I'm Thinking of an Animal...

We love playing "I'm thinking of an animal" with the kids.  Its fun when they are little and you give them clues, little by little, until you see their face light up with knowing as they understand what you're describing.  And their clues to you are hilarious.  Its an especially a fun game to pass the time in the car.

Yesterday, while in the car for some errands, Elise and Paige were playing.  Paige is old enough to give clues that actually make sense and lead to a real animal and she's a good guesser.  Most of the time.

Elise gave these clues, "I'm thinking of an animal that lives on a farm.  It is fluffy and has feathers and lays eggs."  Paige only paused for a second before guessing, "A bird-sheep!!!"

Obviously that's what it was. :)

Its hard when you're "just a kid"

We've had trouble with Paige using Elise's markers.  (See the last post.)  It's bad enough that she uses them without asking.  Add to that that she's drawing on all kinds of surfaces with them and then leaves the lids off, and you can understand why a big sister wouldn't be too crazy about sharing her things.

The other night, Paige had gotten into them again.  I told her she needed to ask before she uses others' things and then had her apologize to Elise.  I asked Paige if she thought there was anything she could do to make it right with Elise.  Paige looked at me and said, "What do you want me to do?  I'm just a little kid!"

Oh, that kid!  She makes me laugh.  Its not the answer I was looking for, but she does have a point. ;)

Artwork

You may remember that Paige used to draw on anything that was NOT paper.  We've been very fortunate that for a while we've been graffiti-free in this house.

Unfortunately, that is no longer the case.

 Mostly what we're finding these days are smiley faces and her favorite letter, "P".

The best part is that they're usually written in permanent marker.  In which case, I'm really grateful they're smiley faces.  It could be much worse.

And even better than ONE smiley face, is a LOT of smiley faces.  I didn't get pictures of the ones she wrote on the hallway mirror or the giant letter P behind the towels in my bathroom.  And probably a few more places I haven't found yet.

We try to keep markers away from her, but that's a tall order in this house.  And we are continuing to emphasize "only write on paper."  Until them, I'm just trying to enjoy the little reminders of happiness from that adorable little imp.

This is one seriously sweet kid.

We Love Daddy!

One of our next December activities was a celebration of that wonderful man that my kids call Daddy.  We decorated the inside of his car with crepe paper, wrote sweet notes and put them all in his car, and left a message for him on his windshield.

 We missed his reaction when he saw it, but we got a picture after he pulled all our goodies out. :)

He might not have found it when he did, except that Paige ran and told him he needed to go see if his car was all sparkly. :)  I think it was just exactly that. :)

We sure do love that man.

Days of December

Each October, we do a daily activity to celebrate the fall season and the upcoming Halloween holiday.  This October, morning sickness pretty much wiped out any desire I had to do fun activities.  So we're making up for it in December by doing a neat activity each day of the month.

One of our first activities was going out to dinner as a family.  We went to our local Chinese restaurant, a favorite dinner for all of us.  The kids were very well-behaved, although any time you take four kids out to eat, you can expect a little bit of chaos.

Waiting for our food.

Paige and Ian

Elise and Merry Grace

My sweetie and I.

The food was delicious.  The company was fabulous.  We had a lot of laughs.  Paige ate her weight in duck sauce.  We told the story of my Dad and his buckwheat pancakes.  It was a perfect night and a great way to celebrate the season with the family.

After dinner, we went to the Nativity our church puts on each year.  They have over 600 Nativities displayed and they are beautiful.  Paige fell asleep in the car, so I went in with the older kids while Cory stayed with Paige.  That was probably just as well, because I'm not sure she could have handled not touching them, even though we had that conversation 101 times that day.  It was hard enough for the older kids not to do it.  

Some of the Nativities were so beautiful, I was almost moved to tears.  We snapped a few pictures with my phone of our favorites, but really, every one was amazing.

This was the perfect end to our family celebration evening.  We definitely left with the spirit of Christmas in our hearts.