Frightening Discovery

This wasn't supposed to happen so soon. Last week, while helping Nathan speed through the rest of this year's requirements for his Faith in God book (one day before his birthday), I made a frightening discovery.

The requirement we were working on was learning to lead music. I took him into the living room and played through a song on the piano and then began showing him how to conduct in 3/4 time. I thought it would make things easier if we were facing the same direction so he could just copy my actions. So I had him stand behind me with both of us facing the mirror so that I would be able to see how he was doing, and a horrible scene played out in the mirror: upper arm jiggle! Aaaaacccchhh! Where did that come from?! Isn't that something that should only happen to old ladies? Help! How do I fix that? (Other than "get in shape", because that's just not working.)

I thought about finding a photo online that I could attach to this post so that you would get the full effect, but then I thought it would forever be an image you would associate with me, so I decided against it. Excuse me while I go cry.

F.H.E. Under the Magnifying Glass

I'm thankful for countless things in my life but, at the moment, Family Home Evening isn't one of them. During our lesson on gratitude, we did a writing exercise that was designed to help us see how much we have to be thankful for. In reality, though, this F.H.E. activity revealed very little actual gratitude and involved all of the following:

• excessive use of the word "toot"
• a bloody lip
• quite a bit of yelling
• fingers used for ear-plugging
• a round of blaming
• an un-named family member singing, "I hate you. You hate me. We are a happy family."

Anyone else ever have the Monday night blues?

Forensic Psychology, Family-Style

Everyone has their modus operandi. Here's our family profile.

Nathan: No matter what is happening, has happened, or is going to happen, I'm innocent. It wasn't me. I had nothing to do with it and I was way over there when it happened, whatever it was.

Daniel: I have no remorse. I don't care how wrong it was, if it was funny or otherwise enjoyable at the time, it was worth it, and I would do it again. In a heartbeat. Oh, you want me to at least say "sorry"? I can do that...while giggling uncontrollably.

Stephanie: Plea bargaining. I'm cute and I know it. There's a lot of exciting trouble out there just waiting for me to find it. I will just flash my pearly-whites and get you to agree to a lighter sentence.

Me: It's possible I might have been a little bit wrong, but I'm sure I'm not completely wrong, and I'm certainly not the only one who's wrong here. In fact, maybe I'll just go ahead and change the law in my favor before anyone realizes what's happening.

Eric: Go ahead. Cuff me. I plead guilty, let's just get the punishment overwith. It's quicker this way, even if I didn't do it.

There. Now you know our family a teensy-bit better. That's us in a nut-cell. Or nutshell.

The Un-mask-querade

When I took the boys shopping for Halloween costumes a few weeks ago, the words "you won't be able to wear masks at the trunk-or-treat" could not penetrate their one-track minds. Since they were both using some of their own money for the purchase, I did not interfere when they insisted they wanted these costumes with masks. In some kind of dream-world, I just figured they would wear everything BUT the mask for the trunk-or-treat at the church. Any guesses what happened on "Halloween"? (Halloween is in quotes because it was really October 30.) Yep! "Mom! I need a different costume! Why can't I wear my mask?!? Can you help me be something else?" Here is the result for Nathan (who raised his concerns mid-day):

I went to Michael's and Target and made purchases (with MY money - I know, I shouldn't have done that) and created a bare-bones Percy Jackson costume for him. While he was happy with it, he carried the shield that I made for not quite a full minute before deciding he couldn't comfortably carry a shield, a sword, and a candy bucket at the same time. Flush that $. Below is a photo of him in his other costume. The hood is pretty cool. You can see out but not in. The ghastly-looking weapon is called "Death's dagger". I refrained from using it on him.

Daniel waited until 6:21pm to decide he couldn't be happy wearing his costume sans mask. We needed to walk out the door at 6:30pm. So, for him, I grabbed Nathan's robe and wand, Daniel's fake glasses and my purple eyeliner, drew a lightning scar on his forehead, proclaimed him "Harry Potter" and off we went to the trunk-or-treat. I know, there's very little resemblance to Harry here:

Here is the costume Daniel purchased and begged to wear to the trunk-or-treat. He was sure I could pull some strings and get the no-masks rule adjusted for him. He did, at least, have the pleasure of wearing this costume at his birthday party:

And, last but not least, the top photo shows cute Stephanie in her hand-me-down butterfly costume which did not cost me one cent or one moment's effort. And I actually love the way the antennas stick straight out to the sides. I'm glad Halloween is over.