Random Thoughts Thursday (the un-random Halloween edition)

We interrupt this regularly scheduled Random Thoughts Thursday to bring you a Halloween-themed post.  This post is brought to you by the knowledge that there are far-away grandparents and an uncle in Australia who really want to see the girls Halloween costumes, and by the fact that I actually have time to blog today.

Random Thoughts Thursday will return at its regularly scheduled time next week.

About two months ago, Ellie told me she'd decided once and for all what she wanted to be for Halloween.  This is the girl who has fairly readily molded her costume ideas to my will for the past six years.  I should have enjoyed that more while it lasted, because this year she decided to be...a volcano.  I usually make the girls costumes, but even if I'd wanted to buy them this year, I have no idea where one would go to find a volcano costume.  So we got creative with the several yards of black felt that Chris has had stored in our cedar chest for the past 10 years, and here's what we came up with:

Pretty darn awesome, if I do say so myself.  Here's another angle:

And one more, because I was feeling artsy:

Her original plan was to have her hair all ratted up and sprayed red, but we tried that for the church Halloween party, with traumatic results when it came time to clean it up, so we came up with the headband instead.  She got pretty good at explaining to people what she was supposed to be, and was over the moon when someone actually guessed right.

Lexi usually goes for simplicity when it comes to costumes.  Her main goal is to just have fun and get candy.  I completely understand that, and appreciate how easy it is to create her costumes.  This year we just had to hunt down a Viking helmet, and the rest I threw together in a few hours using a couple of t-shirts and some fake fur.

And the "okay, stop taking pictures now" picture:

Vicki originally wanted to create an elaborate steampunk costume, but as much as I would have loved to do that (and make something for myself, too, I just didn't have the time.  So she decided to be "Alberta" Einstein instead.

We had fun fluffing up her hair (you can't really tell, but we sprayed it white), and those eyebrows and mustache were a fantastic find.  This is one of my favorite pictures of her, ever:

Here are all three together:

And it wouldn't be Halloween without Chris and I in our goth costumes:

Scary, no?  We also had tattoos:

(That picture is from a party we went to a few days before Halloween.)

So, there you have it.  Hopefully this satisfies those of you dying to see what the girls came up with this year. The only things that scares me now is wondering what, exactly, Ellie is going to decide to be next year.  What could possibly top a volcano?

One last shot of all three girls:

And thus concludes the Ebert family costume roundup of 2012.  Join us again next year when we discover just how much weirder it can get.

I Open My Mouth and the Words Fall Out

Sometimes, as a parent, we are required to do things that we never in a million years could possibly have imagined doing before we had children.  Things like wiping your child's nose with your bare hand, or letting them leave the house with 25 barrettes strategically placed (by them) on top of their head.

And sometimes we say things that you can't even make up.  Remember this?  The phrases come out of our mouths, and it's only once we've said them that we stop and think, holy cow, where did that come from?

For example, a few days ago the girls and I were all in the car with my mom.  The girls were in the backseat and things were getting a little heated, when I suddenly found myself uttering the following sentence: "It's not okay to call your sister a hobo unless you're willing to let her call you a hobo, too."

Being a parent is awesome.

Why I Love My Brother

If you haven't read this post yet, this won't make sense.

Thanks, Robbie!

Junior Mythbusters

We're big fans of Mythbusters around here.  In fact, over the past several months, Friday night has become our traditional Mythbusters & panini night (thank you, Amazon instant video, for feeding our habit.)  Heaven forbid we plan anything else on a Friday.

One of the Mythbusters' taglines is "don't try this at home".  However, there's one myth we've always wanted to test: Diet Coke and Mentos.  Around Christmastime, I discovered a kit that contained a roll of Mentos and a plastic tube designed to let you drop several mints into a bottle of Coke at one time.

The setup

A plastic pin holds the mints in place until you're ready to pull the cord and release them all at once, and there's a hole in the top for the resulting geyser of Coke.  Of course I had to buy it.  We've had the kit since then, but haven't gotten around to using it.

Until this weekend.

Uncle Blaine and Aunt Mel came to visit us from Seattle.  Blaine is a big Mythbusters fan, too, and it was finally not raining, so Saturday seemed like the perfect day to try out this experiment for ourselves.

We headed over to the park and set up in the grass.  The girls took turns dropping the mints into the tube, and then we all stood back.

Vicki somehow managed to score the role of
cord-puller without a fight

I think it's safe to say we had a blast.

Meet Howard

This is Howard the ladybug.

He lives in our car.

I have no idea how he got there, but he's been there for at least two weeks.

Don't ask me why his name his Howard, or how we know he should be "Howard", and not "Howardina".

It's just how we do things around here.

Blast From the Past

I was looking through some old files on my computer this afternoon and came across a priceless gem called "emails from Oregon".  When we first moved here, in my pre-blog days, I wrote a long email each Sunday night keeping the grandparents and aunts & uncles up to date on all our goings-on.  Once I started the blog the emails became redundant, so I stopped, but I'm so glad I saved everything.  I have had the most entertaining (and non-productive) evening reading back over it.

Allow me to share with you a little bit of what our life was like in 2005:

July 17

• Vicki appeared upstairs, announcing that Lexi was making a mess. I went downstairs to find that Lexi had apparently decided that she was in need of lotion, and finding none nearby, had decided that her yogurt, which, after all, was a pretty pink color, would work just as well.

July 31

• The other day the girls were singing a song from one of them [Veggie Tales videos] called "Stand Up for What You Believe In". There's a part in the song that goes, "God! He's the one who backs you up! He'll stand with you!" Well, they were disagreeing because Vicki thought the lyrics were, "God! He's the one who packs you up! He'll stand on you!" And Lexi, bless her heart, thought it was, "God! He's the one who vacuums up! He'll stand in you!"

August 14

• Lexi is still changing her identity on a regular basis, as frequently as she changes her clothes. This morning before church she threw a genuine teenager-worthy hissy fit while standing in her closet because, and I quote, “I hate these clothes!” (keep in mind that this was just three days after her 3rd birthday)

Sept. 4

• Lexi said our family prayer at bedtime a few nights ago, and asked Heavenly Father to "please bless Violet and Dash, and Mr. Incredible and Elastagirl, and Jack Jack in Elastagirl's belly." while nodding at each of us in turn...Lately she has been talking to me about when she was a grown up. She'll say things like, "When you were a little kid and I was a grown up, I made the bed and you messed it up!" (while, might I add, she's in the process of gleefully messing up the bed I just made), or "When you were a little kid and I was a grown up, I made cookies and you cried because I said no cookies until after dinner." And because I know you all need a good laugh, today in Sacrament meeting, she turned to me and announced, in a very non-reverent voice, "You know, my underwear is on backwards!”

Sept. 11

• Vicki said, “I know something that’s not appropriate for dates with boys.” We asked her what, and she said, in all seriousness, “Showing your underwear.”

Nov. 7

• [Ellie] is so calm, which is really really nice given the level of chaos that we generally have around here. She just observes. I only hope she's not saving up ideas for later that she'll unleash on us all at once. (clearly, she was)

Dec. 4

• Yesterday morning Vicki woke Chris and me up by announcing outside our bedroom door that she was "freakin' hungry".

also Dec. 4

• Lexi's new clothing issue arises each morning when I try to make her wear pants while we take Vicki to school. It's been pretty cold lately, and since we don't park the car in the garage, it's cold in the car. Lexi insists on wearing a dress every morning, only to get in the car and cry because her knees or her "little leggies" are "fweezing". However, when I try to make her wear pants instead of a dress, she cries because the pants "make me look weird".

I'll stop now.  There's plenty more where this came from, though.

Maybe you don't think my kids are as hilarious as I do, but I can't stop laughing.

Sign of the Times?

What does it mean?

Some Things Really Shouldn't Be Named

One of the best things about visiting far-away family is telling stories about my kids.  Yes, my relatives all read the blog, but I don't blog about everything, and my kids are, honestly, complete weirdos, so there's always plenty to tell.

Yesterday while hiking, the story of Ellie's foot came up.

See, a few weeks ago Ellie discovered that she has some warts on the bottom of her foot.  Gross, I know, but it happens.  And, since this isn't our family's first experience with foot-warts, I know that they will eventually go away on their own.  Or we could cover them in duct tape for a few weeks, and that would get rid of them.  If only I wasn't on vacation and therefore too lazy to bother with the duct tape cure.  Maybe when we get home.

Anyway, I digress.

Ellie has apparently named her warts.

I swear I am not making this up.  You can't make stuff like this up.  If you ask her, she'll happily (and rather proudly) tell you all about it.  Their names are Bob, Bobby, and Timmy.  Timmy is the tiny one.  Bobby used to be named Tarzan, because he looked like a target, but now he doesn't anymore, so now he's called Bobby.

Where she comes up with stuff like this, I will likely never know.

My kids are weird.

There's an App for That?

I have an iPhone, but Chris got an Android-based phone (I guess it's only fitting, since I was raised Mac, while he's been a PC for life).  We're constantly comparing apps, but it's always nice to compare with someone who has the same OS.  Last Friday we went to the park with friends, and while the kids played, Chris and Tod talked phones.

"You definitely need this one!"

Tod's had his phone for longer, so he was telling Chris about all the must-have apps.  If you ask me, everything they discussed falls into two distinct categories: useful apps, and turn-you-into-a little-boys-again apps.

Case in point: Jedi Lightsaber:

Useful?  Not at all.

A must-have?  Obviously.

Photography Skillz

If I leave my phone alone for more than five minutes, it's pretty much a guarantee that the next time I see it, a few more levels of Angry Birds will have been passed and there will be some interesting pictures on the camera roll.

Case in point:

This is clearly everyone's favorite app.
And Lexi's favorite pose.

I think Ellie took this one.
Why?  I don't know.

There are at least 30 variations of this.

See?

I need to buy lightbulbs.

I don't know who took this one, but I sure
hope my butt isn't really that big.

Freaky.

Also freaky.

Dad's not immune, either.

Then Vicki has to go and take a really awesome picture.
Go figure.

The moral of the story?  Guard your camera well.

Or be prepared to delete a lot.

Speech Impediments

Ellie can't say the initial "R" sound.  She's only five, so we're not really that worried about it yet, and I suppose it's not truly a speech impediment at this point (and I hope it's clear that I'm in no way making fun of people with speech impediments.  Just my own child.)

The best part about this is that she has absolutely no idea that she's saying words wrong.  She thinks she rules the world, so therefore however she says something must be the right way to say it.

Tonight Chris was singing along with the song that was playing while Vicki was cleaning the playroom.  It was that "A is for apple, B is for bug" song.  However, he kept making up new words for each letter.  Rather than yell at him for messing with things, Ellie said, "Dad, don't forget 'Y is for why-no!'"

My days are going to be really dull when she starts kindergarten in the fall.

Pure Awesome

I have the two cutest nieces on the planet.  They just "published" a story, which made me laugh until I cried, and which I absolutely have to share with a larger audience.  It is the best thing I have read in a long, long time.

So, without further ado, please redirect yourselves to my sister-in-law Emily's blog, where you can read what she very appropriately described as "a Salvador Dali painting with princesses".  Enjoy.

Blast from the Past

Thanks to our tax return, we reorganized our "office" over the weekend.  We bought a new desk, added some shelves, and basically turned the room into an ad for IKEA.  Seriously, we're turning into the IKEA poster family.  It's slightly pathetic, but also easy on the pocketbook.

Part of the job involved going through unlabeled CDs, trying to figure out whether there was anything on them worth keeping.  Most of them were either blank but really scratched, or copies of music we already had stored on the computer.  But I came across two discs of random pictures from several years ago that made me really grateful I hadn't just trashed everything without checking them first.

And now, to the future humiliation of my children, I'm going to share some of these priceless gems with you.

First, some of my favorites of Ellie:

Diva child

I like to call this one "trailer trash Ellie"

This was when I learned that naptime
wasn't going to be so easy anymore

And now, Lexi:



In true dad fashion, Chris thought it
would be hilarious to dress her up like
Dobby from Harry Potter.



She said, "Take a picture of me with an
angry face."  This was the angry face.

Self-inflicted mullett

Vicki's aren't quite as embarrassing, but I work with what I have:

Not sure what the face was about.
Also, I'd forgotten our kitchen floor used
to look like that!

Back when she couldn't smile normally
to save her life, and she had a gap-tooth
grin for a year and a half.

Do you think Vicki looks like me?

me

Vicki

Then there was one of me before I got my hair cut. Wow.

I like it better short.


Also, Chris and I used to look really young.


2005


It's scary to think that by the time this picture was taken, we'd been together for 10 years, married for 6, and had two children with one on the way. And we look like such babies.

Among the pictures was also a fabulous shot of my already-big belly at 13 weeks pregnant with Ellie (which I will NOT be sharing with you, thankyouverymuch), pictures of the water damage to our house when we returned home to find a pipe had been dripping steadily for the entire 11 days we were in Utah, pictures of my entire family at the Oregon coast (watch out guys, I'll use those one day!), and a whole bunch of others I'm glad we didn't lose.

So, the moral of the story is: always label your discs.

And also, it's never too early to provide future humiliation for your children.

A Handy Guide for Parents

Several months ago we got to have The Talk with Lexi.  It was fun.

But oh, how I wish I'd had this handy-dandy "where you came from" guide, along with its stunning visuals.

It would have made The Talk a lot more fun for everyone.

I'm definitely bookmarking it for when Ellie's ready.  You can never be too prepared for things like this.

Moral Dilemma

We all know I love spelling and grammar.

I may be in a minority here, but we're a strong and vocal minority.  You can find snarky grammar blogs all over the internet.

Ever since I discovered The "Blog" of "Unnecessary" Quotation Marks, I've been spotting offenses everywhere.  You may even remember my delight awhile back when one I submitted was featured.

Well, when I say everywhere, I mean everywhere.  I volunteer at the girls' school, and way back at the beginning of the year I noticed an offending sign in the art room there.  Because of Project 365, I pretty much always have a camera handy, so I took a picture.  Several months later I submitted it, along with three or four others.

Well, whenever I post on the blog, I link to it on Facebook.  And since the time I submitted those particular photos, I have become Facebook friends with a couple of the staff at the school.  And I know they follow the links and read this blog (hi there!)

So, what I'm about to do is essentially to make fun of my daughters' school.  But not really.  I love the school and the people who work there!  I don't have any idea who wrote the sign, or whether they even work at the school anymore (or if they ever did; it may have been a volunteer like myself, for all I know.)  So I hope no one thinks I'm mocking them if I go ahead and point out that this particular picture was posted on the "Blog" yesterday.

Enjoy.

My apologies to the school.  But don't forget to put it away.  Never, ever "dump it".

The Rules of the Game

For some reason, Chris and I never taught our girls how to play Slugbug.

It may have been because, as parents, we’re not inclined to teach our children anything that involves hitting the nearest person. Maybe. We have nothing against the game when played by civilized people; we still play it with each other, just quietly in the front seat, but we've never bothered to fill the girls in on what we were doing.

However, as kids do, they eventually learned the rules from their friends. Or, rather, they learned their friends’ version of the rules.

My family growing up was pretty non-violent, as families go. Our version of Slugbug involved simply shouting “Slugbug!” whenever you saw one, but there was no actual slugging. I don’t remember if this was the result of an ultimatum by my parents, or if this was just how we had always played it.  (As a side note, there was a car in the town where I grew up that was painted to look just like Herbie.  Seeing that car was the highlight of our day.  In fact, before we knew about Slugbug, we called VW Bugs "Herbie cars".)

Chris’s family was considerable less non-violent (he has more brothers than I do, and at least one sister who’s not afraid to join the ruckus), and their version did involve slugging, along with hollering the color of the slugbug.

Vicki’s friend’s rules include the slugging and the color-shouting, with the additional rule that you are allowed to call “No tag-backs!” on the person you slug. This means they’re not allowed to slugbug you again for...an unclear period of time. But at least not during that car journey. You are also allowed, apparently, to slug someone upon sighting a convertible, any convertible – doesn’t have to be a Bug – once per day.

In general, the version we play consists of someone yelling “Slugbug yellow! (or blue or red or whatever)” and soft-slugging someone else, usually me. They always gang up against me, unless Dad is in the car.

I refuse to call “no tag-backs” and ignore my children when they do it, but Vicki insists on it. Lexi picks and chooses her rules according to her mood at the time, and Ellie tags us for both Slugbugs and PT Cruisers. But she always adds “No tags back!”

There are, apparently, a set of official rules for this game (although I’d like to know under what authority this guy claims to be “official”.) But despite that, it’s clear that everyone has their own version.

So, the logical question is: how do *you* play Slugbug?
***Additional question, suggested by Lolee: do you call it "Slugbug", or "Punch Buggy", or something else entirely?

An Educational Film

A bit of parenting advice: if you want to watch a movie with your young children, but discover it's rated PG-13, don't rely on your memory for why it might be rated that.

Our family rule is that the girls can watch PG-13 movies if we've approved them first.  The approval list currently carries such titles as Harry Potter and Pirates of the Caribbean.  We mostly stick to PG and G ratings.  We've both seen MIB, it's just been a while.  A really, really long while.

Probably just the comic-book violence and gross alien guts, maybe a little language, we thought.

We thought wrong.

Try a LOT of language.  My girls learned some very interesting words last night.  We carried on with the movie, but we had a little discussion afterward about how Men in Black is probably not the most quotable movie we've ever watched.  In fact, how about we just don't quote it at all, okie dokie?

But apparently some of us got more out of it than just a new vocabulary.  Right before the end of the movie, Ellie leaned over to me and said, "Mom, he's really cute."

Whoa, what?  "You mean Will Smith?  The one who looks like Uncle Scotty?"

"Yeah.  He's really cute, with the eyebrows...and the mustaches."  She was practically swooning.

And so it begins.

It's Friday But I'm Still Feeling Random

A former roommate of mine just posted the most hilarious take on the upcoming worldwide life-changing event that is the release of Eclipse, the third film in "The Twilight Saga".  If you're like me, and you enjoyed the books to a certain extent but think the world is going waaaay overboard, check out Danielle's post, Total Eclipse of the Heart.  You won't be disappointed.

I meant to put a link in yesterday's post so you'd know exactly what the new toy we got ourselves is.  I forgot.  This is it:

We caved and bought a dual screen DVD player for the car.  You strap it to the headrests.  Our single unit is good, but we have three kids.  'Nuff said.

I like reading the comics.  Particularly the weird ones.  This Bizarro has kept me laughing since Sunday:

Tonight Chris and I are going to see Josh Ritter in concert.  I'm so excited.  I loooove Josh Ritter.  Anyone who can sing like that, and write songs like those...wow.

Then, tomorrow, at around 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, we're leaving for Utah.  I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight.  Should be an interesting drive.

I really have nothing else to say, but I had too many things to share to do any sort of normal post.  I may or may not post while we're gone.  So if  Thursday comes and goes and there's no randomness from me, well, someone else will have to step up, I guess.  Happy summer, everyone!

Talent

Monday was the annual talent show at the girls' school.  Despite the numerous Justin Bieber songs (none of which I had heard prior to that morning, and hopefully none of which I will hear again), it was a lot of fun.  Vicki played "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds" on the piano and sang "Lean on Me" with the choir, and Lexi's class sang a song about loving everyone, regardless of differences.  There were also a few dancers (one who definitely stole the show), a tiny boy who sang with a piano accompanist (as opposed to the many who sang along with a CD and could barely be heard over the original singer), a little mini-Beyonce in a long shiny pink dress (who Chris described, in an admiring way, as "the girl with the Sideshow Bob hair"), and a handful of pianists.

However, the true stars of the show were these guys:

They danced to "Gettin' Jiggy Wit it".

The blue one is the principal.  Our school rocks.

The adults thought it was hilarious.  The kids thought it was hilarious, too, but they also thought it was Cookie Monster and Elmo.  I had to educate my children by showing them the following video.  I thought you all might like it, too.

Some Kids Have All the Luck

In our church, we don't really have the tradition of choosing godparents for our children.  I don't think we have anything against it, it's just not something we do.

So my girls aren't terribly familiar with the term.  Also, we've been watching Shrek 2 a lot lately. (Do you see where I'm going with this yet?)

Yesterday we saw a friend of Ellie's at the school while we were picking up the older girls.  This friend explained to Ellie that she couldn't have a playdate because her godmother was coming to town and they had to pick her up from the airport.

Ellie stopped in her tracks and her jaw dropped to the ground.  She practically shouted, "You have a godmother???  Lucky!!!"

I'm going to have one disappointed little girl on my hands when she learns that this godmother does not, in fact, have wings or a magic wand.