Dennie Kids: November 24, 2010

Highlights from today: (click here for pictures)

• During Mom’s shower this morning everything seemed quite, until Anderson came with a panicked face and said Campbell is eating Reagan’s necklace and he couldn’t get it out of her mouth.  Mom jumped out, dripping wet and high tailed it to Reagan’s room.  By then, Reagan was wailing, Graham was pacing and Campbell was sitting happily surrounded by beads from Reagan’s bracelet. 
• Mom did a mouth check but didn’t see any and by now the shampoo in Mom’s hair had run to her eyes, so she had to grab Campbell and run back to the shower to rinse her stinging eyes.  Reagan had said that the bracelet was her favorite and she begged Mom to take her back to the dentist so they could give her another one
• We had a very busy pre-holiday day.  We made chocolate chip muffins for breakfast.  Everyone had a turn doing something and as we waited for them to cook, we reviewed our Bible verses, read a story or two and worked on some worksheets.  Campbell didn’t like sitting at the table without eating so she had to have some cheerios while she waited.
• As everyone devoured the muffins, Mom double checked the weather and loaded up the car for out Thanksgiving trip to the zoo.  Since it was pretty warm today, we thought we would go to the zoo.  The animals were out but so were the leaves-Mom said they needed a leaf blower at the zoo for Christmas
• Campbell loved the fish-she became irate when Mom rolled the stroller away.  The two highlights for Mom was when Reagan was watching the roosters and Anderson walked behind her and then cock-a-doodle-dooed and she jumped 10 feet high.  The next highlight was when Reagan was walking in the bat area and she moved the curtain, when she did she squealed and Anderson who was following close behind her, ran out as fast as he could. 
• Graham, who wore his hat the entire time, told Mom as we were leaving that “me no saw penguins, me no didn’t”  Mom tried to explain that they were still working on their house and he seemed to understand.  But as we left the gift shop, there was a 3 foot stuffed penguin.  He hugged it and exclaimed “here they is!”- his trip to the zoo was now complete
• We picked Dad up for lunch and then went to McDonalds.  The kids played on the slides and then we had to drop Dad back off at work.  Our ornaments were ready at the pottery place and Reagan had begged Mom to take her to pick them up.  Mom didn’t really want to take all 4 kids to run in and out but she decided to anyway.  She didn’t realize that parking would be a nightmare since the pottery place was in the same shopping center as a turkey place and zillions of people were picking up their holiday turkeys! 
• After finally finding a place to park, putting Campbell in the stroller and getting everyone out, we made it inside the pottery place-in the rain no less!  We told them our name and they handed us our stuff and just like that we were done.  Mom was afraid that Reagan would be disappointed so she opened up the ornaments to show her while they were still in the store.  They were all very pleased with their ornaments!
• Afternoon naps and then Dad came home early.  Reagan and Anderson even played a few games on Mom’s computer.  Finally, Mom and Dad decided to go out to eat.  We ended up at Macaroni Grill and the kids used their semi-best behavior.  Of course, bread, crayons and lots of coke helped quite a bit!
• This evening, Dad pulled Anderson’s birthday invitations out of his bag and Mom showed them to Anderson.  As she read the invitations to him, he got up and hugged Dad while saying “you are the best Dad in the world”