Another Red Alert!

Ethan has been working on getting his other front tooth to fall out for a few weeks. He wiggles it with his tongue back and forth trying to losen it up. He was playing with it Saturday morning when suddenly we heard "Red alert!! Red alert!!" and Ethan went running for the bathroom. His other front tooth had come out. He was so excited because now he has both of them gone.

I made him stand in front of the Christmas tree and sing "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth..." He sang it happily, because he's a ham, but he did it in "fast speed" so you have to listen well to get it all. Then I took photos.

Saturday was crazy and we ended up grabbing fast food between recitals. Ethan said, "Mom, Dad, the best thing about not having two front teeth is that my straw..." at that point Bryan and I started to laugh because we knew what he was going to say. He can put a straw in his mouth, close his teeth and the straw fits perfectly in the gap. I remember that happening when I was a kid too!

He has shown and told everyone about his second tooth and that the tooth fairy wasn't too busy to come to our house the first night! Yeah, he got quarters under his pillow last night!

Here's the photo:



Here's the video:

Courtney Dancing

Courtney is taking tap and ballet classes right now. She has a recital this Saturday and so today was their last practice. I am not sure if she is going to actually dance on a stage or if she'll be too nervous, so I decided to take the video camera and get what I could.

The first video is from tap class. It took 3 tries in tap class before the teacher decided to split the girls up into groups to have them do the routine once as groups so they could see each other. Courtney loved this and I got the entire routine. She did a great job. Here it is:



This is a video of the ballet routine. Courtney is having issues with her ballet slippers. Grandma Pack gave her some for her birthday that we have been using just fine. But then Courtney started to complain that they were too small (which they really were). So I went to buy her some and the ones we got were a bit too big. She used them quite a bit, but you will see her take them off in this video and then finish the routine. (We went after class and bought her some that fit so she should be fine on Saturday.) Once again, she had a hard time until the teacher split them into groups.

At the beginning of the ballet routine I always get the giggles. They are supposed to do plie and they do a fine job for 3 and 4 year olds. It just always looks to me like they are going to lay an egg, so I get the giggles. You'll see what I mean. Here it is:



Here's another video of the beginning of the routine. The plies are so hilarious! These little girls are SSSOOOO cute!



I'll add more videos if she actually gets through the routine on Saturday. It should be cold so their teacher isn't having them dress in a costume (yeah!). Next year Courtney only wants ballet class and that's fine with me!

The Cockroach

When I'm not around things get pretty goofy. I went Christmas shopping last night so Bryan put the kids to bed. A few months ago, I had used some plastic bugs to help the Primary children "get the bugs out" of the songs for the Primary program (when I was chorister). Ethan has been playing with those bugs since and one of them was in his room. When he wasn't looking, Bryan put the cockroach in his bed. Then when Ethan pulled back the covers Bryan jumped a little to get Ethan to react. Bryan said it was pretty funny.

This morning when Ethan was getting ready for school he said, "Mom, do you the funny thing Dad did last night?" And then he told me the story of the cockroach in his bed. He really thinks his Dad is cool for playing a joke like that. Of course, I had to tell Ethan about the time when we were first married and Bryan put the plastic snake in the clothes drier so it would pop out at me when I went to do the laundry. I think Bryan went up quite a few notches in Ethan mind! ;)

Caroling

We have the neatest neighborhood. For Halloween, we have a huge neighborhood party that is really anticipated and everyone loves it. For Christmas, we usually give out neighborhood gifts to everyone. This year, since money is tight for many people, neighbors are getting creative with their neighborhood gifts. One family invited the neighborhood to a "progessive caroling" party. They had it for FHE and started at one end of the neighborhood. They would carol to one family and then that family would join in and go to the next house and so on until they got back to the beginning. My kids have been waiting for this FHE all week because they wanted to go caroling. Ethan kept asking me to practice carols with him so he would be ready.

I wasn't sure which direction and how long it would take to get to our house so I got our stuff ready early so we could go when they came. Courtney hasn't been feeling well so she and Bryan were going to stay home. It took about an hour for them to get to our house and by then Ethan was dying to go. The kids all ran to our door and sang at the top of their lungs. Then Ethan and I got dressed in warm clothes (it's been really cold here!) and went along.

All the neighbors loved being sung to and those who went along had a great time. The kids ran as fast as they could from door to door and sang their hearts out. It was cold and windy, but no one really seemed to mind.

When we got back to the starting house they had hot cocoa for everyone and we all took treats to share. The kids went upstairs to play the Wii and the adults stayed downstairs to talk. When it was time to go I found Ethan and then we went home. Courtney was waiting up for us...I forgot that we were supposed to bring her back a treat, so we made some hot chocolate of our own for her and Ethan. Then we went to bed.

It was fun and the adults were talking about making it another neighborhood tradition. The family who started it said they would love to do it each year, so I think we have a winner. It really was fun!

Soccer Ball Cake

Last week I got an order for a soccer ball birthday cake for the 3 year old son of an attorney at Bryan's office. I have done baseballs before but hadn't ever made a soccer ball cake. I figured, how hard can it be because the instructions and pattern came along with the pan. Well, it was harder than I anticipated and I am lucky to be married to Bryan because otherwise I would have thrown it in the trash!

The cakes were easy to bake and worked out great, but getting the pattern on the soccer ball and getting it round, wasn't easy. I used the enclosed pattern a few times to trace onto the ball but it wasn't working. Bryan tried and found that the patterns were off. He drew it and then the two of us tried to trace the pattern so it looked good. Then I began to ice it with the star tip. When I was halfway finished, Bryan noticed a huge bulge on one side of the ball. I was ready to call the customer and tell her I couldn't do it. But I built up that side with enough icing that it worked out. She was pretty impressed when she came to pick it up and later emailed me to tell me it was a hit and tasted great. That's what saves me...my cakes taste great so even if they may have a flaw or two, all people remember is the taste.

But I have sworn off soccer balls...until someone else order one ;)

The White Elephant Gift

Bryan's work Christmas Party was last night. Now when alcohol isn't involved you have to invent other ways to bring out the weirdness in the people you work with. At Barney, McKenna & Olmstead, that is achieved with the White Elephant Exchange game. But I'll get to that in a minute.

When you first arrive at the party, you are given a questionaire to fill out. Then you have to find people with the same answers as you and sign your name. You can't have the same person sign for more than 1 answer however, so it forces you to walk around the room and meet people. The first one finished wins a gift card (usually to a restaurant or bookstore). After that game is over we all eat dinner and talk. Then we play a couple more games that usually are made up by one of the partners. This is interesting because you find out who is really competitive and who cheats! And it happens quite a bit! When those games are finished the chairs are moved back and numbers are handed out for the White Elephant Game.

Everyone brings a gift. For each couple you bring one bad White Elephant and one good gift that is under $5.00. They are all bunched in together so you never know what you are going to get. This is where the craziness without alcohol begins. The first person chooses a gift from the pile and opens it. The next person can choose to "steal" the gift from the first person or choose one from the pile. A gift can only be stole 2 times before it is "dead" and the person with it gets to keep it. Two years ago, one gift was chosen by a partner in the law firm. He opened it and found a COW TONGUE. Last year he retaliated by bringing a wild field mouse as a gift. From those two years I learned not to choose a gift that is either on ice or has air holes. There is always a prize for the worst white elephant gift.

But this year really takes the cake. There was a rather large package with a note on it saying "This is the top." One of the receptionists was brave enough to chose the gift. She began to unwrap it and realized that the wrapping paper was a bit wet. She kept going to find a couple of styrofoam ice chests (the flimsy ones from WalMart) stacked on top of each other. A note told her to open the top one where she found a freezer ice bag. Under the ice bag was a bone! She squealed. I looked at it and thought it was a cow rib or something but the man sitting next to Bryan said, "That's my rib bone. I had surgery 2 weeks ago and they had to take my rib out, so I brought it as my white elephant gift." IT WAS A HUMAN RIB!!! I was so grossed out! The second ice chest had some candy in it but I don't really think that made up for the first one being a human rib. The wife of the man who brought the rib actually "stole" it back from the woman who originally opened it, for which I was really glad.

Bryan came up with the strategy of sticking to stealing opened gifts from others so you at least know what you are going to end up with and we went home with the best gifts of any year. I told Bryan that I'm a bit nervous for next year because I don't know what someone can do to top a human rib as a white elephant gift.

Fun times with the law firm!

It's Christmas Tree Time

The first FHE of December is our Christmas Tree FHE. I spent the day getting the decorations out, putting away the Thanksgiving decorations and figuring out where we are going to put things. After dinner Bryan brought the Christmas tree up from the basement. I hate putting lights on a Christmas tree. It makes such a mess and it's usually the time when my family yelled and screamed. So a few years ago we bought a pre-lit tree and I love it.

Bryan put it together, with a little help from Miss Courtney who kept dragging the top section around and plugging it in. Then he spent a lot of time separating out the branches and getting it ready to decorate. And then the kids went nuts. The bottom half of our tree is REALLY decorated. We only had 2 ornaments broken, which has to be a Pack record (I usually drop at least 3 each year)! I was able to glue one of the ornaments back together so it wasn't a total loss. Ethan and Courtney were cute when they pulled out ornaments they remembered were theirs. Courtney found one her Nursery leader made last year with her picture on it. She likes to point and ask if it's her. Ethan found one his kindergarten teacher gave him last year and he loved it. He also thought the homemade decorations we made last year look "dumb" and that we need to buy some more "nice ones" because our tree still isn't completely decorated. I told him that I love the homemade ones and that our tree looks great.

Last year we won a train set at Bryan's work party and it goes around our tree (just like Grandma Pack's tree). The kids love this but I really don't have the patience for setting it up. Last year we took tracks out because it was so big, but this year Bryan put all of it together so we have the Nativity set up so it doesn't look weird.

Now we have to tackle the outside Christmas lights. Our street is always so decorated and we have a hard time getting ours up. One year we were the only ones in the neighborhood without lights up. I kept buying outdoor lights that I thought would work together but they wouldn't and it just turned into a mess. But this year we should be all set!

It was a fun night. Here are some photos: