance of other shades. I was very disappointed.)

So last night I brought up the topic with Ryan. You should do it some time, because you consistently get a distainful reaction about the utility of "personality instruments." He was actually asked last year to do a class with the youth on it for youth conference because the stake YW president thought it would be fun. He couldn't bring himself to teach such rubbish (not his words, but possibly his feelings), so he went with something else, leaving all the kids with no label to slap on themselves and proudly identify with. He did a real diservice to those youth.
We went on to have a lively conversation about Ryan being a blue, me being a yellow, etc.

This morning in the shower, I was thinking real deep. I was thinking about what things in life I would love to to become great at. After going downstairs, I decided to ask Ryan what would be on his list. He immediately responded, "Being able to keep secrets and feeling at peace in my life." My yellow self responded, "Hmm. My top two were tennis and photograhy." So let's not throw that color code out the window quite yet.

Andrew's New Wheels

In honor of a trip to the other side of the world, I'm finally ditching my piece of junk stroller and upgraded to some new wheels. I gave Andrew a test drive last night, making laps around the house. Each time we'd pass through the family room, he'd insist on picking up another object to stuff into the stroller. And he wouldn't let me stop. These commands might seem curious since the kid still really doesn't talk too much, but he's an effective communicator when the need comes. When half of your vocabulary is comprised of the words "knock knock" "candle" and "bus", there just aren't very many opportunities to put those to use in casual conversation. So if you're ever with Andrew and want to chat with him, you might want to ask if he knows and good knock knock jokes involving candles. Or buses.

Halloween Fun

I haven't bothered posting about Halloween. I have to admit it was quite a letdown this year compared to the smash reviews we recieved on Scooby Doo last year. Unfortunately, Mason and Katie wanted to be dinosaurs, since that was their fad of the moment (it since moved on to Pokemon...but I think I'm glad dinos beat that out). I had originally imagined creating these elaborate dinosaur costumes, but after trying to do Andrew's and spending way to much money on a costume that ended up not fitting him and causing him to scream and tear and the costume like a wild monkey, I had second thoughts. I turned to my trusted friend Ebay and had three dinosaur costumes delivered to my door.

The bad thing about dinosaur costumes is that they are fairly generic. This leads to a frustrating evening of "Are you a lizard?" "Oh, what a cute dragon!" and in Mason's case "Nice alligator costume!" I have a feeling they won't be doing dinosaurs again. I really want to do Toy Story costumes next year after seeing an adult size Buzz Lightyear that would be fantastic on Ryan, but the kids are vetoing it with emphatic/bordering on aggressive "We hate Toy Story!". I hate having kids that have to have opinions. I guess it's just having opinions different than my own that is the problem.

We went to "The Lawn" for trick or treating. It is the student housing behing Thomas Jefferson's rotunda. This is not your typical student housing (you can see it in the picture) and is by far the most efficient trick or treating route we've found if you can get through the crowds. It's a lot of fun to see everyone in costume. Katie finished her haul and got tired of fighting the crowds so she sat down on the stairs of the rotunda and proceeded to dump out her entire stash. I hope Mr Jefferson didn't mind.

B-I-N-G-O

Mason's elementary school hosts a Bingo night twice a year. We went once last year, with tragic results. We went home empty-handed, and our children were not prepared for that. As a result, we prepped them well for going to Bingo night last Friday. "We're going to have fun, not just to win." Of course, the idea of playing for fun didn't stop me from laying down some extra cash so we could each have two cards. We also made sure they knew that if we only had one person win, we would share the prize.

It paid off, since on the fifth game Katie's card hit the jackpot. She threw both arms up in the air and let out a very fine "Bingo" cheer. Within five minutes of winning, the idea of having to share her amazing prize hit her, and she began to try to figure out a way out of that. She was very creative in her rationalizing keeping everything to herself, but she didn't need to worry. I came through with a second bingo late in the game saving her from the devastation that would have come if she had to part with her treasures.

After the first bingo night we went to, I ended up buying a bingo game and playing it with the kids. I guess it wasn't good enough for Mason, though, because for FHE tonight we played his home-made bingo game. I think Mason would have thrived in "the good old days" since he loves to make everything himself. Not just does he make everything himself, he make everything out of paper. Paper, paper, and more paper. You name it, he can make it out of paper.

My card had the free spot in the wrong place and Katie's card had 7 horizontal lines instead of 5. It makes for a much more interesting game. Just don't breathe too hard because all of the little scraps of paper you use as markers will blow off your "card".

The best part was hearing him complain about how much work he had to go through to make the game. He was very dramatic about the exhaustion of cutting out and labeling everything. Granted, there was a lot of it involved even if it was completely unnecessary given the fact that we already have a perfectly good game sitting in our closet.