Me in Place

(please note the manner in which i am writing this. it’s called facetious. )

Here’s my kids, doing what is expected – rubbing Lincoln’s nose for good luck, which I explained to them means nothing, but we still did it for fun.:

Here’s me, being fun-facetious. My kids gasped in pretend horror, “But mom, that will bring bad luck!”

“There’s no such thing as bad or good luck, children.”

Not ten minutes later, a pickup runs a red light and does this to my van. Yeah, I’ll never hear the end of that from my kids. And mommy has some explaining to do about good/bad luck and how they aren’t true.

(Further explanation – we were all okay, thankfully. Only bruises and muscle pain for me. Kids were fine. Majorly freaked about losing our van – but they are okay. I have to give props to our insurance company, who has treated us fairly and quickly (Allstate). The major problem was being four hours away from home and being stranded on a street corner. A stranger offered to drive us to a rental place. The rental place wouldn’t rent us a car (Enterprise) to do a one-way and were terrible in customer service in helping us (Um, hello, four hours away from home, with three kids, luggage, etc…help us!). Eventually, they got someone to drive us to an airport rental office, where we rented from another rental company and drove home. Again, everyone is fine – just lost a van, which has now been replaced by a new-to-us van. And my kids can see the silver lining in the clouds – as it turns out, the only 2008 Honda Odyssey in the Chicagoland area that fit our criteria has a DVD player!!)

The next day we visited the Abraham Lincoln Museum (well worth the time) and the state capitol. The state capitol was recently refinished in some areas – so go see the gold leafing you bought! Mine’s in the hallway outside the senate chambers. Don’t touch. The governor’s parking spot was empty.

And that’s as political as this blog will ever get!

Except for this, this is cute. And political. Politically cute.

And we liked the Lincolns. Is that political?

This is my mom and my two girls standing in front of Charlie Parker’s – a diner destination in Springfield. You might as well! It was good food – we did not get the horseshoe, which is Springfield’s famous food (mainly because it sounded disgusting to me). But the lunch I did eat was yummy and recommended. (Yes, Guy has visited for his diner show.)

You know what makes me happy about having kids? Finding little things that are so adorable and so cute and so “hey, that’s my kid!”. I do not talk to other mothers about my kids because 1) I do not believe in comparing my children – either against other kids or against each other as siblings and 2) my kids are just too cool. Just kidding. But, seriously, this is why you can have a blog, so you can tell all the grandmas and grandpas how awesome your kids are.

Here’s my awesome SuperBoy. Mr MIP is a leader in Sparks (the group SuperBoy is in) and snapped this on his camera phone. SuperBoy got picked to hold the flag at Awana one night because it was his birthday week. Did SuperBoy just stand there with flag drooping on the floor? All lazily and sloppily? Oh no! SuperBoy raised that flag above his head and held it there for the entire pledge.

Go, SuperBoy!

SuperBoy is 7. We had fun reminding him of classic SuperBoy stories such as when he fed the angel food cake to the dog and himself and when he ordered a book from Amazon at the age of two. He said sincerely, “I’m really sorry about all that stuff.” You’re forgiven.

Here are shots from his rockin’ birthday party:

*The theme was Star Wars. We even had a guest Storm Trooper.

*Cake with epic battle

*Sooooo excited:

*Playing Wii for the first time. The Great Uncle that is, SuperBoy is a seasoned veteran. (sorry it’s blurry. had to capture the moment, though.)

Every winter my wimpy minivan starts an alarm in my car. This alarm is meant to tell me I have a flat tire. But I don’t. It’s just that my minivan wants to whine, “But it’s so cooooold. I don’t WANna drive now. Take me HOOOOoooome.” And I tell it to be quiet and suffer silently and drive on. This time, we all climbed into the van after AWANA and it screamed and I said, oh, it does that every year. It’s fine.

Eight hours later.

And let that be a lesson to you: You can’t ever NOT listen to the boy who cried wolf.

Here’s to our fifth year of our Christmas tradition of going downtown to see the lights and eat beignets at the Grand Lux Cafe!

On the list of 30 Things to Do in Chicagoland, is visiting the Hancock Observatory. I waited until I had all three kids with me and all three old enough to enjoy it and we went last week. I feel loyal to the Hancock Observatory because they didn’t sell out to some corporation and change their name on all of us. Thanks, John. I appreciate it.

The audio tour included in the admission fee involves headphones and a small device you enter numbers on to hear David Schwimmer explain what you’re looking at. Mine didn’t work and also, it is hard for a mom to listen to any sort of device when there are three kids trying to figure out how theirs work…so, the audio tour was missed by me, but it was okay, I knew what I was looking at after living in Chicagoland for forever!

SuperBoy listened intently and enjoyed the views. And, all in all, it was a great visit and fun to do. (By the way, they are having an ice rink at the Hancock building January til March of next year.)

Check the next tradition off the list! The kids performed in their choir program on Sunday night. They’ve been practicing a lot and it went well. The songs were beautiful – not typical kid songs – and included Joseph Lieber, Joseph Mein; The Holly and The Ivy and a catchy tune called Busy Little Bethlehem that SuperBoy’s been practicing for weeks with his cd player. Add in the joy of the boy behind me pulling my hair and kicking my seat and the boy in front of us being the Naughtiest Two Year Old Ever to Hear the Song Joseph Lieber, Joseph Mein AND the fact that the director stood right in front of SuperBoy the whole time so we couldn’t see our precious wecious son and you’ve got yourself a Christmas concert!

Spot the SuperBoy on the screen! This was the best idea – words on the screen! First kids’ concert I’ve been able to understand what’s going on. Plus, they had good mics and the sound was great.

Combined choirs.

Pretty picture with GG.

These days are going by so quickly, they make me feel old. Because only old people complain about time flying. Days are filled with an endless list of listy things. Okay, so my list for today included making pita bread for our study of the Phoenicians…so it’s not like my list of world-changing, unlike some of you. But it’s still MY list.

Here is a quick overview of the last couple of weeks, so you can be all caught up on our listy selves.

Eldest daughter turned 11. She’s been saving forever for the Lego police station, and she finally had enough on her birthday. As soon as our guests left, Dad took her to Target to buy her set. She had it fully built by noon the next day.

Our family includes nine kids between 3 and 11. Thanksgiving is a little crazy. But a little fun too.

My cool deals I had set to buy on Black Friday were out of stock. I ended up buying myself a Shark Steam Mop that was half price. It works great. Especially when one of Santa’s elves does it for you.

The kids are geared up for Christmas. I got smart this year and adopted aliases for each of them and am making out the gift tags using the nicknames. There’s Fruit Snack, Agent P (from Phineas and Ferb) and Olive (as in “Olive” the other reindeer). No, I won’t tell you who’s who, ‘cuz you’ll just tell.