Farewell Blue Knife

My new swiss army knife for my key chain finally arrived! I'm so excited!

 

Black with snowflakes? How could I resist even if it was a tiny bit more expensive? Snowflakes are "my thing." (My middle name means snow.)

This replaces the swiss army knife I had confiscated at the airport flying out of Salt Lake.  I had that old blue knife for something like 15 years.  I got it as a teenager and had it on my key chain ever since.  It is a testament to my obnoxious anal retentiveness that I managed not to lose it in all that time.  I took over 30 plane flights in that time, always remembering to either leave it at home or put it in my checked bags.  But I finally forgot.  I remembered to put it in my checked luggage for our flight out to Utah, but I accidentally left it in my purse after using it to mend all those wedding clothes at the ceremony.  When I got to security, they pulled the pocket knife out of my purse and politely offered that I could go buy a prepaid mailer in the nearby shop so I could mail it to myself.  I declined.  I had long ago lost the tweezers and the toothpick from that thing, and the plastic face was starting to chip off.

Little blue knife, you had a good run, but it was time for me to move on. Finally an excuse to get a new one!

 

To Most of the Country, It's Snow Big Deal...

But to us in the Austin area, less than an inch of snow a week ago meant no school and that M couldn't get to work until 2pm!

 

We had my best friend from college and her little family staying with us last week.  They are moving to the area next month (WOO HOO!) so they were here looking at housing.  And of course of all the weeks they come to Texas, it's the one with absurdly low temperatures and a day of snow!  We were scrambling to cover the orange tree out back and insulate our outdoor water spigots and I think they were laughing at us a little.  I felt better when they found out that it was below freezing back home in Tucson too and people there were having similar problems.  Their little boy is the same age as Kate, and he DID NOT like the cold.  It was simultaneously SO CUTE and SO PITIFUL watching how miserable he was when we went outside to show him the snow.

Kate, however, was a trooper:

What a week!  76 degrees on the Sunday before and then it didn't get above freezing starting Tuesday night and stretching until Friday.  Then this last Sunday is was back in the 70's again.  Wednesday of this week we had freezing rain.  Texas, I love you, but you're a little bipolar sometimes...

Chop

BEFORE:

 

THEN:

 (For your reference:  One of these squares on the bathroom floor is 9 inches wide.)

AFTER:

She LOVES it.  She's the one who's been begging for it.  And as for me?  I have twinges of sadness, but I'm not minding how easy it is to take care of too much either.

Smithsonian, Naturally

We arrived at M's parents' house in Virginia just outside D.C. late on the Sunday before Christmas.  We spent Monday just recovering and hanging out.  Then on Tuesday we decided to take advantage of some Smithsonian fabulousness.  Part #1 of the fun was riding the train:

I love the DC Metro.  The kids thought riding ANY train was pretty exciting.

 

Claire and Scott enjoying the view.

Poor Kate.  The view from her stroller wasn't so great:

We went to the Natural History Smithsonian.  And really the whole point of the visit was, of course, to see this:

 

 It was pretty much four year old boy heaven.

Although really, who could help but be impressed by this?

Let's not kid our selves.  Everyone thought it was pretty cool, not just Scott.

 

But only Scott was so excited he looked liked his eyes were going to pop out of his head from the effort of trying to take it all in at once.

It's also fun to go to a museum where your four year old is the most knowledgable member of the family on the subject.  He made a good tour guide.

Or at least he was very good at correcting us when we called fossils by the wrong name.

...and roaring.  He's VERY good at dinosaur roars.

We also got lucky because we went to the museum on a Tuesday, and it turns out the Butterfly Pavilion happens to be free on Tuesdays.  And not very crowded a couple days before Christmas.

 

Scott was the only one of the kids who was old/brave enough to hold the butterfly one of the docents put onto a paintbrush.

We had an absolutely fabulous time even though we only saw a small fraction of what was there.

You Could "Count" On How This Would Turn Out

Lately Claire has a problem with being scared.  I don't even know what of - it changes almost daily.  Just really spooked, especially when she's by herself, especially at night.  So needless to say, bedtime can be a little rough.

Tonight she didn't want to go into the bathroom by herself to brush her teeth.  M told her she needed to and they had the following "conversation":

C [yelling] - Rule number one:  I'm too scared.

M - Rule number zero:  You have to do it anyway.

C - Rule number negative one:  I can't.  I'm too scared.

M - Rule number negative infinity:  I don't care.

C - Rule number negative... infinity infinity infinity:  I don't care.

--------------------------------------------------------------

And for those of you who didn't get to see this on Facebook:

Claire's ultimatum the other night when we put her in time out: "If you do that, I'm going to tell you in my MOST STERNEST VOICE..."

(I don't know where she got this.  We don't say that phrase to her.  Those darn books she's always reading...)

Claire's screamed defense the next night when we put her in time out: "I have SCIENTIFIC REASONS why this is ALL SCOTT'S FAULT. It's because HE doesn't EAT ENOUGH and so he's TOO SKINNY!"

Bonus points if you can guess what Claire did that was supposedly Scott's fault for being too skinny!