Cornters

I had a companion from my mission who was from Mongolia. He learned some English before he went to the MTC. He was of course taught British English instead of American English, as is most of the world. He would get fairly annoyed with us Americans as we often pronounced our "T" sounds as if it were a "D". Think of the word "Water" for example. We usually say "wawder" Or in the word Mountain when we just sort of leave the T sound out all together.

In pre-school (Grandma's Montessori Pre-school) the girls are taught to say their T sounds properly. This does make it amusing at home, as they will often insert Ts when there don't have to be. Such as cornter instead of corner. Obviously assuming that their poor "Red Neck" parents aren't aware that the T is there.

Zombies

Faith (today) "It's so weird that Zombies have Pink Shirts"

Where does she come up with this? Look carefully at the left hand side at the 37 sec, 58 sec and 1:45sec marks and you'll see a beautiful Zombie in a pink short sleeved shirt with a green long sleeve shirt underneath. Who happens to be Suzy. This was from Halloween.

Oh So Helpful

Jace is at a really fun age. He's does lots of super cute things. He's also at that age where he loves to explore new things. Like opening a box of cereal himself. And emptying it. On the floor. And then eating the cereal. Luckily Monday is "Mopping Monday" so Suzy had just done the floors (not that dirt, or toilets would stop him from partaking).

You'll also notice that the girls are happily stuffing their faces as fast as possible. You'd think they were starving (I will admit this was just before dinner).

You will also notice how pleased Jace looks in picture #1.

Suzy and I were both in the kitchen, mere feet away. He has this special talent. Just after dinner, Suzy and I were in the Kitchen cleaning up when I looked over to see that he'd already emptied out half a box of baby wipes. Among his favorite activities is to wait for one of the girls to leave the downstairs bathroom door open so he can go splash in the toilet (luckily most of the time it's flushed), wait until he is free from direct parent intervention (say, said parent was taking a shower) and empty all the bathroom draws.

On a side note, I also tried an experiment to determine Jace's favorite things. He likes working electronics (aka, IPADs or Touch screen blackberrys) over balls. He likes knives over balls, but working electronics over knives (and other sharp objects).

He just came into the office running with Scissors, which he grabbed out of the dishwasher (Suzy was chasing him down, he barely made it).

FUN!

Keeping Secrets

This evening was somewhat indicative of how well my girls keep secrets. During dinner, (Cooked cabbage, meatballs with vegetables) Kate all of a sudden pops out with "There's apple juice in it". I'm not sure what she's referring to at this point.

Suzy filled me in. Kate had noticed that earlier Suzy was putting in some Apple Cider into the cooking cabbage to sweeten it. Kate had told her that they probably shouldn't tell "daddy" what was in it because then he might not eat it (apparently this "daddy" person is a bit on the picky side, and if he knows there are things in his food that he doesn't like, he may go into dinner with a preconceived notion). Luckily, I don't mind apple flavored cabbage. In fact, I rather liked it.

It being Monday night, apparently Kate had planned a "surprise" lesson. She couldn't help telling me that there was a surprise lesson, but she was doing a surprising good job of keeping the content secret. That is until she engaged in a game of "guess the surprise" with Faith. Who, thanks to numerous helpful hints from Kate surprised Kate by guessing the surprise.

Of course, Faith then immediately proceeded to try and tell me, but luckily I didn't hear. That is until she later kept talking about it and revealed that she would be "Eve" and Kate "Adam". (It was the story of Adam and Eve and the "fruit (symbolized by two apples) in the Garden of Eden. Kate had also drawn a picture to go with it. With a fish and an unspecified animal.)

What can I say except that I hope they're this open when they're teenagers.

Like Brother Like Sister

Jace was sure having fun at dinner tonight. He loves to eat while holding utensils. Unfortunately, he can't use the utensils yet. So he holds the fork/spoon (or Knife if somehow Daddy was allowed into the equation. It was a plastic knife though, from Ikea), in one hand while trying to shove food into his mouth using his other hand.

Tonight was yellow squash lasagna. That's Lasagna that replaces noodles with slices of delicious yellow squash. As Suzy pointed out, noodles absorb liquid, while squash excretes liquid. It was quite liquidish. Jace was having a good ole time with it.

Faith was in a bit of a "mood" (having just been woken up). However, who can resist the allure of laughter upon seeing young Jace happily banging away at his tray (still covered with lasagna) with one hand and stabbing his cup with fork with the other hand all while covered in sauce. Does the trick every time.

Suzy spent the next half hour going back over her blog with the girls, starting with showing that they were just as messy at that age.

10013

Kate has recently been suffering from Big Sister Syndrome. This is where a younger sibling (in this case one about 2 years and 15 days younger) follows one around to the point where one wishes one were not so blessed with such siblings.

Unfortunately, these feelings that Kate has been experiencing have expressed themselves in quite a negative manner. In fact, Faith has more than once come crying because a certain big sister had been pushing her. Come to find out, Kate was attempting to push Faith out of their room so she could be alone. Faith, never one to give in easily, resists these efforts. We all know what happens when an immovable object is faced with an irresistable force. Actually, upon further reflection, we may not know what happens, but in the case of Kate and Faith, Faith loses.

In an attempt to rectify the situation, we've tried various things. Having the girls hold hands and sing "We are Loving and Kind". I think all that did is sour the girls on that song.

Finally, Suzy had a good idea. Kate wouldn't be allowed to keep Faith from going in her own room, but maybe she could have another place she could go when she wanted to be alone. In order to expedite this process, Suzy suggested that Kate develop a code word that would let Faith know that she wanted to be alone. Suzy had to leave for Young Womens.

Kate soon asked for a pen and paper, and how to spell the word "Please".
A few minutes later she was ready. She then asked for some tape. If you give a girl a pen and paper, she's going to want some tape to tape it up somewhere. In this case, on the guest bedroom door (the location carefully selected for this "aloneness").

Kate had carefully written, "Please ges the pas code". What was the "passcode" (codeword??) that she had selected?
8763941,

I don't think she completely understood the concept.

Now Faith was frustrated since she couldn't remember the "passcode" (even though Kate had so nicely told it to her in it's entirety (Kate had it written down, again, carefully)).

ps (she later changed it to 100 so Faith could remember it. Then I later saw it written down as 10013).

Tonight

We were reading an article in the "Friend" with the girls. After it was over, they had some questions. It went something like this:

Kate, "So, if Jesus wanted to, he could move the whole Earth?"

Suzy, "Yup."

Kate (you can tell she's thinking pretty hard at this point), "So, he would tell it to move and it would just listen to him?"

Suzy, "Yes. Who made the Earth?"

Kate, "Jesus, oh (understanding seems to dawn)."

Faith, "He could destroy the earth. It would go like rrrrrriiiiipppp (as she makes a motion with her hands of the earth's two halves slowly separating.)"

Kate (a bit worried at this point), "Would he do that?"

Suzy, "I think Jesus loves us and wouldn't want to do that."

Kate (in a sort of morbidly excited way), "We wouldn't be on the same half as the Taiwan half, they would be on the other side!"

Slight pause in the conversation.

Kate, "what are we doing tomorrow" (yup, that was the end of that conversation)

Our little olympian