A White Christmas Indeed!

Our Christmas Eve plans were trumped this evening due to Mother Nature and her sleet/snow mix. Althought Jack was slightly disappointed about not being able to go play with his cousins it turned out being a cozy night for us to just spend time as a family. Jack and I spend 45 minutes putting together Christmas puzzle books (I'm amazed at his attention span when there's a task to be done) while Brady ran around like the monkey that he is. Hopefully we'll be able to make it to church in the morning and to my parents for brunch. One thing is for sure. This house will be far from quiet in the morning when the boys see what Santa has brought them. I may be more excited than they are ;) Oh yeah, and Go Tigers! Thank you, Santa, for letting us beat the Illini for the first time in 10 years last night. That is the perfect present for those of us who bleed black and gold.

Figuring out this toddler language

I am a true believer that I am multi-lingual. I do know a tiny bit of spanish but I am nowhere near fluent. I do, however, count myself among the few that are able to speak their toddler's language. I can't explain the empowerment I feel when I finally figure out one of my sons' words. I can only compare it to watching the spanish speaking soap operas on tv and feeling great about comprehending one of the 5000 words they say per minute. On this note, I just figured out yesterday that when Jack says, "What somebody overthere doing?" He is asking Who that person is. Fantastic. Now on to Brady...this might take me awhile ;)

Favorite Jackson Christmas Song Lyrics

Here they are:

"Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle all the way. Elmo fun, it is to ride in a one horse open sleigh."

"Go tell it on the mountain, over the hills and everywhere. Go tell it on the mountain that Jesus Christ is Four."

New Years Resolution

Okay, so I promised I was going to be better about blogging and now its time to put that plan into action. So much has changed since the last time I posted that I don't even know where to begin. Its almost Christmas which has been extremely challenging to explain to Jack. We went and saw Santa at Bass Pro (the boys did great!) but its so hard for him to comprehend that now Santa won't come bring him presents for a while. I've tried the whole "Elf on a Shelf" thing. I thought (and still do think) that it is the cutest idea to keep kids in line (let's not kid ourselves, it is truly made for parents to get better behavior out of their children for atleast 2 months out of the year.) For those of you who don't know, The Elf must not be touched by the children but they can talk to him and tell him things they want to tell santa. Each night the elf "flies off" to the north pole to report to Santa if the kids have been naughty or nice. Great idea, right? Well my brilliant eldest son (after finding our elf this morning in the chandalier in the dining room) asked me "daddy moved elf last night after I went to sleep?" I give up. This kid leaves no stone unturned.