Tagged!

So I was talking to my mom on the phone this afternoon and she said to me, "Trees of Christmas? Seriously? I keep checking and the blog isn't updated!" Unfortunately for her, this isn't going to be the picture-laden post that she was looking for, but it's going to be fun for me! My friend Jessica tagged me in a fun post, and I'm playing along! And yes, Mommy, hopefully this will get me over my blogging slump. And you're still welcome to guest-post at any time ;)

But anyway...

The Rules

~you must post the rules

~post 11 fun facts about yourself

~answer the 11 questions that the tagger posted for you; then create 11 questions to ask the people you've tagged

~tag 11 people and link them in your post

~let them know you have tagged them

My 11 Fun Facts

1. I am currently growing my hair to donate it. I have talked about it a few times in the past, and when my dear hairdresser moved her office from half-a-block away from my office to a 30-minute drive, I got a little behind in haircuts - what better time to embrace my goal, right? It's going to work even better now that she's stopped cutting hair to go back to college. (Insert big sad face here because I will miss her, but also a happy face because I'm obviously excited about both my potential hair donation and her following her dreams.)
2. I buy cards and forget to send them (or even give them to people when mailing is not involved). I do this A LOT. Kim can attest to this. :) I am currently in possession of three Christmas gifts that need to be mailed and at least four cards that I have recently bought and not sent. *Sigh.* Oh wait, these are supposed to be FUN facts, not EMBARRASSING facts... ;)
3. I dislike driving. I've never been one of those "get in the car and just drive" people. I will always take the interstate if it's a possibility to get somewhere faster!
4. I love ridiculously silly movies. My favorites are Dead Man On Campus and Super Troopers. I think maybe it's because I think so hard at work that I don't want to have to think when I watch movies?! We'll go with that explanation, although the truth is I have always preferred silly movies over other genres.
5. I have always been a good speller and worked as an editorial assistant for legal newsletters straight out of college. That's actually how I got the urge to go to law school. I love that it seems like Addie is going to be a good speller, too! Here's to many spelling bees in our future ;)
6. I currently have over 20,000 unread messages in my gmail account. I've even set up an account only for lists, but of course I still get most everything on my main account. Rather than delete the junk messages right away, I just scroll past them. Eh, I'll get to it one day. At least my work inbox is up to speed!
7. I love, love, LOVE working for a governmental agency. I admit that I used to buy in to some of the stereotypes about government employees, but I have never seen such dedicated and hard-working individuals! Also, if you ever think your local government is working slowly, thank your state legislature for the laws that make that necessary ;) (HA!) And be sure to keep any anti-government or lazy government worker rants away from me because I tend to become a little mama bear about it. :)
8. I got a bike for Christmas and when I first got on it, I couldn't remember how to ride! So it is NOT true that you never forget. Okay, okay, so I was fine within about ten seconds, but that was still a scary ten seconds...
9. I feel like I'm cheating on my kids when I eat at Chick-Fil-A without them. But man, I love that place. Funny since I went about ten years without eating it after getting MORE than my fill while it was at the Presidential Courtyard at UT. I still can't eat the chicken sandwiches...
10. I enjoy traveling but I panic beforehand. I think it is a control issue. There are so many variables you can't control when you travel. Eek! My blood pressure is rising as I think about it. Ha!
11. When I began college, I wanted to be an orthodontist. I know, it makes me laugh, too. One semester of advanced calculus and honors chemistry was enough to cure me of that. Also, the 8 a.m. tennis class wasn't a good idea, either ;)

Jessica's 11 Questions

1. Where would you go if you had an all-expenses paid trip somewhere? Hmm...probably somewhere tropical. Tahiti, perhaps? That would be if it were 100% my decision. I think John Michael would want to go to Australia, and that'd be fine with me, too!
2. What do you remember about kindergarten? I had an amazing teacher, Mr. Morgan. I remember our Christmas gifts because we all got teddy bears and coloring books and those stackable crayons. So cool! I also remember our Easter egg hunt and playing on the playground, which had tractor tires on it. So cool. Jessica, I'm not sure if you heard me say, but I went to the same school that Kate may go to!
3. Where did you and your spouse go on your first date? For our first "non-date-date," we went with some friends to a park and played on the swings and then back to John Michael's parents' house to watch movies (remember, this was my sophomore year of high school and his senior year). I say "non-date" because he had a girlfriend at the time who had gone off to college! I had a serious crush on him and I'm not exactly sure how it happened, but our little group of friends decided we were going to blow off the Homecoming dance and hang out. So we did. We went on our first official date about five or six weeks later :) We saw the movie Ghosts and the Darkness. Terrible, terrible movie. Even worse first date movie! I joke to him that I must've already really loved him to go out with him again after that!
4. It's 10:30 pm on a weeknight. What are you doing? Ideally, asleep! Lately, playing on the computer and watching tv or a movie :)
5. What did your senior prom dress look like? Ooh, it was pretty. A pretty blue (lapis blue, I believe it was called) silk chiffon flowy dress. I think I've got a picture on the blog somewhere, actually! I liked my junior year dress better, but this one was a keeper, too :)
6. If you could instantly be fluent in one language, what would it be? Spanish, no doubt.
7. What is the proudest moment of your life? I have many proud moments in my life (not the least of which are my kiddos' birthdays) but my proudest has to be the day I learned that I had passed the bar exam on my first try (after taking it while I had a three-year-old and four-month-old). Yep. I was pretty proud.
8. Are there any words people say you pronounce funny? I have a hard time saying the words "rural" and "drawer." I will do most everything I can to avoid saying them (i.e., replacing them with phrases such as "not urban" and "dresser thingy" or "desk thingy" - ha!).
9. What do people need to know about you to "really" know you? I have been known to let people take advantage of me or "run over" me, but I do NOT accept that for my friends and family. As I said earlier about my co-workers, I can get a little "mama bear" when someone messes with my loved ones :)
10. What was your favorite class in college? Not 8 a.m. tennis. Seriously though, I took a criminology class that was absolutely fascinating. And creepy.
11. You're craving something salty. What do you grab? CHEESE!

Okay, the dilemma here is that I think most of my blogging friends have already been tagged or have already played! So I may not be able to fulfill the last rule :) But I'll ask 11 questions to anyone out there reading who may want to play along anyway!

1. Who was your favorite teacher and why?

2. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?

3. What is the worst date you've ever been on?

4. What is your favorite breakfast food/meal?

5. If you could borrow Harry's invisibility cloak for just one day, where would you go?

6. What is the best concert you've ever attended?

7. What is your favorite feature/attribute/trait about yourself?

8. Would you like to be famous and if so, for what?

9. What is your most embarrassing moment?

10. If you could only watch one tv show for an entire year, which show would it be?

11. Do you have an outfit you LOVE to wear a lot (in our family we call it our uniform :))?

Trees of Christmas 2011

So I promise soon to have a couple of posts about Christmas, etc., but in the meantime, here is a fun guest post from Nana! Hooray! Thanks for the post and for spoiling my babies rotten! :)

I had wanted to have this ritual be a “Nana-Addie” thing but I could NOT exclude my precious grandson, Landon. Therefore PaPa also came to enjoy the day.

There were too many things going on in December so we couldn’t go see Trees of Christmas at Cheekwood until after school was out for Christmas. Of course the usual bribery was if they were good, then they could go to Phillips Toy Mart. They were great – there isn’t too much to the Trees as it was when our boys were young. Only florists and designers do the trees in the mansion now so there are just 6 or 7 trees to see. We blew through those pretty quickly. We did visit the Train exhibit again which they enjoyed. Lunch in the Pineapple Room was fairly uneventful. They wanted to play games on Nana’s phone, but Nana’s phone is in the dark ages and doesn’t have games. They were good.

As they were “angelic”, they of course were taken to Phillips Toy Mart. Mike (since around 1956 when Phillips was on 8^th Avenue) and our boys have been going to Phillips since they were little boys, so it is a tradition in our family. The deal was to get one small thing as a reward for being good. We circle the store many times. Addie dusting her fingers along most everything in the store. Landon wants everything he picks up. Addie finally decides on a “Play” mop. Landon picks out a ball. When we get in the looooong line to pay, somehow Landon shows up with 2 things. I tell him he can only have one thing. “Noooooo.” I said, “You have to choose one thing.” He says “I choose not to”. Sounds like a lawyer?:) Then Addie starts in – why does he get 2 things and I only get one? Well, if you have ever been to Phillips – once you are in line you better be ready to check out. Risking a total meltdown of not only one but 2 grandchildren – we hurriedly get Addie another item to be able to GET.OUT.OF.THERE! Hey, we’re Grandparents, we don’t have to worry about spoiling them. That’s what we’re there for!

We come home for a fun afternoon and spending the night. We have 2 inches of water on the floor for most of the day. Addie’s mop didn’t come with a wringer. Later Landon is scribbling on paper and brings it to me to read. I make up some crazy word that it says and he’s thrilled. Addie gets the drift and starts doing the same thing. After a point, she actually starts writing things for me to read. One of her pages she brings in says “Landon is a brat”. I express my displeasure that she is calling him that but also remind her that she should be writing the same thing about herself too. She goes into the other room, writes her sentence for me to read. She comes back and it says, “Addie is a Princess”. Too funny! They keep us in stitches, on our toes and we love every second of it! Another day(s) in paradise with our Grandchildren!

Practically twins...

The other day Landon was looking at this precious picture of John Michael as a little boy. He said, "Mommy, yook! It's me on dis wocking horse!" I said, "No, buddy, that's Daddy! But it looks just like you, huh?" He then said, "Yeah, it does! Because I have jeans! And a head!"

(I took a picture of this photo with my camera, due to not being able to get my scanner to work. In other news, I love my iPhone.)

Who knew? All it takes for a doppelganger are jeans and a head! On a side (parallel?) note - it really is adorable how much Landon looks like his daddy, no?

Christmas Cards - yay!

So although our family has decided to do New Year's cards each year instead of Christmas cards, I still love, love, LOVE to begin receiving Christmas cards shortly after Thanksgiving. Yay! I get so excited! I always have to display them all, because we love seeing photos of our family and friends (and most everyone does photo cards now anyway :)) throughout the Christmas season. Each year I've tried to put mine on a table in the living room, but last year, I bought a magnetic wire photo holder and made it into a circle and put it on the wall, so it looked like a wreath of Christmas cards. Genius! It saves room, and I don't have to deal with any of our friends ending up face-down on the table - ha!

As far as making our cards goes, I am excited this year to try a new-for-us card company, Tiny Prints. I love their designs! Check their holiday cards out here. They're having a special deal this year for bloggers where you can get 50 cards free if you post about them. LOVE IT! I am so excited to pick out our design. It's going to be hard though!

Hurry and check it out - I'm not sure how long the deal lasts, and it's definitely not one to let pass by!

Halloween

(Okay, I know how late this is! I've got quite a few posts to catch up on - I think it looks like I'll be going backwards...)

We had another wonderful Halloween here! As with the past few years, both sets of grandparents came over for dinner and to help with our trick-or-treaters while we took the kids out. Addie has been asking for months to dress up as Cinderella for Halloween, and we didn't hate that idea since she had the full costume from our trip to Disney World. Landon, on the other hand, was a bit more of a challenge, as he insisted he wanted to be a princess :) If he were older, we would've let him do his thing, but I didn't so much want him hating us ten years from now ;) He ended up choosing a firefighter costume and he was adorable!

John Michael and I took the kids together and made it to about five houses before Addie and JM kinda left Landon and me in the dust. And Landon was really eager to get back to the house to see his grandparents, so it worked out pretty well. I have to say that one of the highlights of the evening was him singing "Patty Cake" at the top of his lungs while we were on our way back home. Our neighbors got a big kick out of it.

The babies had so much fun and were so good while they were trick-or-treating! They also enjoyed helping pass out candy back at home and were great helpers. The sugar high wore off after a couple of days, too, so that was good... :)

[Okay, turns out this is somehow the only picture I have from Halloween?! Nana? Mimi? Anyone?! I promise they had a blast, smiled a lot, and we took pictures outside, just not sure on whose camera the pictures are... :)]

First Parent-Teacher Conference

Okay, so our first *official* parent-teacher conference. I once had a conference call with one of Addie's preschool teachers, but it was about a week after Landon was born and it took me a good four or five minutes to realize who I was talking to - HA!

ANYWAY. Back to the story at hand.

:)

So, we went early Monday morning to meet with Addie's kindergarten teacher. We had been asked to list any concerns on a sheet that we turned in to sign up for our time. The only concern we had was that some of Addie's work was coming home messy. As in, looking like a two-year-old had done it. She has always been so particular with her artwork and handwriting that it was a little concerning - was she rushed or hurried? Also, last week, she had been whining (obnoxiously, and every evening) that "Math and Phonics are tooo haaaard..." Again, this was kind of concerning because there has never been a single thing (school-wise) that has ever been "tooo haaaard" for her.

So we arrived Monday morning and Addie's teacher had her report filled out. Her strengths were listed as kind-hearted, hard-working and diligent. She told us how all of Addie's classmates just love her and how sweet she is to everyone. She also asked us if she has an older brother, because she said that she watches her on the playground and she "doesn't take anything off of ANYONE!" WOOHOO! This was probably one of my proudest moments, given my struggles with timidity/assertiveness. :)

ANYWAY - she said that with regards to the sloppy coloring, that all the kids get competitive and want to hurry to finish their tasks first and that she's having to work with them on this. That didn't necessarily make us feel better, but at least we're not alone. We mentioned the whining about math and phonics and she just laughed and said, "I will tell you this - she is definitely not struggling with either." She did explain to us that their math block is NINETY MINUTES LONG and it's right after lunch. Can you imagine? I can't imagine sitting through math for 90 minutes now, much less as a five-year-old. She said that this is a new math program this year and that she and the other teachers are figuring out creative ways to break up the teaching/learning.

Addie's teacher also showed us Addie's kindergarten testing that was done two weeks before school started. She said that she was impressed, and we were, too! Addie was already "near-mastery" (the goal of Kindergarten being "mastery") for almost all of the subjects, and at "mastery" for some. She still has plenty to learn, obviously (the least of which are patience and non-whininess ;)), but we definitely feel good about where she is.

One thing Addie's teacher warned us about and told us to be on the lookout for is the clique-y behavior of girls. She said she's already starting to see some of it in her classroom so she is giving all the girl parents a heads up. I mean, REALLY?! I expected this conversation from say, a third or fourth grade teacher, but I can't believe in Kindergarten. *Sigh.* Hopefully my "kind-hearted" girl will miss a little bit of this. I can hope, right?

All in all, it was a great conference about our sassy little girl!

Yet another difference...

...between a boy and a girl. I know for sure I never would've had this conversation with Addie at 2 1/2 (or any age, for that matter :)).

Landon: "Mommy, look! A little gold leaf!" [If you want the full effect, it was, "Mommy, yook! A yittle gold weaf!" :)]

Me, as I'm taking the 'leaf' from him: "Cool buddy! Thanks!"

Landon: "I'm just kidding Mommy - that was a booger!"

Awesome. :)