The importance of learning how to spell

Yesterday when Sam was playing with Charlie, we had this conversation:

 

Sam: Mom, Charlie gots a wack.

Me: A what?

Sam: A wack.  He gots a wack in his ear.

Me: Oh. He has wax in his ear?

Sam: No, not wacks.  He just has one wack.

I suppose if you can't read or write, you can't really understand the difference between "x" and "cks."

As promised, here are more pictures from our weekend with Charlotte's family.  These are some pictures Natalia took of the kids, mostly Sam.  He's a bit of a ham when there's a camera around.

This is one of my favorite pictures.  It's Natalia holding Charlie on our porch swing:

 

Punk'd, Minneota Style

Many of you who met her may not have realized this, but Charlotte has a very good sense of humor and loves a good prank.  So when her brother came, she wanted to play all sorts of pranks, like giving him an Oreo with toothpaste instead of cream. Unfortunately for Toby, he didn’t know what an Oreo was supposed to taste like and just thought it was a really bad cookie.

The biggest prank Charlotte wanted to play on him was to pretend that someone from the newspaper was coming to interview them and then have the interviewer be unbelievably ignorant about German culture.  We knew that Josh and Hank, a couple of high schoolers in Minneota, would be great for the job.  This prank was pulled together at the last minute so there was no time to rehearse or go over any questions. The result was absolutely hilarious though painful to watch.  I was able to catch half of it on video.

I accidentally stopped the video from taping so I missed the part where Hank acts like he thinks the reason exchange students come to America is because they don’t have schools so they need to come here for an education.  Toby responded by saying, “You think the Mercedes Benz was created by someone who had only one year of education in America?” Hank just responded by looking confused, and when Toby listed many great inventions that were created by German engineers, he very innocently said, “I guess I just thought all of those things were invented by American engineers.”  

Hank and Josh started out asking very serious questions and engaged in a somewhat intelligent conversation before easing into the dumber questions.  Hank did an amazing job of keeping a straight face – you can see Josh covering his smile from time to time, and the rest of us took turns leaving the room to laugh and come back once we had calmed down. Charlotte told her mom what was going on so she was able to enjoy it, too.

This clip starts at end of any intelligent conversation on Hank’s and Josh’s part. Before you watch this clip, a few explanations:

-          Charlotte had a list of questions that other exchange students had actually been asked and we passed it onto Josh and Hank to use.  As they didn’t really have time to prepare, they just read them off and improvised from there.  As soon as Hank read the question about concentration camps, he thought, “I probably should have skipped that one….” to himself, but there wasn’t much he could do once he got there without spoiling the joke.  Fortunately, they actually found it funny. Afterwards.

-          Elena just happened to pick up a corn cob the day before this on our walk and brought it home so I had it on hand.  Toby had actually been told the same thing about corn cobs when he was an exchange student in Kansas 15 years ago. He (rightly) assumed they were kidding then, but when he heard it for a second time he thought maybe it’s true.

-          You will see Toby and Natalia looking over towards us again and again.  We were all just standing there stone-faced, trying not to react, and they couldn’t figure out why we were not either laughing or becoming horrified by the complete idiocy of this interview.

I should also give a disclaimer: there is one swear word in this video so you may want to preview it before showing it to children.

 

Since I wasn’t actually taping the end of the interview, I started taping after it was done (thinking I was stopping it) so you can see a bit of their reaction when they found out.

 

Goodbye, Charlotte

Our year with Charlotte came to an end on Monday, and we said goodbye to her in front of our house that morning with lots of tears from everyone. It was a very difficult goodbye, but it was made slightly easier because her family was there to take her home (after a trip to California).  Saying goodbye at the airport and watching her leave alone would have been even harder.

We were very fortunate to have her mom, brother and brother's girlfriend (Marina, Toby and Natalia) come for the weekend to see where and with whom Charlotte has been living this past year. Even though they were just here for a few days, we felt like they all became a part of our family as well. So now we are missing not only Charlotte, but her family as well.

 The weather was nice so Seth, Charlotte and Toby were able to go paintballing Saturday afternoon.

Here they are, ready to go.

While they were gone, Marina, Natalia, the kids and I went for a walk around Minneota. It was the most well documented walk I've ever been on.  Natalia has a knack for photography and I think she got around 40 pictures on our walk. Here are a few:

 We stopped at the Minneota Manor when we walked by.  Marina works at a nursing home in Germany so she got to see how they are here. Charlie was very popular with the residents.

 Natalia and Charlie:

Sam running ahead:

 

Sam worn out after so much running ahead:

Like the walk, the whole weekend was well documented in many wonderful photographs so I will stop here and share more details of the weekend in further posts.

 

Having children and lots of niecs and nephews, I've heard many "That's-not-yours-it's-mine" arguments, but this one between Sam and our nephew, RJ, topped them all.

Sam: Look! I can see the moon!

RJ: That's not your moon; it's mine!!!!

Elena got into the toothpicks.

I'm not going to lie: the effect was a little creepy.  Of couse, the eyepatch didn't help.

 

Braveheart (the cute version)

We had a family get-together for mother's day on Sunday. While they were playing outside Sam, Ian and Jack got into some blue chalk.  They looked like a bunch of little William Wallaces running around.

"Dad, this guy is following us,"

said Sam about 20 minutes into a traffic jam.

You can tell we come from an area without much traffic.

Good Mood!

We had three consecutive days of summer-like weather here last weekend (followed by a dramatic cool-down, but we don't need to talk about that). 

Needless to say, those long-awaited days put everyone in a good mood. Charlie was loving his first warm day outside.  Here's a video of our friend, Andy, making him laugh.  He started off laughing at the birds and then Andy was able to get him to laugh when he made funny faces.  It was the first time he laughed for a long time and Seth was able to catch some of it on camera.

When Elena decides she wants to be helpful, she can be very good at it. She normally throws herself onto the floor in violent protests whenever I make her clean something.  But once in awhile, she will decide she's going to pitch in and then she will dust every room in the house or sweep several rooms.

Fortunately, she was in a helpful mood when Sam started to fall asleep at the kitchen table in the middle of his snack.  I was upstairs and oblivious to the fact that he was losing consciousness, but rather than letting her brother collapse onto the floor, she managed to piggy-back him all the way over to the living room and put him down for a nap. 

Like I said, when she decided to help, she goes all out.  Here is Sam taking his nap after Elena tucked him in.  You can't tell, but there are about five blankets there. (She's not really asleep, but also wanted to pose in the photo):

The Box

Nothing beats a big, huge box to play in.

The kids have had this giant box taking up a large part of their bedroom for the last month or so.  It has been a house, a slide and a spaceship among other things. It has now been destroyed beyond recognition from overuse and will leave their room whenever I get the chance to drag the thing outside, but I've loved having it. 

Kids whining that there's nothing to do?
Just say, "Hey, remember that box upstairs!?" and they go running.

Kids beating each other up as a source of entertainment?
"How 'bout that box in your room?"
"Oh yeah!!"

Need to distract your kids in those few hungry minutes before supper is ready so they won't either have a meltdown or hide under the table with a box of crackers stuffing themselves full?
"Box!"

It worked for a few weeks anyway, and I enjoyed every minute of it. 
The downside: It cost several hundred dollars.
The upside: It came with a free water heater.