Fleas on a dog

^^^^post title courtesy of Rhett's translation of  of the Christmas classic Feliz Navidad.

I know he's my kid, but man...he cracks me up sometimes.

Twas 2 days before Christmas...and who hasn't done any Christmas shopping yet? Me neither, but I still believe in Santa so I'm counting on him to take care of everything.

Just kidding!! There's a few last minute details to complete. Nothing like a trip(s)(s) to Target can't solve. It's ironic when the Target cashier says "Merry Christmas" like she's not going to see me 50 more times between now and then.

Anyway, thanks to Amazon Prime and a little (OK big) surprise up our elf sleeves we are almost ready. Just have to wrap. I feel like my Christmas IQ spiked a little this year because instead of recycling our Amazon boxes as they come I'm saving them to make wrapping a little easier. Kid's toys are the WORST to wrap with all the lumps and corners.

We've hit the part of the holidays where the amount of gifts we've threatened to take away is more than the amount actually under the tree. (Insert the holiday joke of whomever wrote Silent Night obviously didn't have children...har har har) Jake and I made a vague, pre kid having, illusionary promise that we wouldn't use this threat with our at the time future kids with calling Santa, but we have, we did, we will.

A few pictures of holiday festivities. In all their grainy glory.

Our library had Mrs. Claus come. She was both hilarious and charming. She called the boys and their friend Everett up to help with a magic trick. When I had to clarify Rad's name to the group she quipped "Oh. You're one of those Moms."

Touche Mrs. Claus. Touche.

A little selfie before our Secret Santa run. Rhett....was perturbed....every group of elves has a party pooper.

In a classy Christmas move I found a fake tree on the curb for free and put it in the boys room. It was cleaned with vacuums and baby wipes. Christmas magic is especially real for Rad this year and I love it.

Ominous Christmas cookies a la Rad.

We put the boys letters to Santa in the tree and the elves come and collect them at night. Oddly, it's one of my favorite traditions. Rhett's letter was very "Rhett." He dictated:

Dear Santa,

I would like a Batman castle and Ninja turtle house. I try to be good so I want a pretend pet tortoise but please make sure it is fake. Thank you.

Love, Rhett

Rad was not inclined to be in this picture.

Since we failed with a family Christmas card this year let's count this hasty post as one. More Christmas cheer to spread and enjoy.

One last thought for posterity and Christmases future.

Rhett: Ok you be the baby Jesus and I'm the Little Drummer Boy...now let's BATTLE.
Rad: CHARGE!!!

My kids. Deeply feeling the true meaning of the season.

Merry Christmas one and all!

Rhett and Rad chat

Puh-arking it real good at the park:

Rhett: I made new friend.
Julia: Yeah?
Rhett: He's over there.
Rhett: He thinks you're my grandma.
Julia:
Rhett: Probably because you have the short hair.

Unloading the groceries from the van:

Julia: Rhett can you come help me?
Rhett: Yep. (comes over to the trunk)
Rhett: So you need some muscle little lady?
Julia:
Rhett (flexes) 

Burning question from my 5 year old:

Rhett: Is Taylor Swift a real person?
Rhett: Or does she just live in the radio?

A fine Saturday evening at home:

Rhett: (comes out of the playroom sans pant)
Julia: Why don't you ever wear pants?
Rhett: They slow down my karate kicks.

Doing homework (Rhett) and coloring (Rad):

Rhett: Whoa Raddie!
Rhett: Your nose just made a bubble!! (snot bubble)
Rhett: Tell your nose good job.
Rad: Dood job nose.

A Sunday afternoon: 

Rhett: Dad... Dad...DAD!!
Jake: Wha? WHAT??
Rhett: You look really tired.
Jake: That's because I was asleep.
Rhett. Oh yeah. You're funny.

Overheard:

Rhett: Hey Beck. (super deep sigh)
Beck:
Rhett: Sometimes. Sometimes...I'm just too tired to deal with this family.
Beck:
Rhett: You know what I mean?

And from Rad, our budding linguist:

Julia: Rad it's time for nap!! (best time of the day)
Rad: No.
Julia:
Rad: So so sorry mom.

When learning new words meets inappropriate terms:

Rad: Wook! Shi****! (fishies)
Rad: Shi**** momma!!!

currently, conversations and confessions

 Heyyyyyyyyyy.

The holidaze are upon us and even though there is no snow on the palmy palms, We thought a blow up snowman for our front yard seemed like it would look natural on our front yawn. Yeeees. A legit blow up lawn decor item. Who'd have thought. Certainly not Jake, he wanted the blow up Minions on Santa's Train monstrosity but I'm not there yet, errr yeah ever.

At the end of last year I did a smorgasbord post of things that had slipped through the blogging cracks. Before the New Year is upon us type I wanted to dump a few such items here.  When our hard drive crashed we lost a decent amount that we now only have thanks to this here blog, so while nothing here might be epically interwebs worthy I'm clacking it out. Spirit fingers.

^^^Rad's under that bucket. (Self imposed bucket...not mother imposed) He was raised by a good time.

Here's a nice life event to start.

Deep introspective wisdom: Everyone is in charge of their own life until they have to potty train a child like Rad.

Rad (when naked) is fully potty trained. Which is super fantastic when being in your birthday suit is socially acceptable. It's less fantastic when any sort of undergarment leads to this...

Julia: Rad. Did you poop your pants?
Rad: NO.
Julia: You smell like you did.
Rad: NOPE.
Julia: Well then how did the poop get in your pants?
Rad: (lights up) Poop jump in dhere Mom!
Rad: Demonstrates with bounding jumps.
Julia:

And now that he does use the potty semi regularly Rhett finds it to be another way to show off his big brother dominance, because err-thing is a competition.

Rhett: Rad, my poop is bigger than that so I'm in charge.

I know it will happen before he goes to college. Because let's be honest, basic potty training is actually the easy part. Teaching your kids to not use an entire roll of toilet paper to wipe their butt is the hard part. #truedat

One more about Rad.

This is Breckie. She's adore-a-freaking-ble. And Rad loves her. LOVES her.

Cue the cute puppy love emojis. "Wheres" Breckie?" is the first burning question Rad has most mornings and any outing is interrupted with the same question until either we A. see Breckie the Beloved or B. He rephrases the question to spice it up "Why no see Breckie?" "Breckie where are you?"

Beck's spirit animal...cat. He tries to maul/attack my face at all times. But when I start to get frustrated with the slobber fest, he purrs and nuzzles me and it's so effective! I feel like I'm in an abusive relationship with a cat.

Also note worthy! >>>>> New unassisted sitting record: 2 proud minutes and 43 seconds and suddenly turkey-lurkey's got a new lease on life.

The moment you realize your offsprings talents might not be the kind that get you on America's Got Talent. #tigermom

Also...our new parenting philosophy with Rhett: Let him sleep, for when he wakes, he will eat all the food. Must be a growth spurt. One that our budget anticipates will last till he's 18.

He came home from school the other week asking for a wallet. When I asked why he told me it was to go with the bling ring he had gotten from the classroom kindergarten. A wallet/ring combo would mean that Rhett and his girlfriend N could tie the knot.

Some of Rhett's thoughts on marriage and love:

Rhett: Sometimes girls like me.
Julia: That's true. Because you're nice to them and polite and funny.
Rhett: AND because I play the game.
Julia: What game? (worry worry worry)
Rhett: The game where I let them hug me.
Julia: (worry worry worry)

Rhett: When I have my wallet then we can get married.
Julia:
Rhett: But I'm not sure what we do after that.

Rhett: Can I always live with you and dad even when I get married?
Julia: Well don't you want your own house?
Rhett: No. We can just live with you.

Last week we had a bond fire in our fire pit to burn our TV console, one of our very first DIY porjects ever and it was literally falling apart. It was a purging cleanse watching it turn to ashes.

Post fire, as we were cleaning up someone left the porch door open and this little bird joined the family. 

It went nothing like this

 or this.

Shocking I know.

Rad was FREAKING out in terror, but was still intensely drawn to the drama. He would run back and forth down the upstairs hall until he essentially sedated himself by putting a blanket over his head and peeped out every few minutes.

Rhett was both manically laughing at every move the bird made and kept announcing in a baby voice that it was the "cutest bird he had ever seen". He also kept trying to tell us that of all the adults present (2) that he was the real animal expert and that if we would just let him try and catch the bird, it would be a "piece of cake". Yeah.

Our feathered friend was caught by Jake and released hopefully no worse for wear. I can imagine him flying back to his family with tales of his experience. I'm sure he painted us to be much like Honey Boo Boo's family because that's pretty much how our behavior ranked during this incident.

My little sister is super pregnant at this point with her first baby (A BOY!!) and so my mom and I headed her way for her baby shower a few weeks ago.

Jane is a hair curling guru. It's her calling in life. I'm standing strong for all those who haven't found their place in the curl world. Stick straight locks 4life.

Basically it was a magical weekend of sleep and magical food consuption and me wishing I had chased my goal of going to Law School. (Or being a plastic surgeon. I like to imagine had I gone the plastic surgery route I might have gotten a reality show with great parallels to the Mindy Project. I would be very Mindy-esq obvs.)

My brother in law is in Law School (Hi Andrew!) and so I got to pretend I was a student and walk the grounds.

My Elle Woods moment. I'm even using legal jargon in my everyday life now.

Julia: Rad did poop 3 times this morning?
Rad: Sure.
Julia: I object!

Rhett: Can I get a new toy today?
Julia: The juries out on that one.

Beck: Screech!
Julia: Order! Order! I said order!

Nightly traditions. The reading of books, not the Fritos Rhett is eating. We haven't quite fallen into Fritos for Dinners as being a full fledge tradition.

^^^Beckett is to Jake, as Jake is to Beckett.

Jake told me the other day if I was one of the seven dwarfs I would be Snarky.

I told him he would be Chubby.

He said. "Yep. Definitely Snarky."

Touche.

Aaaand that's all she wrote.

the time we hiked the mountain

This last week was weird. All the kids had this strange cough, pink eye, stomach bug that lasted 48 hours and came with zero other symptoms. And they just went down like flies, one by one... every new day came with a new person saying "I feel great!" and another new victim saying "Blerggggh." Much time spent caring for tummies and eyes, and no time spent tending to the internets. By Saturday morning everyone was back to normal just in time for weekending and a little smidgen of this.

With the weather (why is she always talking about the weather?) has been on fleek lately (Sorry, I had to use that word before 2016 ruled it as dumb as it is) so we've been taking some nature strolls.

Normally we just do the dirt trail circuit behind our neighborhood. It's enough high adventure for the wild ones, but not too much for old mom.

But on Saturday while Jake was in the middle of the Great DIY Tile Extravaganza part 2, I got the bright idea to take all three of the boys on a legit mountain hike (sans stroller) by myself.

"All gluttons for punishment please raise your hand." 

The first 1/4 mile of the trail wound through the forest floor and I snapped a million pics of my cute little hikers.

We started to climb a bit and I figured we would climb a little here and there so, no big deal. A nice nature walk.

Only it became more like a nature run and scream, followed by a nature whine until 2/3s of our future Eagle Scouts of America needed to be carried.

Up a gravely hill no less. I like to think of myself as the family clydesdale at time like this. Do you think I was in prime shape to handle this? You bet your tush I was absolutely not. But Rhett was frolicking like the mountain goat that he is. Rad tried to frolic too, but fell and skinned his knee. I wasn't worried about any wild critters coming after our injured party; Rad's screams made sure no one wanted to be in our vicinity. 

Making it to the top of a peak (not the whole mountain) was a sweeter experience than I anticipated with the boys. I watched Rad grab Rhett's hand so that he could get an "energy boost" from him (eye-roll of cuteness). I watched Rhett encourage his battle wounded brother when he cried- "You can do it, Rad! Isn't this a fun hike?" Going into such outings I often overlook the bonding that is created. In my mind I'm just feeling desperate for them to burn some energy and not fight me on watching Diego all day and I don't encourage the family bonding aspect. Something to work on in the new year for sure.

We made it back and got a rousing cheer from some seasoned hikers who we were pretending to imitate. At the van, a desperate search for the car keys lead to the realization that they had become part of the desert landscape.

Of course.

We back tracked a little, prayed a little, almost lost super helpful Rhett who sneakily took advantage of my semi panic and wandered off the trail to "find the keys",  and couldn't find em so I moved on to plan B, call Jake with my best "I'm about to lose it" diatribe and have him come rescue his beloved family.

I should dedicate a post to pictures of Rhett helping Beck cheese. A plenty we have for sure. 

Still uh-alive.

And we may have lost a set of keys, but Rad made sure not to lose his beloved 2in tiny sword he adores.

Priorities and yada yada yada.