Run With The Fishes

My dad came to watch Nathan’s football game this weekend. Thanks to the kindness of strangers he actually made it to the game. 1st one of his tires blew out. Then he thought he ran out of gas (it went from over 1/4 of a tank down to empty), so started walking to the station. Eventually, a good samaritin gave him a ride from the gas station back to his car. After putting the gas into it, when it still wouldn’t start, the person actually drove my dad about an hour from where his car broke down to the game.

Saturday night we were invited to a carnival for a school some of Nathan’s teamates attend. Greg and Allie got zapped for one of the community websites.

After the carnival, we came home and watch OSU crush the hopes of UT fans everywhere, only to hand them the game on a silver platter after halftime.

Yesterday, we all woke up bright and early, and.. thanks to the time change, had to wait even longer for NFL football to start. The kids and I spent some of the time carving our pumpkins. Allison thought the pumpkin guts were excellent for skating. Everytime she would slip and fall, she cracked up laughing. I’ll post some pictures later on today.

Allison has started telling us knock knock jokes. This is what our car sounded like on the way to football practice yesterday when Allie was the knocker.

“Knock knock”
“Who’s there?”
“Boo”
“Boo who?”
“Don’t cry, just a joke”

then a few minutes later…

“Knock Knock”
“Who’s There?”
“Apple Tree”
“Apple Tree who?”
“I don’t know, Mom, don’t cry. Just a joke”

From there any knock knock joke she told would end in, “Don’t cry, just a joke”.

So then Nathan tells her the banana, banana, banana, Orange.
“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?”

Alllie says “MMMM HMMMM!”

When Allison does the “Who’s there?” part, even if she doesn’t get the joke, which is most of the time, she will crack up laughing at the end. Just because she knows everyone will laugh.

Do any of the few of you that read this blog have good ideas for books that Nathan and Zoey can read? What books did you enjoy reading when you were in the 3rd-5th grades.

So far, the Nathan’s 2 favorite books he has read this year are Summer of Monkeys and Beauty. He likes them both because he says they have some sad parts in them, and then they make you laugh. I am getting Bridge to Tarabithia for him, but am having a hard time thinking of other books I read way back then.

Zoey has swapped her costume idea a few times, and Allison’s interpretations are funny and of course she wants to do the same thing. First Zoey was going to be a mummy, which Allison kept saying as mommy. Next it was a vampire, complete with teeth, which meant that Allison wanted to be a scary pirate (they sound similar). So we taught her, “Give me yer candy or you walk plank”. Zoey finally settled on a ninja.

Allison is in shock and disbelief about the candy part. Most of our preparing for Halloween conversations with her go like this:

“Hey, what are we going to do on Halloween?”

“I be butterfly/mommy/scary pirate. Zoey be inja, Nathan scare me.”

“Yeah, and when we see people we’ll say trick or treat! Can you say Trick or Treat?”

Then we added a twist.

“When we see people and say ‘Trick or Treat’. Then they’ll give you candy.”

“People give me candy?!?”

She thought this was so amazing that a loop in our talk developed and continued until she fell asleep (surely dreaming of candy) 15 minutes later.

The next day she looked at Greg and told him, “I say trick or treat, get candy for you, Dad.”

Have you ever received an invitation and you weren’t sure if it was because the inviter just felt obligated to hand it out? Is it weird that we actually went? Who cares. They shouldn’t have invited us if they really didn’t want us to come along. One of the guys I work with/for wife’s stepdad is running for a city or county office. So, he had a big fish fry at his house. Since it was a political thing, it was a bunch of people who didn’t really know eachother (including the hosts).

On the drive, we listened to Nathan’s favorite song, by the band he says is the coolest. “Elevation!” WooWooHoo. This is his get pumped up for football practice music and he knows all of the words.

The first thing we did at the fish fry was to see the miniature horses. They are so little (Duh!). The girls think they are awesome and so cute*. Allison was so excited she kept running from horse to horse. She would even immitate their whinnies with her laugh.

After visiting the horses we made our way over to the crowd gathering around the band. Their house is really neat with a big pond and gazeebo. The closer we got to the pond, the more Allison kept saying
she was going to “swim in the really big pool”.

There were some boys playing catch with a football on a different side of the party. Nathan really wanted to join them but was so shy he hung out on the fringes gradually getting closer. After a quick word with the hostess, her cousin tossed the ball Nathan’s way and we didn’t see him again until it was time to leave.

After eating and listening to the band, it was time to go look at the horses one last time. When we got there, Allison was more interested in holding the barn cat.

*ever since Greg Sr. visited, Allison says everything is “sooo cute!”

For whatever reason (mostly just parents who fall asleep and forget about the fairy visitor), the Tooth Fairy has a really hard time getting to our house on the first night of a lost tooth for Zoey. For one of her teeth, it was very stormy, so we decided the tooth fairy didn’t want to risk the danger of collecting a tooth.

2 days ago she pulled out the second of the 2 front teeth. Yes, she has been singing “All I want for Christmas”. The Tooth Fairy didn’t make it to our house again! The explanation was that surely because Nathan started out the night in Zoey’s bed, before being moved to the sofa, the Tooth Fairy did not want to give the money to the wrong person.

I think Zoey believed it, but when she was getting ready for bed she asked me if the fairy was real.

“Are you sure it isn’t you?”
“I’m asleep, how could it be me?”
“What about Dad?”
“I don’t think so, but you can ask him. I’m pretty sure he’s asleep too.”
“Maybe it’s Nathan”
“No way. He has to go to bed at the same time as you.”
“Well, Do you think it’s Grandpa?”
“How would it be Grandpa? He lives in California!”
“He could sneak to a small plane late at night, fly to the airport, walk to our house, then fly back home”
“Yeah, you could be right. Maybe it is Grandpa”.

Greg’s dad is here for an impromptu visit. Because of this, Nathan is going to sleep in the girls’ room. After he picked out his story to read before bed, he asked, “Can I sleep in the living room? I don’t mind staying up late”.

“No, It’s a school night. You have to sleep on Allie’s bed because the grown ups are going to stay up later than you are allowed.”

“Curse you grown ups”, Nathan whispered as I was walking out of the room.

We aren’t entirely sure if Nathan had football practice last night. It’s the opening day of the annual Chicken Festival in town, so the kids are out of school today. We didn’t go to practice because Nathan had two buddies stay the night. He calls them buddies, and he says all three of them are smart and crazy.

The good news is, if they did have practice, we crippled the other team by having his buddies over. They are the QB and RB.

It’s sort of funny. Those three play ROUGH! Well, when they are not playing the playstation. They were out back playing, and by playing I mean wrestling. It looked like ultimate fighting. First, they would pick who was going to go against eachother by sticking their feet in a circle and “eenie-meanee-ing” it. The odd man out would be the ref, who would start things by making them shake hands, and then come out fighting. The other two would go at it. Greg and I watched through the window, but I couldn’t take it. I just knew someone was going to get hurt.

The funny part was watching them sort of discover their boundries. They started off wrestling. Run and jump at each other (literally) while trying to find someplace to latch on. Then Josh started punching Nate in the side of the stomache trying to get away. So Nate decided to try it and took a swing at Josh but more at the face. Josh threw his hands up in the, “Woah! Woah. Sorry about hitting you. How about a new rule… no punching, ok?” fashion. So then they learned punching was out. Nate learned the hard way that kicking in the stomache/groin should also be out.

Greg went out and talked to them before it went much further. We found out after the fact that they never “get” to play like that because it’s not allowed at school. I just thought maybe that was how boys play when they are together, since the buddies each have older brothers. Man would it have sucked for someone to get hurt. Talk about crippling the opponents team.

If you ask Allison how old she is, she will answer “OLD!”.

If you ask her again, she will say, “I’m Six!”
We aren’t really sure where she got six from, since you know, she is about to be 2. And since Zoey is 7 and Nathan is 8, noone says they are six around her.

Fall is in the air. Finally the weather is cool enough to wear jeans and long sleeved shirts. When, instead of just sitting around watching football on TV, people feel like going outside and tossing the ball around. It’s also the time to start thinking about Halloween. As a way to get the ball rolling, here is my tribute to Halloweens past.

It looks like we only take pictures on odd numbered years.

1999 – Zoey was about 1 year old and Nathan was 2 1/2. It’s the first year we dressed them up for Halloween. We were moving from Stillwater to Plano and our apartment wasn’t ready for us yet. Our digital camera, the first series of Sony Mavicas which was great in it’s day, was slowly starting to die. Zoey was Laa-Laa and Nathan was a football player. If we had known then one of his favorite players would be Brett Favre, he would have been him, instead of Troy Aikmen.

Yes, I am eating Laa-Laa’s antenna.

2000 – No pictures of this year. Zoey (2) was dressed up as an Alligator while Nathan (3) was your friendly neighborhood Spiderman. UPDATE!! Brenda found a picture of the kids!

2001 – Our kids were big Blue’s Clues fans and Nathan was on the end of the Pokemon craze that took over young boy’s minds. Zoey (3) dressed as Magenta (before she went to the eye doctor) and Nathan (4) is Pikachu.

Nathan is demonstrating how Pikachu would hop around for candy.

2002 – I’m a little disappointed that we have no pictures of this year. Only because I made Nathan’s costume all on my own. Complete with homemade Firebolt, red and yellow Quidditch robe and glasses. Nathan (5) was Harry Potter, all ready for a game. Zoey (4) was a purple flying unicorn.

2003 – Back to the pictures. I think the kids’ costumes looked awesome this year. Nathan (6) was the devil. Zoey (5)was running a fever and missed school that day. We didn’t want her to miss out on trick-or-treating though, priorities right? She was Princess Jasmine.

Because it isn’t every Halloween you have a huge belly to paint on (ok, maybe for some people it is), part of me was dressed as an eye. I had on a ginormous (it had to be) button-up shirt so it looked like the eye was peeking out. This was the last time my belly made a public appearance.

2004 – Something must have gone wrong. It’s an even numbered year and we have pictures. Nathan (7) was the grim reaper. Zoey (6) was a witch, and Allison’s (almost a year) costume was a crazy wig.