The gift that most describes Sam

What do you do?

I was hoping to shield my daughter from the "m" word as long as possible. I thought we could make it to at least two years old before it entered her vocabulary. We've spent the last few days with Maria's four children (add Ben and Lisa's four kids on Christmas day) and the result has been the following: screaming when something is taken from Agnes; screaming when someone else has a toy she wants; hitting; biting; hair pulling (the last three happened sequentially in a matter of ten seconds; pushing anytime another child invades her personal space; and the dreaded word has been spoken (or whined, rather) "Mine!!!"

Merry Cookie, uh Christmas

I've been offline for nearly a week! We have been so busy with moving...we're mostly moved in now, but the kitchen isn't nearly ready for Samuel to visit yet! I need a lot more things in there first.

It's been a good day. Merry Christmas to all of you. I hope your day has been good too. K, B & C came to our new house and we ate dinner (even though it was cold by the time it got to the table). After dinner had settled a bit, it was time for dessert.
Because I didn't have the necessary ingredients for making chocolate cookies (no baking soda among other things...I told you my kitchen was lacking) I came up with this. A peppermint brownie Skookie. It was SO rich even Brandon couldn't finish it.
Love and hugs to all my kids and babies!

How the Nora Stole Christmas

After a long, but nice, Christmas Eve day, we brought the girls home to get ready for bed and go to sleep. One of the steps involved in getting ready for bed was opening the Christmas pajamas and the Karen presents. (Karen is the new Paula.) FIrst, we cleaned up the living room, not wanting to add mess on top of mess, kind of like how the creepy guy at the office just adds extra cologne when he forgot to shower. That was a minor struggle, since Nora knew she was going to open a present and had it in her hot little hands. Every twenty seconds, "Is the room clean? Can I open my present?" Every twenty-one seconds, "No! Put that away!" Finally, the living room was cleaned to Holly's appeasement standard. When Holly looked under the tree to get the presents, she noticed something unusual. Some of the presents were missing. We had been at a friend's on Sunday and she told us that one of her biggest fears was that someone would break into her house and steal the Christmas presents from under the tree. I mocked her for being irrational, but now, here we were: someone had stolen the presents from under our tree! It didn't take too long to figure out who our little Grinch was, of course, it was Her Royal Highness, The Princess Nora. She had scattered presents ALL over the house. I found some in her room, behind the elliptical, and under the clothes in the laundry basket. We had finally found all of them except one, the Karen present for Sara. I went through the girl's room again, nothing. Looked in all of Nora's regular little hidey-holes, nothing. We were becoming slightly frustrated, especially since Nora had NO idea where she had put it. After a total of 15 minutes of searching for all the presents, we finally found it tucked between the window and Nora's toy bench in the front room. We opened our presents, the girls loved their books, and we got them up to bed. They're still asleep as of 8:07. Of course, I was "too excited to sleep!" Bonus points to whoever can tell me what commercial that line is from.

Merry Christmas!

Which reminds me

This one time, when I was living in Anaheim, I brought some stuff home from Dad's house. When I went to get it, I saw an insect, freaked out (because that's what I do), and didn't bring the box in. I mistakenly told Brandon there was a cricket in the car and had him bring the box in for me. He searched our car, but saw no cricket.

The next day, I get into our car to go to school. Sitting directly in front of me, on the dashboard behind the steering wheel, is a praying mantis. I FREAKED out! No, freaked doesn't even come close to describing what I did. The praying mantis was just watching me, it's head slightly cocked to one side, not moving a single inch. Just watching. I leapt out of the car and promptly began hyperventilating. I called Brandon, but there was nothing he could do since he was at work and I was at home. Somehow, amidst my hysterics, I managed to open the passenger door and use something to flick the praying mantis out of the car through the open driver's door (I was going to say it was a snow scraper, which I've owned for a really long time, but why would that have been in our Vue in California? So it must have been something else.)

The praying mantis fell out of the car. I hurried into the car and shut the driver's side door, but in doing so, saw the praying mantis on the ground, sitting on his back legs, just staring at me still. I slammed the door shut, and drove to school at lightning speed, utterly freaked out of my mind.

I wasn't sure that it was a praying mantis (having never seen one before), but when I got to school and looked it up on the internet, there was no question left in my mind. That is most definitely what it was.

Did you know that praying mantises will blend in with their surroundings, holding dead still until their prey comes close enough? Then, they eat their prey alive. They can even eat animals as big as squirrels, biting their necks off to kill them before devouring the rest of the animal.

And this one, in my car, definitely wanted to eat me. I'm sure of it.

It's, by far, one of the scariest things that has ever happened in my life. (Yes, okay, I've led a pretty sheltered life.)

We needed some activity around here!

I didn't really have anything to say that was witty or heartwarming, but nothing had been posted in days, so I thought I'd put something on here. Um, yeah, that's about it. Oh, Danny, Christmas brunch is at Marta's at 11:00. She says we'll eat first and then do gifts afterward. See you then.

I was going to put a picture of a cricket in this post, to reflect the lack of activity, but all the pictures I saw were rather disgusting. What an ugly little creature...

Where's Boo?

Hey Laura,
We miss you being a part of our little blog. I hope that you can get your internet situation settled pretty soon so you can chime in again, and let us know what's happening in your world. Love you, miss you.

Time Warp

Last night I was all sentimental-like and decided to watch the video that we took of you guys in 1989 and 1990 at Christmas. Danny was so little and cute wearing his way-too-big Dickson Stars red sweatshirt with flappy sleeves (which he wore the following year as well...didn't I ever give my children new clothes?) and no pants and crocheted slippers from Grandma L. Everytime he would open a gift, he'd say "thanks Mom" and sometimes "thanks Mom, thanks Dad." Once he started to say "thanks Mom," but then stopped and looked at the tag to double check whether it actually was from me. In-between the '89 and '90 gift unwrapping frenzy, there was Danny's first grade concert at Newman. He looked so sweet with his little silvery angel halo scrunched down over his wavy hair. He was missing two front teeth and after the concert we taped him pulling out his (here comes technical talk) upper left lateral tooth (#10). It wasn't quite loose enough for him to pull out easily, and after he twisted it this way and that, and a final yank, it came out. There was a brief look of pain on his face and I was sorry for him at that moment. I knew it should have stayed there a few more days but he wanted it on camera, so he toughed it out and yanked. I love you so much Danny boy!

'89 was the year Karen gave me the squooshy-faced Santa head that she bought from her school store. We both have really bad perms. Ugh. I love you too Karen!

Laura was sick and spent the entire morning on the couch. Poor lammy. You had huge glasses and the following year I had huge glasses too. I'm so sorry about that even if it was the trend. I love you Boo!

Samuel was suffering with his voice changing, so mostly it's still very high. What a cute boy. In '90 your sisters were struggling to carry all their loot up the stairs in one haul. You saw they were having trouble and jumped up and carried it for them. Of course I love my first-born son. So so much!

Just wanted you to know how much I loved watching you all be little again. Yes, of course, I cried.

To: Margaret Layne

From: Mrs. Pat Haroldson
1584 Oakhorne Dr
Harbor City, CA 90710

To: Margaret Layne
13584 Frady ave.
Chino, CA 30710

Outside Cover:
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another
1 john 1:7
[picture of woman angel thing]

Inside Left:
Dear Margaret,
Everything is the same here. I'll try to have the hip surgery next year. I have to have another angioplasty, before my heart Dr. will O.K it.

Inside Right:
Dear Margaret
[printed text]
May the light of the world Bless You in this season of faith and celebration.
[/printed text]
Love You
Pat.



Huh?

Error in size judgement

I bought this big Santa at a grocery store for $30. I love it because he sits on his own chair and he's big! The chair, however, broke a bit when we put it in the Jeep. Nothing that Bud can't fix for me once he gets a minute of time. But it's just a plain unpainted chair. I saw this other chair in a catalog and thought to myself that it would be so much cuter than the plain unpainted chair, so I ordered it. It came today. Oops. I don't think Santa is going to fit on the new chair. Not to worry, I have another Santa that will fit and looks very cute on the new chair. Guess next time I'll check the size a bit more carefully.

Hey! We went out to dinner as well last night...

While we went to dinner last night too (Mmmmmm, In-N-Out), we don't carry a HUGE camera with us everywhere we go. Therefore, this was taken with my cell phone. Sara had a great time eating Nora's food.

Dead Camera

What kind of camera did you get? I love mine, and Laura has the same kind too. Cheryl has almost the same kind but a different model (Nikon D40 as opposed to my Nikon D50). I hope that whatever you got has little or no lag time because when taking kids' pictures, that's a plus. Here's an example we took last night while we were waiting 2 hours to get into The Cheesecake Factory for dinner (where cheesecake doesn't taste like cheesecake, it actually tastes yummy!).
Caleb is waiting for Santa to get back from his dinner break. Maybe Santa also went to The Cheesecake Factory, which is why he was gone so long!

Blueberries

So are the Eastside Roseners ready to cough up the blueberry story yet? Ew, maybe not cough it up. That could be messy. Maybe just tell it.
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One of Nora's veggietales songs has a line about his aunt came back from Kalamazoo and she brought with her some "nuts like you". Then the singer guy says "Nuts? They don't even grow nuts in Michigan, they grow blueberries!" So the blueberries are a reference to the nuts like you!

Home Sweet Home

We finally got the word yesterday that the sellers of our house will be moving out on Dec. 15th and then they want a few days to clean the house. They will give us the keys on Dec. 19th at 7:00 pm and then we can start moving in. With a lot of work and some volunteer help, we should be able to awake to Christmas morning in our new house. Hurray!

Votes?

***We finally decided on the B&W version that was not on the ballot. Call it a write-in candidate****


Another 5 minutes of effort and Danny created this:

Quite a bit more than 5 minutes of effort, I got this:

Less than 5 minutes of effort, I also got this:

These are for Grandpa for Christmas, which one do people like?

Nora's a partial monkey

We were talking last night about how we needed a new name for Sara since she doesn't squeak like a mouse anymore.  She really is a monkey like her sister, but Nora refuses to share the monkey name.  So I asked Nora, "Are you a monkey?"  She answered "But I don't have a tail" and then wiggled her little butt at me.  I guess that makes her an orangutan.

Nora did come up with a new name for Sara: Title of Liverty. Why? Because Sara is a flag. Oh, that makes perfect sense.

My other OTHER blog

I thought I would announce to the family that I have a blog. Not that I'm new to making it, I'm just new to actually writing something there since about the time Laura got married. I had hoped that it would be easier to "journal" if it was online, but it wasn't easy enough evidently, because I never added new stuff. But, the last little while (since Samuel started our family blog) I've added a couple new entries, so if anyone is interested, they can check it out at http://nanaknowlton.spaces.live.com/. You can see by it being msn instead of google that it's from a long time ago because if I were to make one today, I'd go with google's blog. Lot's easier and compatible with Picasa (duh). Anyway, since Karen was the only one that knew I had that (and just barely at that), I thought I'd tell it to the rest of you.
PS- Disregard this information. I've moved to blogspot.com because the spaces site was way too hard to navigate. Click here for my new blog.