A Sad Goodbye

Todd's week started off on a good note when he won a drawing for Skeeter's Swag.  The Sugar Land Skeeter's baseball team was giving away some bobble heads, beach towel, puzzle, and a nice jersey.  When Todd went to pick it up at their offices, he was met with a former major leaguer who is the special assistant to the president.  Apparently he's always in the office, he's 84-years old, curses like a sailor and loves to give away stuff.  So in addition to the swag Todd already won, he gave him a replica championship ring as well as lots of coupons to their Holiday Lights event.  The kids were super excited to get their hands on it all.

I hit my own little jackpot at the Goodwill stores this week.  We've been looking for dressier clothes for my brother's upcoming wedding and I managed to find Josiah a fancy blazer and pants.  I found dress shoes for all three kids (which turned out slightly too big, so we bought thick socks).  I even found two winter coats for the boys ($5 for a kid's coat!)  Todd got the fun job of polishing all the new shoes.  The kids cannot wait to fly in an airplane and Caroline cannot wait to eat wedding cake.  For her sake, I hope it's the best cake she's ever tasted because she is building it up a lot.

The boys had their last Boys of Iron at church this week.  The tradition has been to do a sock exchange (as well as bring in socks for charity).  Both boys brought in skateboarding socks.  Henry's pair had a bunch of skateboards on it.  Josiah's had a skateboarder doing a trick.  After Boys of Iron was over, I picked up Henry and saw he had the same socks he went in with.  When I inquired about that, he said he traded to get them back because he liked the skateboards.  Then we picked up Josiah.  He came out carrying fuzzy sloth socks.  Henry was livid.  He said they both promised to trade to get their original socks back.  It was agreed upon until Josiah liked his new socks better.  Henry is a kid who values socks.  He always wears knee socks so that he can show them off.  Shorts and knee socks.  That's our Henry.

Grandad and Nana played a lot of games of War with the kids.  I was impressed by their stamina.  I tend to cheat-to-lose when I play War.  I keep a handy "2" at the bottom of my pile and bring it up if I ever want to lose a war.  No one's caught on yet.  :)

We also got our annual Nutcracker picture with Grandad and Nana.  The rain made for a soggy backyard, so we opted to include our only outdoor decoration.

We had to drive Grandad and Nana back to the airport this week.  We had three very sad kids.  It was a very quiet drive back to the house.  When we got home, Henry texted Todd:
Hi daddy how are you doing i'm feeling sad
Henry
:(

Later Henry explained part of his sadness.  He likes it when Grandad and Nana are here because "it's easier to speak with them than to text because when I text I have to ask how to spell words and it's easier to just speak the words."  Poor guy.  He's a little guy with deep emotions.

After getting home from the airport, we brought out the Monopoly game to distract us from Grandad and Nana's absence.  Caroline started out as the banker, until she announced, "Everyone can pick one [from the till]."

Then she made a neighborhood and wasn't too keen on us breaking it up.

Josiah was the only one who had a monopoly and could buy houses.  Right now in the game he has three hotels and $4 to his name.  Just like in life, when Josiah has money, he feels the need to spend it all.

We had some crazy rain that blew through on Friday afternoon.  Everything was cancelled.  It felt like a hurricane coming with all the warnings.  The next morning, Todd was looking at some of the flooding that had occurred.  There was an intersection he drives through every day to get to work and there was 2 feet of water covering it. 

The rain brought cold, windy weather behind it.  That made it easy to stay inside on Saturday and put up the Christmas tree.  The kids did a good job at distributing the ornaments around the tree.  It was the best they'd ever done.   Henry put the star on top though it took some convincing to get him to stand on the top step of the ladder.  He kept saying that the sticker said, "Do Not Stand."  Daddy's holding you, buddy, it's okay!  He'll ignore us all day long telling him to stop running in the house, but a sticker on a ladder he'll obey.

As soon as the ornament hanging was done, all the kids laid down underneath.  Then Josiah and Caroline spent the next few hours playing 'house' with the ornaments.  Caroline clustered them together in their own houses/rooms.  They've been playing with the ornaments so much this year that we may have fewer to put away after the holidays are over.  We keep reminding them they're ornaments, they're decorations, not toys.  They're not believing us.

Henry had a birthday party today for a friend from CC.  It was supposed to be a pool party, but since it was 48 degrees out, it got moved indoors. 

Since they no longer needed the adult supervision poolside, another mom and I went out for crêpes at a new restaurant.  Mine was crêpe au citron. It was so big and tangy and sweet.  I had to eat a big bowl of cabbage for dinner to make myself feel better for eating it.

While I was out eating my crêpe , Todd made lunch for Josiah and Caroline at home.  He texted me that Caroline said it the best lunch she had ever eaten.  He cooked a hot dog for her and baked some fries in the oven.  5,475 meals I've made her.  Todd wins with microwaved hot dogs.  I throw my hands up.

Though we did get the tree up, I predict this week Josiah will be quite persistent that we get all the other Christmas decorations out.  And Caroline says we're non-decorators...