It's Time to Pray

Yesterday, I had a bad eating day. I mean, a really bad, pizza/donut/cookie/candy bar/beer sort of day. In fact, the gravity of the situation must have hit Jack when he saw me eating breakfast. I have taken the idea from both my mother and my friend Cindy, both of whom I have seen eating this before for breakfast, to eat what you want to eat even if that food doesn't "fit into" the stereotype of what you should eat for that particular meal. So, when Jack saw me eat pizza for breakfast yesterday, he said,

"I can't belive my own mother is eating pizza for breakfast."

Geez Jack, sorry to disappoint you so severely. I will work on that!

On another note, Luke has declared that he will not learn when he goes to school. No ifs, ands or buts, this one is settled. I told him then he would have to go to extra school if he refuses to learn at school, to which he replied he would not go to extra school either. So today, we toured a preschool that he will attend this fall since I don't feel he is quite ready for kindergarten. As we discussed it at lunch, he said that indeed he would not go to this preschool when he was 5, to which I replied, Yes, you will.

At this point, he found it necessary to drop his head into his hands and begin to pray: God, please don't make this be a big fight. I don't want to fight about going to preschool. Help us to not fight. Amen.

How perfect! Maybe sometimes they do learn from us despite how hard they might try not to learn!

He followed up his prayer by asking me,

"Is left quicker?"

You see folks, this is what I'm talking about with Luke. I am sure at some point in our lives, there was a conversation, which involved the fact that indeed, left might be quicker. However, the time and places these tidbits of conversations reemerge make it somewhat difficult to follow his train of thought. So, generally, my answer is "Luke, I don't know how to answer that."

Somehow I suspect the time will come soon where I will be told "Gee mom, you sure don't know many answers to my questions!", and I guess I would just have to say, "Luke, I don't know how to answer that."

A cold weekend in Iowa

Friday, after 3 days stuck in the house either due to sickness or school cancellations, we decided to venture out for a family outing to the bowling alley. There was a two hour special for all you could bowl, including black lights/disco balls, so we were in. Due to his pro form and impeccable style, Rob took game 1 with a score of 132:

Jack, while thoroughly enjoying bowling at first, lost interest and became focused on lemonade refills and fake playing the video games after about a game and a half:

while Luke decided that he should hold this pose, after throwing releasing his ball, until his ball struck the pins: And let me tell you, that sometimes took a VERY LOOOOONNNNNGGGG time to happen. There was more than one occasion that we had to throw a second bowling ball down the lane to get his ball moving again.

Saturday Rob had to work, so the boys and I went to the mall to run a few errands and to Target. This always seems like a fairly easy venture but never turns out that way. I don't know, maybe I have too high of expectations, but after 3 hours of, "Luke, stop running!", "No, don't put that in your mouth after you've dropped it", "SSHHH! Inside voices", "No, we are not buying that!", "Luke, stop running!" I was sort of exhausted, so after Rob came home, we headed to church, and then back home for a fire and a few movies.

Today, after Jack had to work at the Legion for the annual Scouts pancake breakfast fundraiser, we returned to the house for more of the same. Sundays always feel very slow and sleepy to me, and once Luke's down for a nap and Rob and Jack head to the basement to play the Wii, the couch by the fire always lures me in.

I'll leave you with a few Luke-ism's this weekend:

"Luke, what do you want to be when you grow up? A truck driver? Doctor?"

"Nothing! I want to be a stay homer!"

At church, I pointed out a small newborn, probably no more than a few days old, to Luke-Look, isn't she cute?

"Yeah! Oh, she's so cute! When she grows up, is that baby going to hurt me?

WHAT?!?

Chuckle for the day

2009 In Review:
It was a year of Hope -- at first in the sense of "I feel hopeful!'' and later in the sense of "I hope this year ends soon!''

And so begins Dave Barry's recap of 2009, which was published in my newspaper last Sunday. I have been meaning to post a link to this article all week and am just getting around to it. If you have never enjoyed Dave Barry's humor, you are missing out. He manages to be very funny to both sides of the political tightrope. Warning, the article isn't short, so read it over your lunch break/kids taking a nap break, but it's worth it. Too funny.

http://www.miamiherald.com/living/columnists/dave-barry/story/1397654.html

The tooth has arrived

Jack lost his first top tooth 1 year ago, January, 2009. That loss was quickly followed up by the loss of the other three on top, so Jack has had the toothless top look for close to a year with no sign of any new ones coming. Sooo, without further adeau, let me introduce Jack's new top tooth-FINALLY! This one's for you Aunt Heather; those bulging gums with no new teeth were of high concern to Aunt Heather so I knew you would be much relieved to know they are finally here and we won't have to surgically pull them down! I guess when you start getting your teeth at three months (OUCH! You know what I'm talking about!) it's no surprise to start losing them at 4. These new teeth are always large and awkward in little kids' mouths so should be interesting to see how it fits in!

On a sidenote, school was cancelled two days this week due to snow and cold. And yes, I did have to physically chip the ice chunks out of my eyebrows after snowblowing the driveway Thursday morning. But, you still have to admit, it is pretty beautiful...

Has anyone seen my duck?

This is Luke. He is a four year old, fun-loving, convention bucking guy who often leaves us scratching our heads. He doesn't care much for "fitting in" or "making others like me"; he would rather just do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it. Probably fantastic traits for a future leader or way-paver, but for now, he can sometimes be tough to manage. He stores bits and pieces in his head like Rainman, and inserts them into conversations whenever he pleases. Sort of like this:

"Mom, where's my shirt?"?

"Gee honey, I don't know, I haven't seen it."

"You BLOCKHEAD!"

Or, try this one today riding to preschool with his friend Abry:

"Abry, I hate it when you call me your big baboo."

"What are you talking about, I didn't even say that?"

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

Do you think maybe we should watch a little less Charlie Brown? Anyways, he does give us some chuckles along the way, that's for sure. This is how he looked the other night when I checked on him before going to bed...

What has posessed him to tuck his "guys", as he and Jack affectionately call the stuffed animals such as Duck that they sleep with, into the front of his pants before falling asleep, is beyond me. He's even taken to upping the ante-the record is now six guys stuffed in his pants. The only question Rob had when I showed him the picture is, "Wow! Who's the lucky fella?"

Go figure.

Baby It's Cold Outside

Seriously. This is what Rob and keep saying when we look at the temperature, and then look at each other. Seriously. WHAT were we thinking? Iowa officially marks itself in the Miller history book as the coldest place we have lived in. We are just really tired of seeing this when we look at the temperature gauge:

It was actually -18 on our van driving to church Sunday morning. And folks, that's not -2 but "feels like blah blah blah with windchill". This was just straight up, -18 degrees. Seriously. It's too cold for the birds to even come to our birdfeeder lately. We have snow frozen onto the INSIDE of our front door jam. Yikes. So, while we love to do things like this in the winter:

The hill/cornfield behind our house

Rachel and Jack

Luke loves his new purple sled

Lately, we've been "stuck" in the house doing things like this instead. Not a bad trade-off, huh?

Ring in 2010

We were lucky enough to have some old friends come to visit us to ring in the New Year; Liz and Scott came all the way from Memphis to see us and let me tell you, our temperatures were scaring her silly. You see, this girl is from Puerto Rico, and though she survived a noteworthy stint in Milwaukee, which is where we met back in '95, she's gotten a bit spoiled with the warmer weather.

Liz and Scott

However, we kept ourselves warm mainly by eating and drinking nonstop, and I was able to utilize both Liz and Scott's techie skills to start this blog (view Liz's blog here).

We also were visited by our equally old friends, the Rieds, from Milwaukee, who we also met back in '95. We have been spending New Years Eve's together with the Rieds on and off (mostly on) since then, and keep a record of what we did and where we were each year, so we were able to add this visit to our growing list.

Scott and Kathi

We lasted till 2:30 am with lots of laughing and storytelling from the past, along with a lot of good natured teasing. Of note was the eruption of laughter and astonishment when I pulled out my video camera to record some of the festivities. Now, you may remember from a previous post that technology is not my passion; we received this video camera for a wedding gift 10 years ago, and it has quickly turned itself into an antique. I knew I was embarrassed to pull this thing out in public and plug it in since the battery will no longer hold a charge, but when I was asked if it recorded sound or was just silent, if I needed a key grip, and if it used a tripod, I became convinced it is time to update.

Old Faithful

So, despite frigid temps, sick kids, and very little sleep for all, we managed to have a wonderful time together as usual and party like it was 1999 (note the year our hats said?). There is something special about feeling like your face always remains on the verge of a smile when you are with old friends. That comfortable feeling of slipping on a worn pair of shoes and knowing you can be 100% yourself never gets old. Thank you for making the trip my friends!

Liz, Kathi, Rob, Scott, Rachel, Scott