Neither Mr. Knightley nor I are runners. I have tried at various points throughout my life to be a runner, but it has never worked out for me. This is probably due to the fact that I simply don’t like it.
Anyway, my point would be that with Mr. Knightley and myself as his parents, Thing 1 is not genetically predisposed to be a runner. I was, therefore, enormously proud of that kid for trying so hard at his 4th grade Hershey track meet. He did the long jump and ran the 50 and 100 meter races. He even came in second in one of his heats. And, because he is an awesome kid, he was just happy to be there and have fun.
We love you, Thing 1!
On St. Patrick’s Day, I went roller skating and belly dancing at the roller derby. You see the Irish connection, right? Oh, wait. Neither do I.
Let me back up a bit. The morning started out with the trashing of the kids’ room by our family’s leprechaun. That naughty thing comes and messes the kids’ room up every single year! This year, it had pulled off the books from the bookshelf to make book tents all over the room. Trust me, this was much better than the year when it dumped mounds of confetti all over the room.
There were also creative stuffed animal arrangements.
But to make up for the shenanigans, the leprechaun always leaves a treat and something fun. This year it was shamrock cookies and green bow ties.
While Mr. Knightley made the traditional corned beef, cabbage and potatoes dinner, I took Thing 1 to the roller rink with me to practice. You see, my belly dance troupe had been hired as half time entertainment for the roller derby show that happened to be taking place on St. Patrick’s day. Having spent large parts of my childhood and teenage years in a roller rink (I always knew disco rollerskating Saturday nights would help me out somewhere later in life), I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I skated / danced-on-wheels around with a veil at the beginning of our first number? Oh, man! The roller derby crowd would love that!” And so, because I often talk before I think things through, it was decided by all in my dance group that, yes, that was an awesome idea and I would be skating at the roller derby.
After practicing, I ran home long enough to eat the yummy food Mr. Knightley had made and headed back out for the performance. I had to at least smell Irish from the food as I wore my Middle Eastern dance costume, right?
Well, my idea proved to be not the greatest idea in the end. You managed to see that one coming, didn't you? I totally biffed it on one of the rope lane lines that they put down on the floor for the derby. And having made a complete fool of myself, I decided to take a grand bow for biffing it. Haha! Do I know how to make a bad thing better or what? After that, I skated just fine, and the rest of the performance went well, too.
But at least it was an extremely memorable day. I mean really, how many people have celebrated St. Patrick’s day with corned beef, roller skating, belly dancing, and bruises? I have a hunch that there probably aren't too many. In all the world. Ever. :)
P.S. I had to include this because it is awesome.
You're welcome.
I saw these cute, little Mickey snow globes that you can put your own pictures into at the Wally World and thought to myself, “Now won’t that just be an awesome Valentine’s present for the boys?” So I bought them, and the night before Valentine’s Day, I cut school pictures of the boys to the right size and inserted them into the globes.
What I hadn’t taken into account was the distortion that the water in the globes would cause. Basically, it made our children look like they had the head shape of an alien from Mars Attacks or maybe Megamind. The effect was particularly pronounced with Thing 2’s picture, which caused Mr. Knightley to remark, “That boy eats his fish.” You know, brain food. Whatever, Mr. Knightley. :)
So the boys got weirdly distorted pictures of themselves in Mickey snowglobes for Valentine’s Day. But I gave them Valentine’s cards and candy with them, so that makes it OK, right?
In slightly related news, apparently there is a movement amongst parents to take Valentine’s Day back from the children. Mr. Knightley rides a van with several other employees to and from work everyday. When he got home from work on Valentine’s Day, he told me that there had been an intense discussion on the way home about how Valentine’s Day has now become another occasion to buy stuff for your kids, not just for your romantic love. Apparently several of the guys on the van want to take the holiday back, so that constitutes a movement amongst parents, right? See, I wasn’t lying about that.
And in directly related (and delicious) news, we had heart shaped pizza for dinner (thank you, Papa Murphy’s!) and strawberry shortcake with melted chocolate on top. I think there was probably a vegetable involved somewhere, but I can’t remember for sure. The dessert was all Thing 2’s idea. Good job, Thing 2!
And, finally, here is Thing 1’s Valentine box he made for school. The 4th grade theme was the state of Utah. So Thing 1 made the state of Utah out of ... wait for it … LEGOS! What else would we expect from the kid who wants to be a Lego designer when he grows up? Good job, Thing 1!
To start the day off right, the boys’ bedroom was decorated like this when Thing 2 woke up:
As a present from us, Thing 2 got this because he loves to “cook” food so much:
Maybe he’ll be a famous chef someday. He does have an opinion about all foods, you know. To quote him: “I like all foods and 3 vegetables.” And he goes around smelling things an awful lot. Soaps at the health food store, shampoo, rocks, metal--to Thing 2, everything has a very distinctive smell. He’s like Gus and the Super Sniffer. Genetically speaking, though, he gets it from me. I have a Super Sniffer, too.
And the best part of it all is that Thing 2 can’t pronounce the “sm-” sound combo yet, so he talks about “fmelling” things all the time. This makes it 100 times better.
Thing 1 got Thing 2 an awesome Playdoh pizza maker, in keeping with the chef theme, because Thing 1 is the best big brother ever.
And then, as his other big present, we took Thing 2 to the Children's Museum in Salt Lake City on the Saturday after his birthday. The Children’s Museum is a super cool place to hang out with your kids for a few hours. Our kids did things like this:
But then, after our day of fun, we went back to our car in the parking garage and it wouldn’t start. Um, not so fun. Thank you parking garage attendant man with the battery charger thing! The birthday joy would definitely have been seriously marred without you.
After the car was jumped, I was a jumpy, nervous wreck driving through the construction mangled streets of downtown SLC with the power levels in the car fluctuating. Oh, how I prayed that the car would get us to the nearest auto parts store and not stop in the one lane traffic! And how thankful I am that it did!
Even though the jaunt to SLC cost us a bit more than expected with the new battery added to the total, it was a pretty awesome day. We had lots of fun at the museum. We got to hang out in a parking garage (wha?!--I mean, how often do you get to do that?!). We met a very nice guy at the auto parts store who put in our battery for us and politely declined to shake hands with Mr. Knightley since his (the auto guy's) hand looked like it had been dipped in grease a few times that day. Maybe it really had been. I don't know. And we finished the night with some Crown Burger. Sweet! Enough said. :)
P.S. This was Thing 2's "All About Me" poster that we made for his preschool birthday celebration:
And yes, we fit in the requested chocolate cake with chocolate frosting with G-ma, G-pa, and Auntie V that birthday week, too.
Really, why celebrate for just one day when you can celebrate all week?
When Thing 2 turned 4 (back in March--woefully late blog post, I know), we had to make a special day of it. We do birthdays kind of big around here. So I had this idea to make it a 4 Jacks Birthday.
The first Jack was, of course, Thing 2 himself, our Jackson.
We then took him here:
For lots of this with Thing 1:
And after that, we went here for dinner:
Count them up! That’s 4 Jacks. Read ‘em and weep. OK, totally kidding there. I’m so not a poker player. My face would give me away every time.
