Today was a good day

Thanks to Eliana's mullet hair, look what we can do . . .

Here's to business in the front, party in the back.

A day of Life Lessons

Here is what I learned today:

1. Pop Rocks cannot be cleaned once spilled. The minute the humidity in the air gets to them, they are glued to the carpet and stuck to the floor. {Lesson 1b would be that pop rocks cannot be swept off the kitchen floor either}. Pop Rocks, a candy I adore, will darken our doorstep no more.

2. Six year old and eight year old boys will not practice the piano when left to their own devices. They will also not bring in their piano books from the car with out proper prompting. {Six year old and eight year old boys learned today -- no practice, no piano prize box. Mother's orders.}

3. A two year old can become addicted to candy in three seconds flat. Since Halloween, Nicholas has had candy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, afternoon snack, 4:30 AM snack, and just because snack. {Nicholas also knows what he likes and doesn't like. And I now know what he doesn't like because I find half eaten candy dropped all over the place.}

4. Ants in Texas live for Halloween. {Ants in our house live for the candy Nicholas doesn't like.}

5. To Nicholas, Rude means someone does something mean, and someone gets an owie. {In otherwords, if Sam is rude to Nicholas, that gives Nicholas permission to hit Sam.}

6. Fall daylight savings is kicking my butt. My children have adjusted to going to bed an hour later, but not to waking up an hour later. This morning, they were all up by 5:45 AM. {I, unfortunately, was not.} Threats have been made . . . tomorrow I will not see the light of day until 6:30 AM.

Lessons learned . . .Patience tested . . . tomorrow will be better.

And to go with the randomness of this life, here are some Halloween pictures.

A Proud Mother

There is a contest at school where the kids are asked to submit something creative based on a theme. This year the theme was "WOW!" Sam wanted to participate, and he chose to enter in the photography category. One of the rules of the contest is that it has to be 100% the child's work. Sam started brainstorming ideas for pictures. For every idea he had, I would ask him to tell me how it "WOWS!" him. Some ideas were good {a photo spread of his gecko catching cricket}, others were not so good {the wind blowing the grass}.

He tried to take a picture of the gecko eating, but sadly, the gecko would not cooperate. On to idea number two. He chose to take a picture of the American flag {because it is a symbol of our freedom}. Life being crazy like it is, he didn't get to take the picture until close to sunset. But that worked to his advantage. He got the camera in position, then put it on rapid shutter mode and clicked away. And we came home with some winners.

Next came the photo editing. He wanted to edit the photo so that it would look like it was taken at Fort McHenry, where in 1814 the valiant defense of the fort by 1,000 dedicated Americans inspired Francis Scott Key to write “The Star-Spangled Banner.” I was skeptical at first, but he did a great job!

So here are Sam's pictures. One original, and one Sam's photoshop special.

To Infinity and Beyond

At our house, some people can really {fly} . . .




Others just {fall} with style . . .

Monkey see, Monkey do

Eliana loves Nicholas. She REALLY loves Nicholas. She loves everything about him - his clothes, his dog, his blanket, his toys, his cup of milk. Anything Nicholas has, Eliana wants. As I type this, she's throwing a fit because Nicholas has a granola bar and she doesn't. Does she like granola bars? {No.} Will she eat a granola bar? {No.} Will she stop crying if she's holding a granola bar like Nicholas. {Yes.}

Yesterday, two things happened that took her love of Nicholas to my breaking point. Nicholas woke up grumpy and all around disagreeably opinionated. I know, that doesn't sound at all like Nicholas. I digress . . . I told him it was time to get dressed. He looked at me and in his deepest demon voice said, "No! I don't wanna get dressed!" And then stomped off. So, I turned to Ellie and told her it was time to get dressed. She looked up at me and unleashing her inner Nicholas screamed, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!" And stomped off after him. I suppose I shouldn't have laughed, but it was so shockingly funny.

Second story: At Walmart yesterday afternoon, we happened to be perusing through the toy aisle. Eliana noticed a display of dolls. She kept saying, "baby! baby!" in her cute little voice. How could I resist? {thankfully, she wanted the $3.00 Walmart special.} I have been waiting for her to want a doll for forever. I began to dream of all the quality mother/daughter play time we could have. So I bought her the doll. She hugged it the entire time we were in the store. She hugged it all the way home. She hugged it all the way into the house. She hugged it all the way to Nicholas room. She hugged the baby until she saw him playing with airplanes. Then she stopped hugging the baby and demanded an airplane. Nicholas gave her a plane, she threw the baby on the floor and played planes with her hero. The baby has been forgotten, along with all my hopes and dreams. I am, after all, no Nicholas.

A Mother's Right {OR} The Cycle is Repeated

When I was in the third grade, I had bad hair . . . it still pains me to talk about it. My mother liked to curl my hair with her hot curlers.

{A short bob cut + a million hot curlers = bubble hair.}

My hair stuck out like an inner tube around my head. To make matters worse, my mom knew her way around a can of hair spray. That bubble hair stayed in one place ALL day long. I got a lot of compliments about my hair - you know, the kind of compliments only 9 year old kids can make. The hairstyle of '86 still haunts me. I'm sure my mom had my best interests in mind. She was only trying to add some volume to my practically bald head. And I'm sure she thought it looked good. It wasn't her fault that she wasn't privy to the Turnagain Elementary fashion world.

Relevance?

I'm sure, years from now, Eliana will tell me that I scarred her for life because of all the silliness I insisted on putting in her hair. But in my defense, the flower is so obnoxiously large, it's cute. So without further ado, may I present for your viewing pleasure

Eliana at 13 months

Alaska in a million pictures

Nicholas, Eliana and I were lucky enough to spend a few days in Alaska last week. It was a quick trip, but we had so much fun. My brother Jacob and his son Garion were visiting the same weekend, so my parents had a houseful. We've been home a week and Nicholas still hasn't adjusted back to Texas time. Today, Nicholas told me that he didn't want to go to our house - he wanted to go Grandma's house in Alaska. So here is a little photo journal of our trip. It may seem like a lot of pictures, but I'm only posting a tenth of the pictures I took {I love digital cameras!}

Eliana and my Grandpa. {There are a million pictures of the two of them . . . I'll try to limit myself to only a few.}

Garion, Eliana and Nicolas with Grandpa . . . you have to love Nicholas' face!

All the boys. Nicholas is, of course, cooperating just like we asked him to!

I love the look on Grandpa's face in the picture.

How much we miss out on by living so far away from family!

Four Generations of Cox Men.

Doggie, meet Doggie.

Nicholas meeting a future Iditarod sled dog champion.

Part of the beauty that is Alaska - Summer Flowers.

Taking the fox for a walk at the Alaska Zoo.

Now, how would you like to have this creature scrounging for food in your backyard? This is from the zoo, but black bears are common sights in some parts of Anchorage.

Check out the claws on this Grizzly!

Nicholas had fun chasing the mountain goats at the zoo.

Here's a picture of Mt. McKinley. On a clear day, you can see it from Anchorage -- which is over 130 air miles south of the mountain. Pretty impressive, no?

Mt. Susitna, otherwise known as Sleeping Lady. Can you see the sleeping lady? {Her hair is flowing off the top of her head to the left.}

The Legend of Sleeping Lady: Legend tells us that a millennia ago, the Great Land known as Alaska was inhabited by a race of giants. Among these people was a beautiful young maiden and a handsome young man whose devotion to each other was admired by all the villagers. Wedding preparations were underway when word reached the village of a warring tribe approaching from the north.

After a village council it was decided that the young man would bring gifts to the invaders to show the peaceful and friendly intentions of the villagers. Keeping herself busy while waiting for the young man's return, the maiden eventually grew tired and laid down to rest.

Soon after, word reached the village that the invaders rejected the offer of peace and a battle ensued in which the young man was killed. The villagers, gazing at the sleeping maiden, did not have the heart to wake her.

So there she rests today, still waiting for news of peace and the return of her love . . .

A shot of downtown Anchorage.

A picture of the Inlet.

My dad caught some salmon while we were there. Nicholas was fascinated with it.

Here we are posing as tourists.

We got to visit some reindeer. Nicholas called them antlers and thought they were great!

Nicholas feeding the reindeer. {This one was a little gross - he was still loosing the velvet from his antlers and it was disgusting!}

Again with the tourist poses.

Eliana didn't quite know what to make of the reindeer. She was pretty brave, though, and petted them anyway.

We couldn't resist . . . :)

Nicholas and the chocolate waterfall. He was dying to jump in!

My Grandpa.

Eliana loving the bear skin that hangs on my parents wall . . . you HAVE to love Alaska!