Ella's Dress

I made this dress this morning. It's cheater fabric-- it is already smocked and cut and I just had to sew one long seam. Add two straps and voila! Wiggles, here, was not ready to cooperate so that I could take a good picture...

Lookie!!!

For Christmas, my friend, Lisa, gave me a cool sewing book with lots of little projects. Mom bought me a yard of Christmas fabric, so I decided to get crafty and make this reversible apron. Jacob says that if I'm going to be making cookies with him, I have to wear it on the green side.

Please ignore the fact that I just got out of bed, sewed an apron, and took a picture. Those with Photoshop are advised to use it liberally...

Kid Stuff

What you can't tell from the above picture is that Jacob is ALSO wearing a bat-faced baseball cap under his cowboy hat. He is a bat cowboy.

Jacob's house with library.

"Who could have POSSIBLY made this mess!?! Certainly not sweet, little ol' me..."

Jacob is actually sort of coloring in the lines and being picky about correct colors for the first time.


And here is his name.

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KIDS' SPECIAL SKILLS:

Jacob:

ART: Still builds amazing buildings. Not really a fan of coloring, but did great on Elmo coloring this morning-- mostly in the lines and colors were appropriate. Likes to paint "machines." Likes to talk about sculptures. (In Jacob's world, bird baths also count as sculptures.)

SCIENCE: Jacob's favorite weather is the moon.

MATH: Jake and Kris count to 100 almost every night. The 10s are the hardest, but he's almost ready to count to 100 by 10s by himself. He asks adding questions all the time. ("Go ask your Daddy. He's good at Math...")

READING: Jacob has several books practically memorized, but seems shy about actually reading them. He can recite Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See?, Go, Dog! Go!, Green Eggs and Ham, and What's the Time, Mr. Wolf?, and The Spooky, Old Tree. He likes to bring me books that we're read before and tell the story using the pictures.

WRITING: Jacob can mostly write his name. He needs help with the A and the B, but everything else is on his own. Right now his Js are backwards and his C is actually a U, but whatever...

ATHLETICS: Today, Jacob has figured out that he can jump from his bed to Ella's bed across the room. He is crazy. He jumps everywhere he goes and often tells people, "I am really, REALLY good at jumping!" He's been going to KidFit at the gym where they run around and throw balls and stuff. He likes to ride bikes, but feels a little intimidated by the size of the bike he got for Christmas. He gives it a try evey now and then, but if we make a big deal out of it, he stops.

MUSIC: Jacob makes up songs all the time and likes to play them on the piano. They kinda all sound the same, and if he wasn't yelling the lyrics at the top of his voice over the sound of the banging piano, you might think that he was just being destructive...

OTHER: Jacob is really good at computer games. He plays educational games at pbs.org and has no trouble using the mouse or typing his name. His favorite games are World of Goo, Yo Gabba Gabba, and Curious George.

Ella:

ART: Ella likes to color, but not on paper. Mostly on the table or important paperwork.

SCIENCE: Ella likes to pick her nose and bring us the boogers. She's also fascinated by tooting and goes around saying, "You tooted!" even when no one has. Perhaps she will excell in microbiology...

MATH: Ella can count to 16.

READING: Ella loves books and has general topics she wants to hear. "Wanna reada bunny book." She's woring on recognizing emotions so she likes to point to pictures and say things like, "Monkey sad." or "They scared!"

WRITING: All over the place and on everything. We say she's in her multimedia/street art phase.

ATHLETICS: Ella is what you would call a natural dancer. She likes to do a "trick" where she points her toes and lifts one leg behind her like she's doing ballet. She's also quite the jumper, though she definitely has more of a death wish than Jacob (if you can belive that!). This morning as Jacob was jumping from his bed to hers, Ella was following suit and jumping from Jacob's bed to the floor-- a good 2.5 feet drop.

MUSIC: Ella can sing any song she's heard 3 times. Her favorites are Hey, Hey We're the Monkeys, High Five, Rock a Bye Baby, Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, and the ABCs.

OTHER: Ella's been asking us to change her diapers for a couple of months now, but she's just started asking to go to the potty. We don't have a little potty for her yet and she's scared of the big potty, so she hasn't really had a chance to try. Her vocab is amazing and she mostly speaks in sentences. We call her the wunderkind...

Just Jacob

I tried to take a series of pictures of Jacob like I did for Ella. A bit challenging, but here's what I have... It took me two tries.

Traveling Zoo

Tuesday, I took the kids to the River Bend Nature Center and saw the Ft. Worth Zoo's traveling animals. They started off with the largest snake I've ever seen (which they said is only HALF her adult size), then a parrot, a baby alligator, a fat toad, then a possum, then a giant dog, then some penguins. The kids were only mildly interested since you couldn't touch anything, but at the end, we were able to pet Zeke, the giant dog.

Grandad's Birthday

I was an idiot and forgot the camera...

BUT!

We had a great time. We met up with John and Nikki, Suzie, Dad and Linda and went out to lunch. Then we came home and ate red velvet cake. John showed everyone how to play Guitar Hero (which is MUCH harder if you actually play guitar) and once the kids were in bed, we played Cranium.

A good time was had by all and the BEST part is that we're all in the same state and can do it again!

4 and 4

This is Hope's game:

Pick the fourth folder of pictures and choose the fourth picture inside. Post and explain.

I wish it had been a cooler picture, but folder #4 is "2002." (I got the camera in 1999) This is the first new car I've ever had-- a 2002 Hyundai Accent. His name was Manuel (said with an accent) because we were always searching for the manual. Pretty lame, huh? We got a scratch on the bumper the first week we had it. Probably from our drunken, Gospel singing neighbors...

Alas, Manuel was sold in 2006 because little Ella was on the way and we could not fit two car seats in this car. When Jacob was a baby, his car seat was on the passenger side with the seat moved all the way forward. No one (except my mom) could sit there. I sat in the back seat for an entire year until Jacob's seat was forward facing.

MO to TX

Tuesday, January 6th:

The alarm didn't go off, so we didn't get out of Columbia until 9:30. We drove and drove and drove with our only notable incidents being Jacob walking out of the bank bathroom with no pants on and Ella crying for the last hour and fifteen minutes of the trip. Good times.

Mall; Chinese (food); Bonkers

Monday, January 5th:

Another lounge day. After Ella's nap, we took the kids to the mall to ride the carousel and play in the play area. Maroua and I went to Target to pick up road food for the journey back to Texas the next day.

For dinner, we went to downtown Columbia and ate at a tiny Chinese restaurant. It was pretty good, but it was no El Rancho. Maroua and I took Ella home and Kris and Ryan took the boys to Bonkers, an indoor play area, and closed the place down.

Library; Shakespeare's

Sunday, January 4th:

Another hang out day. After Ella's nap, we went to the library and met up with Rami's girlfriend, Dot. The kids played and read books for a long time, but soon it was time for dinner.

We had tried to go to Shakespeare's Pizza the night before, but were met with a one hour wait, so tonight was the night to actually sample their fare. We all dug in and had none left over.

Devil's Icebox; El Rancho; Slumdog Millionaire

Saturday, January 3rd:

This was another lounge day. Once Ella was napping, however, I went with Ryan and Maroua and the boys to a state park to walk around and check out a cave called The Devil's Icebox. We picked up Sonic on the way and had a picnic before hiking off. The park was really nice and we followed a boardwalk for nearly the entire trek.

Once at the cave, Ryan helped the boys go inside. There was a small stream running through it, so they had to be careful not to get wet. Once both boys had had a turn inside, we headed back towards the entrance.

We had a bit of a meltdown halfway back, but I won't go into it...

Once back at the house we were thinking about dinner and decided to hit El Rancho once again. I again ate too many nachos and again had trouble sleeping because of how full I was. But as I write this, I know in my heart that I would do it all over again... mmmm.... Outside were weird clown people who kept the boys entertained. The adults, on the other hand, were creeped out.

Once the kids were in bed, Maroua and I went to the Ragtag Theatre and saw Slumdog Millionaire. It was really good!

STL; Zoo; Fitz's; City Museum; White Castle

Friday, January 2nd:

We got up early-ish and loaded up both cars for a day trip to Saint Louis (STL). The boys rode with Maroua and me and Ella rode with Kris and Ryan. As hoped, Ella napped on the two hour drive.

Our first stop was the St. Louis Zoo. In STL, the zoo and many museums are free. We found parking and walked around. We really lucked out on the weather- it was in the 40s and 50s. The zoo was really nice, but there were several closed exhibits due to weather. The kids rode the carousel and saw huge grizzly bears, lions, and a new baby giraffe.

Now it was time for lunch. We drove to the beautiful old downtown for lunch at Fitz's Root Beer Company. The Fitz's root beer is pretty good, but a little too minty for my taste. Kris really liked it and Maroua feels as though it's not good by itself and needs ice cream. During lunch we discussed what to do next. Maroua had heard that The City Museum was really cool, but it cost money. It's $2 cheaper after 5 so we figured we'd go ahead and go and by the time we got there it would be 5 already.

The City Museum should be on the list of thing to do before you die, but probably should be before your body quits on you. When we arrived, we were amazed at the huge, iron structure on the outside. It was an intricate maze of rusted stairs, airplanes, a firetruck, and slides and it was probably five stories tall. We hurried in and immediately saw a three story slide that ended in the lobby. We each paid our $10 and walked in, marveling at everything. First up: the outside crazy playground. It took a while to figure out how to get out there, but once we did, it was amazing. Jacob's big goal was to get to the firetruck. We climbed stairs, went through tunnels, and finally got to the firetruck. We played there for a long time before heading to the ball pit. This was a chaotic, giant cage filed with kids throwing beach ball sized balls. Rami and Jacob had a hard time getting around, but liked the challenge. After a while, Rami got hit by a stray ball so we left. Jake wanted to go back to the firetruck and Maroua and Rami went around looking at more stuff. Maroua found us later and we went to the bottom of the playground where they had a fire pit and were letting people roast marshmallows. It was so surreal!

We regrouped and went to explore the inside of the museum. The kids rode a train and played in the toddler area while we adults rested up a bit. This place was crazy! There was a huge area just for arts and crafts, a skateless skate park, a big area devoted only to blocks, stone work from the tops of buildings, and more. And then we went on the craziest thing of all..

THE SUPER ULTRA MEGA COLLOSSAL SLIDE!!!!!!!!!

We climbed a million stairs (I carried Ella, so I got my workout for the day!) to get to the 7th story. We then took a slide all the way down to the first floor. It was nuts... It was a spiral and mostly enclosed, so it seemed like it took forever to go down and a lot of the time it was pitch black. So crazy... Once at the bottom, Ella and I had to sit for a while-- we were breathless and dizzy. After that, we went to other areas: the mangroves where you climb through trees and tunnels and the caves where the stalagtites and stalagmites look like dinosaurs. A lot of this would have been more fun if we were not fearing the deaths of our children the entire time. There were tunnels and slides everywhere so it would be really easy to get separated and never find each other again. (Kris looked up the death rate when we got home-- 0 dead, 2 very seriously injured. We were sure the whole place was a death trap...)

And then we saw a circus. Nuts, right? There were about 5 aerialist acts in a small circus arena. They were part of the museum's circus classes and performed for tips. The kids were getting very tired and hot so we stripped them down to only one layer of clothes.

Around 11:00 (the museum is open until 1AM) we went back to the car and headed back to Columbia. Kris requested that we find a White Castle on the way home, so Ryan led us to our very first White Castle experience. I say gross, Kris says good.