Some Family Pics

Unfortunate genetics

I think she get's this from me.

Email from Suzy:

"The scene:

I am feeding jace some sweet potatoes, Kate is next to me coloring. Faith sits down next to her and asks if she can color to.

Me: No

Faith: Why not?

Me: Remember how you colored on the couch?

Faith: I won't do it again! I promise! Pleeeeease!

I look over at her, and as she is saying "Pleeeease," she is coloring on the table with a crayon. [insert exasperated sigh here]"

One more Faith inspired email from Suzy

"Faith just knocked down her tower and said, "Rock! Me!"

This puzzled me, and then I remembered that we read a book in which the piggie said, "I rock!"

Why do we have to pick up the mess?

Sometimes it seems our children will only happily clean if there's either:

a) A reward at the end or

b) A wicked stepmother/queen making them clean.

Case in point, this is from an email Suzy sent a couple of days ago

"I'm enforcing a little child labor currently, and Faith just called me "Your Highnesty" :)"

Who's yo' daddy now?

So...Suzy left me alone with the kids, for a full day. Yes, I've done stints of up to 3 or even 4 hours by myself, but never a full day. It's a big moment in a Dad's life when he's ultimately responsible for the health and well being of his children for a whole day. Did they survive? I'm proud to say that they did!

What were the ground rules?

1) I couldn't spend the whole day at my Mom's house (basically pawning the care-taking duties on her).

2) I couldn't give Jace a bath (still not quite trusted to watch the 1yr old in the bath without getting distracted by some type of Multimedia).

3) I had to feed the kids.

4) No using the TV as a babysitter.

So, how did it go? I think it went okay. I did get burned out on "princess, princess, hero, bad guy" and "Mermaid, Mermaid pirate"). Especially after MMP (Mermaid, mermaid, pirate) degenerated into the mermaids getting turned into Fairies. That's where I draw the line.

The girls spun in place until they were dizzy. Again and again and again until they made themselves sick. I pointed out that now they know why I don't like spinning rides, they argued back that they were only sick because they spun in place. If they spin in wider circles, they were sure they wouldn't be sick (citing the Tea Cups and other such rides as evidence).

Kate ate her broccoli and peaches (yes, I steamed broccoli). The kids and I went to Wal-Mart (which I was pretty nervous about but turned out okay), and we only spent from 10:30-noon at my Mom's house. Faith sampled the broccoli and ate her peaches.

Suzy commented to one of the Young women (she was at Young Women's camp for the day) that I was somewhat nervous to watch the kids. She (the YW) was quite confused by that since she's babysat multiple times and thinks my kids are easy. Yeah, I'd like to see you do the whole day anonymous young woman.

The girls had a bath with only a minimal amount of water damage to our home (my excuse was that I was paying attention to Jace, but could still hear them in the bathroom. As long as they kept making noises I was sure they were fine).

So, recap:

3 full meals including 3 types of either fruits or veggies.

A bath for 2/3rds of the children

Multiple games played and books read

No resorting to electronic babysitting.

I'd say I mostly passed (I'll admit that the house wasn't in perfectly steller shape, but hey, my Kids are still around).

Travel Pics

This is Tower 101, the second largest building in the world (next to Dubai). It was the tallest for a while. My Hotel was right next to it.

This was in the Japan Airport, They had a whole setup made out of Origami figures. They were selling Origami as well
Some more Origami figures from the same scene.

Another cool looking building.

They had some really classy bathrooms here.

Here you go...luxury toilets. Luckily, they have regular toilets for us gringos as well.

Flowers in your hair

It's been a lot of fun having a boy. Yes, he's not yet 1yr, but he already loves to throw and catch, play with cars etc. However, the other day there was a little flower on the floor (it was a magnet that fell off the fridge). What does my boy do? He tries to pick it up and put it in his hair. Just like the cute hair accessories that he often sees his sisters with. Despite this lapse, I still have high hopes for the lad and his future basketball prowess.

Milestones. And Alaska

Jace had a special experience yesterday. It was his first time ever standing up and going pee! Yeah for Jace! He had just gone swimming at the Tingey's, and I was cleaning him off in the shower. He was standing, I was holding his one hand and spraying him off with the other. I had just finished, turned off the water when guess who (with quite the surprised look on his face) started to pee? It was Jace (since your choices were Jace or me, I really hope you got that right). We will always remember this special milestone.

Also, Kate has trouble knowing that she's slept. Often, in the mornings she'll tell me that she didn't even sleep at all (she's very serious about it). However, we have visual evidence of such sleeping. The other day, Kate, just out of the blue, say's that she wants to live in Alaska. I can understand, she visited her Cousin Darin there when they used to live in Juneau. It was the perfect time of year, very green and beautiful, with lots of fun stuff to do outside. Wondering which of these reasons she would have for wanting to move there, I asked.
Her reply? "Well, since I don't sleep at night, and the nights are so short there I won't even have to go to bed!" Hmmm...I'll have to make sure she visits during winter so she understands exactly what she's getting into.