Airplane to Heaven

We just had a wonderful evening with Jeff's family at a new place in Burbank called Kids Castle. It's like a medieval Chuck-e-Cheese with amazing gourmet brick oven pizza and salads. They have a wonderful habitrail-play area for kids that is brand-spankin'-new and clean, along with tons of games.

On the drive home we passed 2 dead skunks and a dead opossum. Mikey said: "I know what happened! A truck came driving so fast and hit the skunk and he died, right?" Then Jackson said: "Will someone come and eat the skunk?" Mikey replied: "No, because he went to heaven!" Then: "We will need to take the airplane to heaven when we want to go, because cars don't fly. Maybe a helicopter." Why not! I just don't want to be stuck in a window seat next to a dead skunk.

Charlotte is 1 1/2 Today!

Charlotte turned 18 months today. We went to her doctor for a check-up, and she is right on track developmentally. She's still in the 90th percentile for height and head measurement, but her weight has dropped back down to where she was several months ago, and she is now at the 55% percentile. I think it was a combination of the flu, learning to run, and weaning her from the bottle that caused the weight loss. She refuses to drink milk from a cup (unless it is very chocolaty). Hopefully she'll grow out of that, although I never did!

Her Dr. was impressed by her vocabulary, so I decided to make a list to see how many words she uses regularly now. Her favorite word right now is EAT! EAT! EAT!

CHARLOTTE'S VOCABULARY – 18 MONTHS
1. Eat
2. Food
3. More
4. bite
5. Juice (often for anything drinkable)
6. Milk
7. Waters (always plural)
8. Baboo (bottle)
9. Popper (binky)
10. Cereal
11. Crackers
12. Apple
13. Orange
14. All done

15. Nose
16. Eyes
17. Mouth
18. Ears
19. Hair
20. Head
21. Belly
22. Butt
23. Toes
24. Pee-pee
25. Poop

26. Shirt
27. Shoes
28. Socks
29. Pretty (jewelry)

30. Bed
31. Book
32. Bath
33. Brush

34. Cat
35. Dog
36. Bird
37. Bug
38. Dino and "di-sau"
39. Duck
40. Fish or Pishy
41. Turtle
42. Money (monkey)
43. Rat (giraffe)
44. Elmo

45. Go
46. Up
47. Down
48. Upstairs
49. Out
50. Outside or 'side
51. Play
52. "De-doo" (thank you)
53. Uh-oh!
54. Yes
55. No
56. Uh-Uh! (yes or sometimes no)
57. Sowee (sorry)
58. Awesome!
59. Owee
60. Mine
61. Bye!
62. Two (she counts along when I count for time-outs)
63. Pie! or Five! – when we say "gimme five"
64. YEAH! (after giving five)
65. Hi
66. Uppy (when she wants to be picked up)

67. Mommy
68. Mama
69. Daddy
70. Dadda
71. Jacksey
72. Money or Mitey for Mikey
73. Baby
74. Shawee (Charlie)
75. Josh

76. Car
77. Ball
78. Hello (her word for phone)
79. Beep (thermometer)
80. Cheese (camera)
81. Watch it! (TV – new 2/27)
82. Bubble
83. Pop!
84. Buckle (car-seat and stroller)
85. Hot (cooking)
86. Soft (gentle)
87. Box
88. Kiss

Candle-Lit Dinner for 5?

Our family has been battling the flu for 2 weeks now. First Mikey got it, then Jackson, then Charlotte, and now me. My fever struck last Wednesday right after my knitting class and spiked pretty quickly. Jeff took the next 2 days off of work to watch the kids while I hibernated.

Today my fever was down to 99.5, so it was time to rejoin the land of the living. I took the morning Charlie duty so that Jeff could catch up a little, and decided it was time for some real food. I think the day before I had a piece of celery and a few bites of pizza.

It's still very strange to me that I love to make breakfast foods so much, especially since I won't eat most of it. It's along the lines of my fascination with watching cooking shows about lobster and rack of lamb.

Today we had sausage, heart-shaped "Ace in the Hole" (eggs in toasted bread), and home fries. I decided to try something new - pink pancakes! They turned out to be a lovely shade of hot pink inside and made great valentines. (Editor's note -- we all loved them, and the kids especially thought they were AMAZING. -- Jeff)


We even had some strawberries in the fridge (hard to keep them around with Mikey and Jackson in the house), so I made some strawberry syrup as well. I even managed to eat a few!

Later, after taking a bunch of cold medicine and pain killers, we thought we could all use a few hours out of the house. We went to a VERY ROMANTIC movie: "Paul Blart - Mall Cop." Our first choice was sold out, but the kids LOVED IT. It was quite funny, and the music was a blast from the past. I almost forgot my tummy ache for a while.

By the way Charlotte's hair now fits in pig tails - "HOLLA!"

Anyway, I was in no condition to go out tonight, and honestly I don't especially like to go out on Valentine's night. I hate the crowds and the price fix menus. After a long nap, Mikey anounced that they needed to go to the store to buy me som "Balemstime Day" flowers. Jeff was going to make dinner and was planning on saying he was going out to pick up some ingredients. Mikey is great at spilling the beans.

I ended up making Chicken Mole Poblano while Jeff wrangled the kids and surprised me with a beautifully set candle-lit dinner table set for 5. When I brought the food out Mikey was bouncing in his chair saying "FANCY DINNER, FANCY DINNER!!!" They were very excited to be eating off of the good plates and drinking blood-orange soda out of tiny cordial glasses. We ended dinner singing a few rounds of "Happy Valentines to You!" while the kids blew out the candlesticks and clapped. I must say it wasn't the most typical romantic candle-lit Valentine's dinner, but I was with the 4 people that I love most in the world, so how could I have spent my evening any better? We may have to do this every year. . . minus the flu.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Fever Watch - Day 3

This is what 3 consecutive sick days in our house looks like. Each of the kids has topped 104 degrees at some point in the last few days. Charlotte is currently in the lead at 104.5. YIKES! I'm glad we recently stocked up on kid's Motrin! Jackson has now missed 2 days of school breaking his 100% attendance streak.

The boys temperatures are more or less back to normal, but the coughing has started. I keep wondering, when it's going to hit me. . . because it ALWAYS DOES!

Thank goodness for warm blankies and good DVDs!

Waiting for the Letter from Hogwarts

Mikey must be magic. Things keep happening to him which he swears he had no involvement in.

Just today, for instance, we were at the UPS Store notarizing a letter. Mikey kept playing with the packing peanuts. It was time to leave, and Mikey no longer had a jacket. Where did it go?

"Someone put it in the golden drawer, and I can't get it out."

"What drawer?" And he led me to a bronze mailbox. A locked mailbox.

"How'd you get it in there?"

"I didn't do it. Someone else did."

"Who?"

"I don't know."

The lady behind the counter was nonplussed because, of course, the mailbox was locked, and the UPS guy in to pick up the packages was laughing hysterically. "He couldn't have put it in there," she said. "Even if it was open, he'd have had to have the key to shut it."

She got her manager, who opened it up, and Ta Da! One mini Dickies jacket, crumpled in the box.

Here's what we figured. The manager opened the big bank of doors for less than a minute to put in mail. Somehow Mikey warped time and space to get to that end of the store and slip past the manager's legs without getting noticed and shove in the jacket, just in time for the doors to shut again. All this without his own knowledge.

It's a little bit easier to understand how the 13 cookies cooling on the counter turned into six, also with no human intervention.

We are waiting for a letter any day letting us know he's been accepted into Hogwarts. He won't need a key to get into the mailbox to open it.

Happy 6th Birthday Jackson!

Jackson turned 6 at the beginning of this month during his winter break from school. We decided to hold off on his birthday party until school started up again, so that he could invite all of his kindergarten friends.

He had asked for a Grinch/Dinosaur/Star Wars Birthday party. How in the world was I supposed to put THAT together?? Christmas was a HUGE dinosaur event for him, so we convinced him that maybe it would be OK try something different. On his actual birthday we brought a Grinch cake (photos to come) to my parents home and watched the Grinch movie with them. So that left me with a much more manageable Star Wars themed kid party.

Jeff was definitely more excited about it than Jackson. He had been trolling E-bay for several weeks before the big day picking out the perfect gifts. He found a vintage Rancor Monster and keeper as well as a newer Millennium Falcon ship that was unopened and in perfect condition.

This is the invite that I made for Jackson to pass out at school. All those years of designing Star Wars board short paid off!


The week before the party was a particularly hard week for me. In addition to trying to get the kids back on schedule for school, my knitting class started up again for a spring term, and I was bidding on and ultimately won a large freelance gig. The party went on the back burner. I was very tempted to cancel the whole thing, but knew that was impossible. So, after a quick trip to Party City, Target, and Michaels, then a 9pm run to the grocery store the night before, I was FINALLY able to START the party prep for an 11:30am party.

We had the idea that it would be a fun challenge to make a Millennium Falcon cake. Making the cakes for the kids parties is my FAVORITE part of the party planning process. When I "grow up," I secretly want to work for Duff at Charm City Cakes in Baltimore. Mikey and I are Ace of Cakes Junkie's. Jeff found a picture of a Millennium Falcon cake that Duff had made online, and I thought it would be a fun challenge. I decided that I was going to start when I got back from the store, and not go to sleep until the cake was done. At 3am I was able to put down my piping bag and crash for the night.

Not bad, considering that I didn't use fondant (and wouldn't know how anyway)! I used gray cream cheese frosting over double fudge cake. The gray circles are Necco wafers. The lights are cut up fruit roll-ups, and the shading was done with some awesome black food-coloring spray that Jeff found. I'm going to post step-by step photos at some point, in case anyone out their in cyber land wants to give it a try someday too.

Jeff had found some mini Star Wars figures to place around the ship, and we pilfered the machine gun from Jackson's present.

The next morning came VERY fast. The bounce house guys showed up 2 hours early - just as I was crawling out of bed. Jeff was wonderful and had stayed up cleaning the house as I was baking and decorating the cake. In the morning we had to set up chairs, hang streamers and balloons, throw snacks in bowls, pick up a GIGANTIC 36" pizza, and we were ready to roll.


After the kids got a little worn out from bouncing in the bounce-house, eating pizza and drinking Yoda Soda and Dark Side Floats, we had a meteor hunt. I told the kids that there was a meteor shower and I needed all of the young Jedi Knights to come and find all of the valuable meteorites. I told them that it might be dangerous, so they needed to select some weapons for protection.

I made sure there were plenty of pink squirt guns for the little girls.

I think the adults were a bit jealous that I didn't hand any out to them!

It was such a beautiful day that it felt like we were having an easter egg hunt in the middle of June and not January. Kinda trippy to think that a few short weeks before we were sledding in the foothills and celebrating Christmas. You gotta love L.A.!

The meteors were filled width planet bouncy balls, UFO yo-yos, alien toys and star bracelets for the girls.

Some of our favorite new friends from Jacksons school came. This is Caden and his mom Jennifer. She is on the school councils with Jeff and I, and we think she and her kids are great.

This is Anthony and his mom. Anthony and Jackson have been best friends since the 3rd day of school. The first few days didn't go so well since Jackson "narked" out Anthony for splashing toilet water in the boys bathroom. After that they became fast friends. Unfortunately a month into school their class was divided up, and Jax and Anthony were separated. They have done a good job of hanging out at recess and lunch though.

I was quite surprised at how many school friends DIDN'T r.s.v.p. for Jackson's party. I had no idea how many kids (and parents) to plan for. It turns out that only 2 kids from his school came, and that was because we already knew their parents and they had committed to coming early on. Hopefully by next year, we will have gotten to know more families, and he'll have a better turn out.

It was great to have his tried and true local friends and cousins fill in the ranks, and it ended up being the perfect size party. He was happy that his favorite school friends came, and I think that distracted him from how many didn't.

After the meteor hunt we played stick the chest-plate on Vader. Jackson was almost dead on. I double and triple checked that blind fold. I guess he just used the force!

Then it was time to take a crack at Vader's helmet. I had wanted Jeff to dress up in his Vader costume to hold the pinata, but besides the fact that he never wants to be seen in that skin-tight nylon costume in the daylight, we were worried that the mini Jedis might get carried away with the bat and strike-out at their mortal enemy.

Caden shredded the helmut with a well aimed blow and separated the mask from the helmet. It made a great hat.

Jackson blew out the candles, and I was sick about having to cut the cake. It ended up tasting great, and we had plenty of leftovers. True to form, Jax was MUCH more interested in playing with the action figures than eating the cake.

We were able to hang out with our friends for a few more hours before heading up to little Alabama's 2nd birthday party up the block. When we got back, Uncle Al came over that night to help us polish off some more cake and pizza. Despite the exhaustion, it was a wonderful day and the kids had a blast. We are thankful to everyone that helped celebrate Jackson's special day!

Start 'Em Young

We took the boys to the La Brea Tarpits on Monday and let them climb on the giant sloth statues at the end of the day. Jackson was in full-on imagination zone when suddenly he broke it to say, "There's Obama! He's going to be our next president!"

He was looking an Obama sticker on a backpack. "Everyone loves Obama for president," he said. "But not John McCain!"

Honestly, we have no idea where he gets this stuff.