Successes

Zoë's been practicing French braiding my hair while I've been reading our nightly novel to her and Alexander. After showing her how to do it once she tried it and did it...a little loose and sloppy...but obviously a French braid. Then she undid it and tried again and again and again. And she's getting quite good at it.

This morning she did Phoebe's hair in a French braid:

Robbing the candy store

Zoë's primary teacher gifted all the kids in the class a bag full of activities to do during General Conference and a bunch of candy (mostly to use for the conference games). Phoebe can't attend her own class without having a panic attack, so she went with Zoë this week (she alternates between Zoë's class and Alexander's class). This meant that Phoebe also got a big bag of candy.

Recent silly sayings

Benjamin has his first swim meet today (on his year-round team). Andrew's taking him because it's all the way in Newnan and will be a whole day affair. 

Andrew grabbed his shoes out of the shoe closet and then went to sit on the stairs so he could put them on. While he was sitting down, tiny little Phoebe sneaked around him and started walking up the stairs.

Luckily Andrew was gently settling himself on the stairs because he didn't see Phoebe sneak past him and...sat on her. 

"Okay, wow," she said in disgust. "I'm, like, trying to go up the stairs."

Like, how incredibly rude of him!

Mailboxes

Growing up in Canada, I lived at multiple places, four that I remember well: Burnaby, PoCo, Calgary, and High River. We never had door-to-door delivery. We always had community mailboxes. 

I thought this was normal. 

I thought having a mailbox at the end of every driveway was insane when we moved to the States (to be fair, our house in Spanish Fork had a community box and I applauded that; and Darla's neighbourhood has a community box as well...but literally one for the entire gated community, so it isn't quite as convenient as walkable community boxes). 

Admittedly, I don't remember Burnaby very well. I wasn't ever in charge of getting the mail. But I know we had a playground visible from our window. I'll bet the mailbox was right there as well. 

In PoCo, our mailbox was a 1 minute walk from our house (91 meters)—and a 7 minute walk to the playground (500 meters). We also had a 2–3 minute walk to a provincial park/forest, and a 10–15 minute walk to the recreation center.

In Calgary, our mailbox was a ~1 minute walk from our house (56 meters)—at the playground on our street. There was also a large open field directly across the street from us. And another playground just a 5 minute walk away. And another playground a 10 minute walk away. And...there were outdoor ice rinks we could get to...

In High River, our mailbox was a 1 minute walk from our house (77 meters)—at the playground on our street. We could also access the lakes with a 3-minute walk, 250 meters—conveniently there is now a playground at Sunshine Lake. When I lived there we had walk to the other lake (Emerson) to get to a playground...past the elementary school (just a 6 minute walk from our house—450 meters), where there is another playground where we were freely allowed to play outside of school hours. They've since taken down the playground at Emerson, but the sledding hill is still there (a 15 minute walk from our house). River access was about a 40 minute walk from our house...but no one wants to live too close to the river anyway...for flooding reasons.

It's the final countdown!

Our days at the pool are limited and our schedule is so packed that our time to visit the pool in the limited time it's still open is also limited. Miriam had a babysitting job this afternoon, so we decided we'd visit the pool after dropping her off. 

We had it all to ourselves...if you don't count all the salamanders. There were four dead ones and two still-alive ones. We collected the dead ones and the live ones and moved them off into the woods (returning the salamanders to the little pond/stream area we assume they originated).

Happy birthday, Andrew!!

Andrew turned 41 on Friday. He was at a conference for most of the day and Zoë and Alexander went to a church activity in the evening and didn't return until much later than we thought. A friend of mine gave them a ride since I had to get Benjamin to swim practice and couldn't be everywhere all at once. 

Phoebe was so excited when Daddy got home because she's had such limited time with him the last couple of months. She was really looking forward to him opening his presents (she loves birthdays) and was very upset when he decided to initiate bedtime before the kids come home.

"But Dad!" she wailed. "Mom said presents before bed!"

Lucky for Phoebe the kids arrived in time to rescue her from her having to wait one more day for Daddy to open his presents. 

Perception is reality

This afternoon we were out on a walk and Phoebe wanted to see a police car. 

Now, I have some serious skills as a mother. I can kiss boo-boos better. I can sing away nightmares. I can tape ripped pieces of paper. However...

Not once have I been able to conjure something out of midair. I've been working on it since Rachel could talk and started requesting to see donkey carts while we were taxiing about Cairo. Unfortunately for her, I couldn't make donkey carts appear whenever she wanted to see one. 

Despite the intervening years of parenting...I still just...kind of am not very good at conjuring things...so Phoebe was rather disappointed.

"Is that a police car?"

"No. That's just a black car."

"Is that a police car?"

"No. That's a white truck." 

"Is that a police car?"

"Again...no...that's just a red car."

"Well, I want to see a police car! Can you find me an...oooooh!"

Just then a car with a Dominoes pizza delivery sign on top drove by.

"Now there's a police car!" she said, happily. "See how it has the red and blue lights on top?"

Sisters, sisters!

I was helping Alexander fill out a survey to be spotlighted in primary and he breezed through the first half, confidently answering questions about his favourite primary song and where he was born. Then he got to the really difficult questions, like, "How many brothers do you have?"

Just kidding. That question was easy for him to answer. 

"One," he said, quite sure. 

"And how many sisters do you have?" I asked. 

"Uhhhhhh..." he said, absolutely perplexed. "Does Rachel still count?"

"Yes, Rachel still counts! Why wouldn't Rachel count?"

"Because she's far away..."

"She's still your sister though, so..."

"I guess so..."

"I...more than guess so..." I said. "She's definitely still your sister."

"Okay, let's put down four."

"Sounds good. Four sisters it is."

The P-O-O-L

Going to the pool in September means that leaves dance across the surface of the water, like figure skaters pirouetting. The water is cool, but not so cold that we get goosebumps. Still, the kids climb out of the water to lounge on the hot cement—which they could only sprint across on scorched tip-toes just last month. The shade around the pool is dwindling as the leaves fall, but it doesn't matter because we welcome the sunlight now that it has to stretch a bit further to reach us—to rub our shoulders, boop our noses, run its fingers through our hair...

Is it bad that he's halfway through his math curriculum already? Probably...

 "Is it cheating," Alexander asked. "If I write down the word PEMDAS on my paper? Because I have a question that involves parentheses, multiplication, and addition and I just need to be sure that I remember to do everything in the right order..."

That is not cheating, actually. 

"It's just that we didn't learn PEMDAS this unit..."

Testing is cumulative. You are allowed—encouraged, required—to call on prior knowledge. 

*****

"I have a slight problem with this question because it wants me to find out, like, what is 15*6 and 4*15 and so I did that! I said 15*6 is 90 and 4*15 is 60 and I added those up and I got 150. But then I remembered that this test is focusing on the distributive property and I could have solved this much faster if did 15*10, which is 15(6+4). So I just hope it's okay if I did it another way even if it is slower and takes more work. And it should be okay because this question also wants me to find out what 9*6 and 9*14 is so that I can find out the difference between those two answers, because I'm really trying to find out how much more money one of them earned than the other one. So if I go straight to 9(20), which is 9(6+14), for the second part, then I used the distributive property to get to the answer and it will still count, right?"