A January Spring

I went outside the other day and found this...

I can't tell you how happy this made me.  I HATE winter.  I've never seen anything grow in January before, at least not in the northern part of this blessed country.   

I was mad at my Dog

This is Marie. This is her real name, not a pseudonym for her pug-safety.

You see, Marie is a California girl. She was born in the sunshine and spent the majority of her puppy-pug days in the SoCal endless summer.  

 A short while ago her family moved her north where the sun shys away from its warming obligations in certain seasons of the year.  Luckily for her it was a somewhat smooth transition. 

Spending her first days and months in the great white north, she was none the wiser. It was summer and she only missed the occasional trip to the Sandy Pacific shores. 

As Fall set in she adjusted accordingly.  Even in Southern California it can rain and get a 65 degree chill. 

As winter finally arrived. As promised in the north it snowed on schedule. She didn't know what to do. Her paws were cold, her coat wasn't fully grown in. She'd even put on a whole 2 pounds of pug-weight!

She took it the best she could. No more free frolicking all day outside, no more non-Healthy Weight formula dog food, no more sun bathing for hours on end, she was a House-Pug now. Her only trips outside were for potty breaks. And even then she was out and in, in a dash. 

But then her coat grew in, and she got used to the cold. She became more curious. She sniffed and sniffed all around. She could smell deer forging for grass the night before. She could smell rabbits and sometimes she was lucky enough to dig up their droppings. 

One day her pug-mom ( that's me), started to realize something. All her sniffing about would make her pug-potty breaks longer and longer until one day she had been outside for 15 minutes. 

Not Happy! 

So Marie's pug-mom (again me) decided that if she didn't use her potty time wisely she could go straight back to her crate. 

"While you may be the California girl, I'm still freezing my patootie off.  I don't have time or the fur for all that Jazz," said Pug-mom.

Finally pug-mom realized that it wasn't that Marie was just taking her time in the snow.  In reality she'd grown. Pug-mom realized that she was no longer a puppy and no longer needed LOTS of puppy-pug potty breaks. 

Hurray for Adult Pug!  

  

Stuck in the Mud

He was outside for 2 minutes.  I thought I didn't need to look for his boots...

Someday I'm sure I'll miss this. 

Cute Toddler moments

This morning I gave my littlest guy some Trix cereal for breakfast.  I didn't get to my camera before my 6 year old helped him out.  When I looked in his bowl, he had left all the yellowish/green ones.   When I showed my daughter she said, "Mom they taste all the same he just doesn't like color." I love these cute little moments. 

Character Bee

Several weeks ago I discovered that the charter school we partner with was going to host a spelling bee.  I thought it might be something my second grader would be up for.  He's very keen on competition. So I explained what a spelling bee was and he was game.

We received the list of words about a week or two before Christmas.  This gave us about a month to practice these words.  Christmas is a busy time for anyone, but when you homeschool and you live thousands of miles away from grandparents it's a little extra hectic on mom. Which means that mom was depending on my second grader to exercise some independence on practicing spelling bee words.

Ombudsman????? What kind of Children know these types of words?

I reminded him and I did on several occasions attempt to help him memorize these words. I could see he was becoming increasingly disinterested in words and more interested in what Santa brought (who wouldn't Bee? haha).

About a week before the spelling bee I asked him if he was interested at all in being in the spelling bee.  At this point he'd had it (and so had I).  So I told him he didn't have to compete.

Then this morning I woke up....

  I realized that whether or not he knew the words he needed to do it for two reasons.

1. Because he committed
2. Because one thing my son needed to learn was how to lose and be happy for the child that does win.

You see my oldest child like many other children, including myself as a child, has a hard time with others receiving praise when he does not. He takes it as a blow to his self esteem, as he's worth less and the other person as worth more.  And consequently he can not celebrate his peers successes.

So for us this spelling bee will be about doing his best while being happy for others in their successes.  His personal Character Bee.

Meanwhile, we will be cramming for the 2 days that we have left.

Update

White Elephant, Non-Fallaction

Ah GiGi! She'll make you laugh, She'll make you cry. She can shake her hips like a Tahitian Dancer.  Her ability to sing "Barbie Girl" at Sonic speeds is unparalleled. Her eyes never blink the same way twice.

And he way she moves her Arm up and down would make your local butcher jealous.    

But the most breath-taking feature of GiGi is the way she glides forward with 'Non-Fallaction'

.  

 White Elephant gift of the year.

Sibling Gifts

Pop Quiz:  What store three days before Christmas has amazing deals on books and toys and is practically empty?

Answer: Your local thrift store, or at least mine was!

We started a new tradition this year with our children.

Big D wanted to teach our children about giving to each other and not just receiving. He came up with this idea about 4 days before Christmas. We had already spent more than we had decided on and dragging three kids into a store at this point sounded like a ' fun' day at Disneyland on Thanksgiving break.  I was feeling a wee bit stressed, though I didn't disagree with the gesture.

After my sons basketball game, we decided to take a trip to the thrift store to look at aquariums. My oldest son has been dying to get a bearded dragon.  I'm not to keen on the idea, another story...Anyhow, while we were in there I had the idea, 'why don't the kids pick out their gifts for each other here?' I mean what other store 3 days before Christmas is empty and has amazing deals on books and toys?

After a bit of rummaging we found some amazing gifts that all the kids genuinely enjoyed.

Bolt: Sanitized in the Front Loader, the 2 year old has a new obsession with him.

Firetruck: Added some new batteries and its louder and more obnoxious than you'd expect!

8 year old LOVES all of these! Paper airplane book was never used.

For my Barbie Lover

Pirate Ship, you can't go wrong.