Week 36!

Kickin' Faded Catholics
Yesterday, Drew came out of school with a huge smile on his face and a certificate that said he had been nominated as "Student of the Quarter" for his class. Well, I was so proud of him, so before piano practice I stopped at KFC to get him some popcorn chicken as a snack (his new favorite food!). While on the way to piano, Dawsyn looks at the box of KFC and says, "what exactly does that stand for, mom?--'Kickin' Faded Catholics?'" Where do these kids come up with this stuff? Dawsyn turned 7 on Sunday. I do not know what we are going to do with her when she turns 17. Our house rule has always been that you can do whatever you want on your birthday as long as you don't hurt yourself or anyone else. Well, of course, Dawsyn woke up prepared to take full advantage of that! She spent the day listening to Miley Cyrus and dancing, at one point Shawn again expressed his hope that this baby is a boy because he is very worried about how Dax knows all the words to the Miley Cyrus songs and he was dancing with Dawsyn and freezing in a pose that involved his butt sticking out and jazz hands! I even let Dawsyn call a friend on the phone for the first time, but I made her stay in the room with me and kept it to a ten minute conversation. Mostly, they just sang songs to each other. (Today, Delaney got in bed with me and said, "Mommy--the baby can come now!" I had been saying that all I need was to get through Dawsyn's birthday and then it didn't matter when the baby came--I guess she has been listening.) Dawsyn did go to church (little does she realize the 'birthday clause' does not include family functions like church) because it was All Saints Day and she got to dress up like her favorite saint and process into church. She chose Saint Elizabeth, Mary's cousin. Delaney was the Virgin Mary, and Drew was St. Andrew. The costumes I made turned out pretty good and the kids looked angelic as they walked into church. On the way home, Shawn and I discussed how innaccurate the whole event really was. I adore my kids, and know they are perfect for me, but saintly? In actuality, if Dawsyn had really been Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, and Delaney was the Mother of God, I can just imagine how that whole story in the Bible would be a little different--I can imagine the coversation: Elizabeth, "Are you pregnant too?" Mary-"Yes" Elizabeth, "This is supposed to be my time to have a baby, how come you had to go and have a baby to--you always copy me!" Mary: "Well, I can't help it--my baby is the son of God" Elizabeth-"yeah, right!" Mary- "no, really--an angel came and told me I was having God's son!" Elizabeth (stomping her feet and crossing her arms)- "How is that fair? How come you get to have the son of God? Why is my kid only a baptist?" This probably would have resulted in a slightly different version of the "Hail Mary" prayer.

Halloween!

Last night was Trick-or-Treat. The kids got too much candy and I was exhausted from walking around, but we had a good time. We went as the Scooby-Doo gang, although I personally thought Shawn looked more like someone who could be serving 8-10 for child endangerment instead of "Fred". I must say he was pretty excited about the ascot! I didn't have a character for the scooby-doo theme and I refused to be the "mystery machine" regardless of my current size. I ended up just saying that I was "Michelle Duggar--the early years" most people thought that was pretty good. The only rough spot of the evening was when Delaney fell causing her glasses to fly off and her knees to get skinned up. Shawn and I both wanted to pick her up right away, but Drew and Dawsyn thought she should crawl around for a few minutes saying, "My glasses, my glasses!". I had to admit, I thought this was very clever of them and sort of agreed--until she started to cry and my parenting instincts kicked in again!

We were listening to Halloween music on the way to school this morning and it reminded of the Halloween when Dawsyn was 3 years old and couldn't sleep because she was afraid of the "pizza wiener". At first, I was dumbfounded as to what she was referring to and she just kept saying that Daddy was singing about the "purple pizza wiener". My first thought was "what has Shawn been teaching them now?" until she said, "you know, the one-eyed, one-horned, flying purple pizza wiener". I began to tell her that it wasn't pizza-wiener, but decided that was actually a lot less scary than "people-eater" so I just let it go. We had a good laugh about that this morning!