Green eyes?

The other day Frankie went into the bathroom, and after a little while I heard him yell out: "YEEEESSSSS!!!! YESS!!! YES! YES! YES!" And then he ran out of the bathroom exclaiming, "MOM, I HAVE GREEN EYES!!!!"

For the record his eyes are still blue, but green is his favorite color. None of the kids' eyes are quite as blue as Seth's so I suppose he was able to convince himself they were green.

You can't see his eyes in this picture, but it's a good belly pic anyway. I'm about half-way through now, and Frankie is enjoying his new pillow. 

Language through a 5-year-old's eyes

I was watching something on TV in Spanish, and the characters started laughing. Charlie noticed they were laughing, and here's the brief conversation we had.

Charlie: "Mom, how do people laugh in Spanish?"

Me: "The same way we do."

Charlie: "But laughing is in English."

Me: "No, it's not. Laughing is universal. People laugh in every language in the world."

Charlie then proceeded to try out a wide variety of laughs. When he was done, he said: "Mom, did I laugh in Spanish???"

Scaring Daddy

The kids had "ugly sweater day" at school last week. Here is what Charlie wore to school. It doesn't show in the picture, but the headband has blinking red lights on it in addition to the big elf ears.

Right after I took this picture, I told Charlie he could go and wake Daddy up. I didn't really think about what Charlie was wearing. Or the fact that I normally wake him up and not Charlie. Or the fact that Seth tends to freak out easily when woken from a deep sleep. Nor did I take Charlie's quirky personality into consideration.

So instead of going up and just telling Seth it was time to wake up like I thought he would, Charlie turned on his blinking red lights, snuck into the dark room and proceeded to silently hover over Seth's face until he woke up. The result was that Seth opened his eyes to tiny blinking lights and huge ears an inch from his face, which startled him pretty good. He said he's just glad he didn't impulsively punch Charlie upon waking.

This kid never ceases to crack me up.

Sam's 10th Birthday

We had Sam's 10th birthday party last week, which entailed having nine 3rd and 4th grade boys over at our house. There were several more we could have invited, but we finally had to limit him to just inviting school/neighborhood friends. They spent the first hour running around the house chasing/wrestling/attacking each other in every room of the house. Then Seth braved the cold and brought the whole crew to a large snow pile in town so they could go sledding for an hour. It did kind of double as his birthday party, too, after all. Only a couple of sleds broke and there were no major injuries so I considered that a success.

Then came time to feed them. Fortunately we had enough food to keep them happy and they managed to sit down and be relatively still for a few minutes. Want to know what nine 10-year old boys talk about when they are all stuck together in one room? Poop. That's pretty much it. Try as we might to change the topic of conversation (and we did!), they kept just circling back to poop. It started by sharing every story they have ever heard/experienced involving poop...which then became making up outlandish stories about poop...which digressed into just spastically shouting the word "Poop!" at random....and finished with a chorus of songs such as "Poop! There it is" and "I Poop." 

Ok, I'm not being completely honest. To be fair, they did occasionally change the topic to farts.  At least that was when parents are within earshot - I seemed to notice a change to the topic of girls from time to time as I moved further away from the group. It honestly terrifies me to think how the conversations go when adults are completely removed from the picture.

That was followed by an all out nerf-gun battle all over the house. And then we tried to settle them down with a movie - which worked for the first half of the movie anyway.

All in all, they had lots of fun and our house survived with only a few minor things broken aside from my dreams of having a somewhat tasteful and organized party at a sound level of under 80 decibels. I was unable to capture the crew all in one place long enough to get a picture so you'll just have to do your best to visualize it all.

Flirting

Charlie was looking at the jacket to a movie he hadn't seen, and asked if a couple on the back was married. I said they're not married, but they like each other.

Later he showed the picture and told Seth, "This guy and this girl like each other."
So Seth said, "Oh? Do they flirt a lot in the movie?"
Charlie thought about it and said, "No. I don't think there's any farting in this movie."

Halloween and All Saints

St. Ed's school had their annual Saints Day Contest this year. It's one of my favorite events: I love seeing all the creative costumes. I do not envy the judges at all because the kids all do such a good job every year. Sam and Charlie both got first place this year for their age group. Charlie was St. Joseph and Sam was St. Lawrence. Fortunately most biblical and saints costumes can be created with old pillowcases and sheets. Elena's was a little more complicated this year as she chose St. Catherine Laboure, who has a habit similar to The Flying Nun. I had to leave for work before they were fully dressed, and Seth had an early meeting so unfortunately we were dependent on their teachers for photos this year. We're still waiting on Elena's, but I'll share as soon as I can.

 And for Halloween this year we had a Ninja Turtle, Chewbacca, a "Good Dragon" as Frakie called himself, and Annabeth from the Percy Jackson book series. The extras are some of the local cousins.

Birthdays and other news

Frankie turned 3 this month. His birthday lands right between his cousins Gabby, Laney and Bella quickly followed by my dad's birthday so we had our fair share of birthday celebrations last week!

He was very excited to be 3, and proudly shows off his 3 fingers whenever anyone asks how old he is. He's an adorable 3-year-old, but he can still be exceptionally challenging - as can most 3-year-olds, I guess. He's our first kid to adamantly refuse to open his mouth for the dentist - refusing things in general has been a bit of a habit lately, so there are lots of tears over things like having to eat his supper and wear be buckled into his car seat. And I can't get his haircut for anything. Luckily for him (and for me), this isn't my first time around the block so I can deal with the difficulties a with more patience than I had with the older kids.

Sam wasn't feeling great this day and opted out of the picture.

Birthday cake! As usual, they only ate the ice cream. 

Age 3 at our house always means entering that transition time when the kids almost don't need a nap, but can't quite make it all day. Here he is passed out on the counter while I made supper.

 In other news, we have another baby on the way! We kind of just told the kids and let them run with it so I have no idea who knows and who doesn't other than immediate family. I've been sick enough (sicker than the last couple, I think....although it's entirely possible I've just blocked out how sick I was) that I really couldn't hide it anymore from the people I see regularly, and Elena was getting suspicious because I was lying on the couch all the time. A sick mama usually means a healthy baby, though, so we're all very excited. First ultrasound looked great - I love seeing that tiny little heart-beat!!

I'm due right at the end of the school year, which times out great for work! I'm a little nervous about going back to work with a 3 month old next year, but I didn't want to put the school through the difficulty of finding a part-time Spanish teacher again. Fortunately we are surrounded by family willing to help out - especially when it comes to new babies!

Class pictures

We maybe could have used some warning that they would be taking a full body picture with the classes for school picture day. I remember having the conversation with Sam before he left that his Superman shorts did not look great with his shirt, but let him go figuring you wouldn't see his legs in the picture anyway. At least he decided against the dress shirt he had on at first, that would have looked even stranger.

September Highlights

I went back to work again this year, teaching Spanish at the high school. I am really enjoying it so far, but it means this blog might be reduced to monthly highlights for a while. 

Here's what's been going on around here.

Charlie started Kindergarten, and he is loving it! Here is a picture of him helping out in the kitchen with one of his classmates. Looks like he's taking the job pretty seriously.

The kids found a monarch caterpillar and we were able to successfully keep it alive and release it as a butterfly. We missed it actually emerging from the chrysalis (again!). I checked on it, went upstairs to change clothes, and when I came back down it was out. I always forget how quickly they come out once they start. Oh well - maybe next year.

Bug Days was a blast. And much easier this year with a couple of older kids who can help out with the younger ones. Elena took care of all the costuming this year for the kiddie parade. Sam got distracted right before the parade and decided something else was more interesting so Seth's cousin's husband wore his costume (sorry I didn't get a picture).

Frankie was super excited to be the Hulk and wants to be that again for Halloween. He stomped like the Hulk all the way down the street during the parade - it was pretty dang funny.

And Charlie took 2nd place in the tractor pedal-pull for his age group. He was very happy to get his first trophy and took it everywhere with him for a couple of days.

And to finish, I'll leave you with one fun quote of the month. I was getting ready to go run a few errands, and I asked Frankie if he wanted to come downtown with me or stay home with Seth.

"I want to go under!" he said.
"Under?" I asked, "Under what?"
"Undertown. I want to go undertown with you!"

More August Fun

Another big highlight of August was having my brother, Joe, and his girls visit us from Boston. The kids had a blast getting to know their cousins and showing them around rural Minnesota. It was especially nice for Elena to have some more girl cousins her age to play with as the Myhre side is so heavy on the boys. 

We lucked out that school started later than usual this year so we had the entire week off. 

All the great-grandkids of my Grandma & Grandpa Marso

All of my parents' grandkids 

Skipping rocks at Camden Park

Our niece, Hoku, is especially fond of pigs, and we were luck to have good friends who had pigs farrowing the week they were visiting. These piglets were just a few hours old. So much cuteness!!

After seeing the pigs, we were treated to a "ride" on the hydroswing door of a machine shed. I hear it was a beautiful view (I stayed down because I knew Frankie would want to follow me if I went on)

Frankie especially liked riding around on Uncle Joe. I recall making Joe carry me around everywhere as a kid. Now that I've finally quit asking him to carry me around, my kids stepped right in line!