R.I.P.

Every winter our boiler breaks (because the house we rent is old and the boiler is even older). It can get pretty chilly while we wait for a repair man and Monday it got down to 52 degrees in here! Sadly, that was too cold for Grandpa Ron (not to be confused with our actual grandpa). Tate's little beta friend died. I actually saw him floating oddly in the morning, but he wasn't belly up on top so I thought he was just hiding from me. I had Sean look at him at dinner and he quickly recognized it. I felt dumb, but I guess they can sink too.

We called Tate over and told him that Grandap Ron had died because it was too cold. This was a really tough conversation to have with no preparation. Sean wanted to show him the body, I wanted to hide it. I said the fish went to heaven, Sean said it would go down the toilet into the ocean and "be happy there". Hmmmm, never thought through our fish theology before. It took Tate a minute to grasp what we meant, he kept saying we just need to feed him more and he will come back alive. Poor buddy. Then he cried. I actually shed a couple of secret tears myself. Not for the fish obviously I've been wishing them dead for awhile , but my heart just hurts for our little guy experiencing his first loss. Gracie and Benny were pretty sweet to him at first, although they kept saying he's DEAD, he DIED over and over. Finally, Gracie and Tate were talking and decided that if all three fish die they will "EARN A DOG!!!"
Huh? Not sure where that came from, and we told them that wasn't how it works, but they are pretty sure. I think they think it will be gifted to them from the pet fairy or something and 3 dead fish=one live puppy.
I suspect poor Molly and Tutu may have some kind of tragic "accident" soon if we aren't careful.

QOTD #243

Last night Gracie comes up on the couch to cuddle with me.

G: "Mama, you smell like fish."
Me.:"What?" (concerned face)
G: "A gummy fish that is red...but still."

Thanks. I feel a lot better now.

Better Late Than Never

Still nursing my flu here, but I wanted to post some Christmas pics before I forget.
Painting bird houses for Gma and Gpa's gift. We are trying to make more presents this year.

Christmas eve at Grammy's house

Kids with their Great Great Grandma

The kid table

Tracking santa on Aunt Laurie's iPad

Santa came! Or so we thought it would appear. I forgot the fake snow at my mom's and improvised with flour in front of the fireplace. Tate and Benny were inclined to believe they were Santa's footprints in snow, but Gracie was like "wow! Santa got into our flour and made a mess! Why did he do that?" *sigh*

Christmas morning:

Gracie's new microphone (why did Santa think that was a good idea?!) led to many morning announcements.

Tate holding Sammy, my sister's new puppy.

Christmas chaos!

We had dinner at Grammy's that night and stayed overnight. It's a lot of driving going back and forth Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We like to take the day off after Christmas and be lazy in our pj's all day. We finally headed back and the kids passed out. Three days of no naps and late bedtimes were wearing on us all. The kids and I had until Jan 3rd for break and daddy went back to work the 27th. That was when Benny got his first stitches, but that's for another time. Christmas was a crazy time, but really fun. Who knows how many more years we'll have before the magic is gone!

Sick

We're sick. Ranging from stuffy noses to hacking coughs and high temperatures. We've put ourselves on quarantine which makes cabin fever eminent. The kids are fighting over new toys and old toys. We are trying to clean up Christmas stuff everywhere and wiping noses, when all I really want to do is take 3 Tylenol PM and wake up in a week. 3 more days until the end of Christmas break for me and I think I will need every last minute to pull it together for my first graders. Oh, and did I mention Benny got stitches? He was wrestling with Tate and hit his head by the wood stove. I got to take everyone to the doctor's office by myself in bloody pajamas. At least that was before I got sick and became such a whiner. Going out with a bang, 2012!

Our Christmas Card

A little late, but just wanted to post for fun since we worked on it forever! The theme was A Charlie Brown Christmas! The front of the card was Lucy

Then on the inside was Charlie talking with Linus, saying "doesn't anyone know what Christmas is all about?"

Then Linus says, "Sure Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about..."

Then on the back is the kids singing around the Charlie Brown tree!

Merry Christmas, Charlie Brown!

Angels

Gracie and Tate got to be in the high schoolo play "the Best Christmas Pageant Ever" and don their costumes again for their Pre-K Christmas concert at school with the "big kids" (kindergarteners and 1st graders). It was sort of exhausting shutting them to rehearsals and all that, but so worth it. Gracie made it clear nobody was allowed to cheer for her or smile at her, but Tate gladly takes her portion. He blew kisses to us and waved between songs.

Another Milestone

I came to pick Tate and Gracie up from school and noticed he was wearing different pants than what I sent him in. His teacher told me that he had a little incident in the bathroom. I sighed and said ok, then she mumbles under her breath "and he walked into class naked."

Open mouthed shock.

Whaaaaaa? She said she thinks he got confused and just came back to class. "But don't worry, as soon as we saw him we scooped him up and took him to another room!" It doesn't help that his merciless and chatty twin sister saw him as well as 14 other four year olds who giggle and squeal just hearing the word underwear.
Thankfully, he really seemed unaffected. Like I was talking about him leaving his coat on the playground, "oh THAT incident". I got the full-ish story out of him though and it seems he went to the stall and there was no toilet paper, so he thought this meant he would have to hold it. So he went to the sink and grabbed a wad of paper towels and "put them on his privates and then couldn't stop it." So then his pants and everything were all wet and he couldn't go back to class with wet pants. That would be yucky and embarassing. So he stripped fully from the waist down and strolled through the hallway past 3 kindergarten classrooms(!) back to class. He walked in the door and they scopped him up. Unfortunately, we used his emergency clothes last month when he went down a wet slide, so he had to use another boys pants and Gracie's underwear for the rest of the day. You would think he'd have enough sense not to admit that detail to anyone, but alas. Gracie was quite chatty about that too.
Fortunately, we ARE talking about 4 year olds and their memories and short and fleeting. If this happened in 2nd grade, you'd better believe he'd be assigned a painful nickname for the next 5 years. A Pre-k kid can get away with a little streaking at school. But I had to write it down, for my memories and of course, to delight his sister.