The Singing Birthdaygram

Pops and Susan have a neat tradition of sending each of the grandchildren singing birthday cards in the mail. They even have found special stamps with characters on them from time to time.  My kids always love getting something in the mail, and I am amazed how much they love these singing cards.  Last year Julia's card had a crab that sang a Reggae version of I Wanna Wish You a Happy Birthday that went like this:

I wanna-wanna wish you a haaaappy biiiirthday...
I wanna help you cel-e-braaaaaate...
I hope you get lots of preeeeeseeeeeents...
I wanna help you eeeeeeat your caaaaaake.

I know this by heart now because it played so many times in our house, including up until the day before her birthday.  It would disappear for months or even weeks at a time and then I would hear the music again floating out of Julia's room.  I don't know how that thing even still has batteries.

This year she got the card pictured here that plays Kokomo by The Beach Boys.  So here is what we will be singing at our house at least until David's birthday in December...Aruba, Jamaica, ooooh I wanna take ya...

Can I Plese Cepe My Tooth?

AJ lost tooth #3 at school on Friday.  He was thrilled that it came out at school because that meant he got to have a special trip to the nurse's office for the tiny treasure chest that she gives to kids who lose a tooth at school.  I don't remember a treasure chest when we were young.  What did we do if our tooth fell out at school?  Go to the bathroom and wrap it in a brown industrial paper towel?  He decided he wanted to write this note to the tooth fairy asking to keep his tooth and still get the money.  The tooth fairy didn't appear the first night.  We speculated about her failure to show. Perhaps she was sick?  Maybe AJ should have been more specific in his note about wanting to keep the tooth AND still get the money?  Or maybe it was just that he stayed up too late that night and the tooth fairy had made her rounds while he was still awake.  She appeared the next night and left the $3 and all was well again.

She's a Chick-Bunny-Cat

Hello there!

Here is Julia's Halloween costume, which she insisted on wearing to her brothers' football games last weekend.  One of the coaches promptly said, "well that's a cute costume...what are you?  A pink chicken?  A rabbit?" Julia scoffed and said "no, of course not! I am a pink kitty!" As adorable as I think it is, I gotta agree with that guy that it is a little tricky to pin down exactly which fluffy animal this is. 

Julia has a mind of her own when it comes to costumes.  At first she asked to be a Ninja Turtle with her brother (the purple turtle, of course). When the costumes came, she was happy to run around in it, pretend battling with the boys. About a week later, she asked me if she could be a Ninja Turtle for neighborhood trick-or-treat but a pink kitty for her school party.  I loved that she felt like she could do both.

Here is her Halloween joke this year, courtesy of Night Eyes at the Zoo.  Q: What do witches put on their bagels? A: Scream cheese!

Omaha, Somewhere in Middle America

The kids and I have been making lists of places we want to travel together lately.  We start a great list and then part way through I start to get anxious when I calculate that if we go three places a year, I only have 33 places left to go with AJ before he goes to college.  So I remind myself how much fun I have had traveling as an adult with my family and with Joe's family and remember that 18 is not a magical deadline for travel and this is just the start.  But I am getting more focused on making the best use of holiday weekends from school, spring break and all of that.  The kids had no school on Friday so my mom and I decided to take them to Omaha for a day.  We had driven through Omaha before on the way to Colorado but never stopped to enjoy it.  When you know you have all of Nebraska ahead of you for driving, stopping does not seem like a good idea.

We went to the amazing zoo there and had a great time.  The aquarium was awesome, and the kids were fascinated by these sea snakes.  They are very clever animals that hide their tails in the sand at the bottom of the ocean and make themselves look like algae and then surprise a passing fish by gobbling it up.  And the monkeys were exactly as I remembered them from 20 years ago when my dad took my sister and I on a trip to the Omaha Zoo over our spring break.  My sister loved the monkeys and talked about how much she wanted to take one home for a pet.  Until the monkey looked right at her, defecated in its hand and threw it in my sister's direction.  You can't make this stuff up.  Thankfully the monkeys were better behaved this visit, or I would worry that my kids would get some ideas about things they thought were funny that I don't want to see in my house.  Monkey see, monkey do, right?

At one point, I caught the kids very sweetly walking together and spontaneously, without any suggestion from mom, holding hands. And then I promptly ruined the moment by asking them to smile (see bottom photo).  I'm learning to live in the moment more and to put the camera away.