Daddy-Daughter Dance

Last month, Jason and Jordis went to the annual Daddy-Daughter Dance sponsored by our city. You have to be four to attend, so she just missed going last year by about two months. I had fun getting her ready, but I'd make a horrible pageant mom. Jordis is a typical girl.....she wants to look pretty, but she doesn't want it to take too long. This is the look she kept giving me when I told her for the eighty-millionth time, "No, I'm not finished with your hair yet."

All ready to go

Upon arrival, all of the little girls received a red carnation corsage.

Jordis wore hers all of five minutes before demanding that it be removed.

There was an ice cream buffet that looked really yummy. Jordis apparently had two bowls. She's never really adventurous, just chocolate and sprinkles.


Jordis' neighbor friend, Megan, and Xander's neighbor friend, Lauren, were also there with their dads, and they all sat at the same table together. Besides the dancing there were also some other activities, as well as a professional photographer on hand to take pictures.


Xander and I couldn't let Jason and Jordis have all the fun, so we went on a little date or our own. I took him to Donato's for subs and pizza because he really loves meatball subs and I really love Donato's pizza. It was win-win!

By far, this picture of Jordis was one of the highlights of my evening. She has never been one to enjoy posing for portraits. So much so that, after taking her for unsuccessful photos at 9 months, 12 months and 18 months, I finally quit taking her altogether. I was getting upset with her because she wouldn't stand still and smile for a picture before we left the house, and she rolled her eyes at me. Sometimes I tend to forget that some of the best pictures are the candid ones. I think this one needs blown up and hung on the wall.

Mardi Gras

We had fun celebrating Mardi Gras this year, although I didn't take too many photos. Jason had to work at dinnertime on Fat Tuesday, so we had our little celebration the day before.

Of course the house was decorated, and for dinner I made chicken sauce piquante. I also made king cake. Typically I make it from scratch, but I was sick and decided to take a shortcut involving crescent dough. It was a little flat, but it actually tasted better than my time-consuming recipe, so I might start doing that from now on. I figure if I lived in Louisiana I'd be buying my king cake from the grocery store like everyone else, so I'm still adding a little homemade touch to it by making my own with store-bought assistance. The kids were super excited to eat some since we don't give them dessert very often.

We have a GIANT bag of Mardi Gras beads I collected on my two trips to Mardi Gras in 1997 and 2001. They are mostly the green, gold and purple ones that the locals don't care about very much because they're not as intricate as some of the other ones. So they were pretty easy to come by, either because I caught them, or found them on the ground or Jason's family just handed them off to me.

I thought it would be fun for Xander to take some in for his classmates, so we counted out enough and he took them to school. Looking cute in his purple shirt, Xander informed me as we were waiting for the bus that if you bring in something about your culture you have to be prepared to talk about it. So I quickly wrote out a few things for him to share. I volunteer for his teacher on Tuesdays so she invited me in for his presentation. He did such a great job, and his friends seemed geuninely interested in what he had to say. They asked relevant questions as well.

He ended his presentation by saying, "I love Louisiana because I like to watch Billy the Exterminator." He cracks me up.

March?!

Wow, February sure went by quickly. We've been so busy the past week or so. Xander spent more time out of school due to weather, I think one whole day and maybe two 2-hour delays. My bible study has also been cancelled the past two weeks ~ last week for snow and then this week because the power went out during a thunderstorm and the sump pump broke, so the restrooms were out of order.

Jason's parents came to visit on Sunday afternoon and the kids were able to con them out of some money. They were both pretty excited to get a five dollar bill, they're used to only having singles. That money, on top of allowance and three visits from the tooth fairy made Xander a very rich little boy. Yes, I said THREE visits from the tooth fairy. He's had this one tooth on the top that has been loose for almost six months now, and he wouldn't let anyone pull it. It's made for some serious battles where tooth-brushing is concerned. Two other teeth ended up coming out first, and the other one had been hanging on so long that the adult tooth is already sticking out. He currently has an adorable lisp.

One of Xander's teeth fell out on Saturday while we were at an old friend's for dinner. I used to always look at my mom's wedding album and ask why I didn't know anyone who was in her wedding. I thought, if these people were that close to you that you would have them in your wedding, why don't you still talk to them any more? And now I understand, as our dinner host was one of those friends for me. I've known her since first grade, we were in each other's weddings, and then life plus a few miscommunications on both sides occurred, and here we are. Currently we live less than 10 minutes from each other and we had a nice time reconnecting, so I'm hopeful we will do a better job at keeping in touch.

On Tuesday the kids and I went to Red Lobster for dinner with my mom and step-dad. We needed to get together on that specific day and, unfortunately, Jason had to work so he wasn't able to join us. My dinner came with dessert though, so I gave him half. The kids were crazy-hyper after we ate and my attempt at taking them to Whole Foods with me was futile. They were running laps around some cases of wine in the meat department and then when I was looking at some chicken I heard Xander shout

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"Everybody dance now!" and he had a whole chicken standing up on its legs and was dancing it around the meat case. The song he was singing was what we used one year in high school for drill team tryouts, but he heard it from Shrek the Halls and now I will just never think of it the same way again.

At bed time I asked Jordis why she was acting up throughout the course of the evening and she said, "I was mad at Xander because he woke me up today when I was trying to get my booty sleep." On Wednesday she had her first gymnastics and hip hop class. She was easily the smallest one there by about 6 inches, but she jumped right in and had a smile on her face the whole time. She's been practicing her stand-ups (hand stands) ever since.

I now have a cold and am glad that this week is coming to a close soon. Hoping to rest up over the weekend and prepare a little Mardi Gras shindig for us since Fat Tuesday is right around the corner. Have a great weekend!

Valentine's Weekend

Yes, I realize that Valentine's Day is only on the 14th, but it fell on a Monday so we celebrated for two days since we had family time on Sunday. After playing in the snow the kids came in to warm up with some hot chocolate. They didn't know I had heart-shaped marshmallows for it, so they were pretty excited.

For dinner I decided to have a diner theme and serve chili cheese hot dogs (nitrite and nitrate free for those of you who know I try not to serve my kids processed meat), homemade french fries and red Crush in the bottles. My secret sister from church gave me some festive plates and napkins for the occasion so it made setting the table cute and easy, I just added my own red chargers and special touches.

Jason's uncle Roy and aunt Mona got us these soda glasses from our wedding registry years ago. I don't use them often because they're not practical for every day, but I love them and they come in handy for special times, so I'm really glad that we have them. I thought they would be perfect to serve french fries in for my diner theme, but I quickly realized it would take a LOT of fries to make them stick out of the top like I wanted and a) I wasn't cutting up any more potatoes and b) that's way too many fries, especially for the kids.

And it just wouldn't be a party without dessert, would it? I had a chocolate covered strawberry for everyone's place serving and then I had a dessert plate on the table.

I made Jason and the kids a card from a tutorial I saw online. It had pictures of us together from throughout the year and it folds up to look like a gift tag. They were really fun to make and all the supplies I already had, so they didn't cost me a dime.

I also used my supply stash to decorate some straws for our bottled pop. To my shock and excitement, the kids aren't big fans of red pop. Awesome, since they don't need to be drinking it anyway, but now I know they won't start asking for it now that I let them taste it.

Jordis gave up on the straw for some reason.

It was a fun evening together.

On Valentine's Day I started the kids off with some heart shaped waffles and we had some fun cookies for lunch. Xander said he was really excited to find his cookie in his lunch box. We also sent some treats for his teachers. They are pretzels shaped like letters covered with chocolate and red sugar, but you couldn't really tell by the time they were in the package.

That night, Jason and I got to go on a dinner date. My mom and step-dad gave us some money and babysat the kids for us. It was a great weekend!

Now we move on to Mardi Gras!

Our nursing home friends

Jordis and I have been visiting Willowbrook nursing home every Wednesday morning for the past few years. They opened a new branch, Willowbrook at Delaware Run, which is closer to our house, so now we attend there. It's a much smaller group and the residents are a little more......attentive. Recently we've been inviting Jordis' neighbor friend, Xavier, and they've been having a great time together.

Miss Kelly entertains the kids with stories and songs.

They also did a craft.

This is Miss Lucy. She's a spry little lady. Feisty, Italian, and has a slight east coast accent. She also likes my tattoo. And she's one of Jordis' favorite residents.

We love visiting Miss Kelly and our Willowbrook friends!

Super Bowl

We didn't really care about any of the teams playing in this year's Super Bowl, so we weren't concerned about getting together with people or having a party. But I'm all about eating appetizers and I had some NFL napkins, so we had a little shindig here at the house for just the four of us. I got to work the day before and Jordis wanted to help me make Chex Mix.

We ended up having quite the selection. Jason had requested white pizza dip, so I made that for him. The guacamole was for me. I should have made half the amount since no one else ate any. I was apparently expecting too much by thinking that my husband or children would ingest anything that's green. My peeps love sausage so I thought they'd enjoy my kielbasa appetizer, but Xander was mad that it had sauce, he just wanted plain meat. We all love deviled eggs so I knew those would be well received. My favorite part is the yellow and the kids' favorite part is the white, so this always works out really well. And it's very rare that the kids get dessert so I had no worries about the cookies. They would probably get excited about eating carpet lint if I told them it was some sweet confection. Sad, I know.

We shook our heads at Christina Aguilera's rendition of the National Anthem, looked for good commercials, then ate more cookies after the kids went to bed at half-time. And while I didn't care who won, I was really glad that Pittsburgh lost. :-)

Out of the mouths of babes

It's not uncommon for our kids to say some funny stuff, but over the past week or so they've been on a roll. Here are a few of my favorites:

Jordis

While watching me do my makeup one day, Jordis asked me what I was doing to my eyelashes. I explained to her what an eyelash curler was and she asked if we could curl her eyelashes, too. I agreed and set to work. A few seconds in she says,

"I don't think my eye likes this, it's a little bit distractive."
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I took her to the mall one day and let her run around for awhile in the play area where she made a friend. This is the conversation we had after leaving....

Me: I'm glad you were able to make a new friend while you played.

Jordis: Her name is Sophia and she's four.

Me: Nice, she's even the same age as you.

Jordis: No mom, she's four. I'm four and a HALF.

Xander


At Xander's parent-teacher conference I was discussing behavior with his teacher and she told me that when he does something inappropriate at school they say "Good choice, bad choice, what's your choice?" and he will supposedly think about it and then usually make a good choice whether it's ending a behavior, saying sorry to someone, etc. I thought that maybe trying this method at home might be good for consistency, so later that night I used it myself. Clearly, Xander was not impressed that I knew about his school routine, because after I asked him "Good choice, bad choice, what's your choice?" he said,
"You don't think I'm falling for THAT do you?"

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The day of the Super Bowl, Xander was upset that we weren't letting him watch a TV show before bed because we wanted to watch football. To soften the blow, we informed him that the Black Eyed Peas would be performing at halftime and he would probably like it since he likes their songs. He then says,

"Oh cool, tonight's going to be a good night."

(the name of a Black Eyed Peas song if you're not familiar)

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The other day Xander asked me if he could have a Justin Bieber poster for his bedroom. We don't listen to Justin Bieber and couldn't figure out how he knew about him, but apparently the bus driver lets them listen to his music as they ride to and from school. *Sigh* He has a cute, boyish Cars-themed bedroom and I was hoping to keep it that way for awhile. A new Cars movie is coming out this year so my plan was that he might regain some interest in it and we could hold on to the room a little longer. A Justin Bieber poster just doesn't fit in to my plans. In my attempt to dissuade him I said,
"Buddy, that poster wouldn't fit the theme of your room. And besides, do you really want to look at Justin Bieber all day?"
To which he replied,
"Mom, I'm not in my room ALL DAY, just for a little bit."
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It seems that being literal is really starting to bite me in the butt, because I've apparently passed on that gene to one of my own.