Anderson's gonna be a great cop

Caroline:  Dad!  Anderson hit me!
Me:  Anderson, what happened?
Anderson:  We were just having a conversation.

Walker had good results from his most recent x-ray so he went back to school today to get his cast signed by all his friends, though there's little room left now that all his extended family has been by to see and sign him.  I signed on the part covering his bicep.  I told him I did it so he could make a muscle when he showed the girls where I signed, then I demonstrated what I meant.
Walker:  Whoa, Dad!  Can I feel your muscles?
Me (head swelling a little):  Sure buddy.
Walker, feeling said muscle:  Wow, Uncle Bob's muscles are way bigger than yours!
Me (head returning to normal size but feeling the need to defend myself):  Uh, I don't know, we're probably pretty close to the same.
Walker:  Yeah, well, that guy you're always looking up on the internet still has bigger muscles than you.
Embarrassing, especially if taken out of context, but I had to give him that one.

Oh, wow, 200th post.

Walker's arm

OK, so Walker broke his arm on Thursday morning in gym class by running into the wall during a race.  He broke both bones just above the wrist.  Carla took him to the ER and I met them there at about noon.  He was obviously in a lot of pain but he held it together pretty well for the nurses and stuff.  The ER doc ordered some morphine for him which got him feeling better pretty quick.  It also made him drift in and out of sleep a few times so that was good.  It was probably about 3 by the time the doctor had looked at the x-rays, gave us a scrip for what was basically children's Vicodin, and told us to follow up with an orthopedic doctor.  They had put his arm in a splint by then but it was far from good to go.  Fortunately we were able to follow up almost immediately and Walker was in "surgery" by 6.  They called it surgery because he was in the O.R. under anesthesia, but they didn't have to cut him open or anything (although the doc was afraid he'd have to put in a pin).  Walker woke up pretty slow but that was expected... it was after his bed time.  All in all, it went really well for what it could have been and we were home by about 9:30.  The main thing Walker complained about was actually being hungry.  He hadn't eaten since breakfast and he was starving but we wouldn't let him eat because we were thinking he might have to have anesthesia later.  That also meant that Carla and I didn't eat until he went into the O.R.  I ran down to the cafe and got us huge dinners to enjoy while we worried about our little guy.  Before we left the hospital, the nurse told us to give Walker crackers and chicken broth so he wouldn't get sick from the anesthesia.  Instead of all that he ate a double cheeseburger, chicken nuggets, and french fries.  Hey, he earned it, and he did not get sick.  He's doing well now, mainly resting up and watching football.

Carla asked Caroline to ask me to make her a protein shake before church on Sunday.
Caroline:  Will you make mommy a . . . bucka-chuck?
Carla:  No, say, will you make mommy a protein shake?
Caroline:  Will you make mommy a . . . purple shirt?

Caroline, to Carla, after I apparently refused to give her milk:  I want milk.  Daddy telled me no.  You don't say no to me.  You're a bad girl though.  Don't say no to me.  Mommy, I want you to go away.

Tonight I asked her if she wanted to sleep with her bunny, Lilly.  She said, "No, Wiwwee's bad.  She bit me on the leg."  I think she might have had a dream that she got attacked by her bunny.  Maybe she had just watched a horrendously unfunny British "comedy".

I was reading the kids stories from the epic novel Mainly Stuff the Kids Say tonight before bed and they were all telling me what their favorite parts were before prayers. Anderson continued to do so during prayers, so I told him he had to pray because he was interrupting.
Anderson:  Dear Jesus, My favorite part was when I said . . .

The hockey game

I took Walker and Anderson to the Monsters game last night as one of their Christmas presents.  On the way up I asked Anderson if he knew how hockey was played.  He said, "Yeah, you just skate around, and try to get the hockey pickle in the goal."

We had pretty good seats, right by where the Zamboni machines come out, and each of the boys got to take home a puck that the team had used during warm-ups, so that was cool.  Anderson got to give the mascot five a couple of times, too.  Also we got to see one of the Monsters get a hat trick (I think his name was Ogdnezwoloski or something) and the Monsters won, 6-5, in overtime, so pretty good night.  No really good fights, though.  Actually, I'm just making fun of Hockey names.  His real name is Jessiman.  Though their goalie's name is Desjardins.  Now Anderson wants to be a hockey player, which I think would be pretty cool but very expensive, especially with the dental bills and all.

Me:  Caroline, do you like Christmas?
Caroline:  Yeah.
Me:  Do you like singing Christmas songs?
Caroline:  Yeah.
Me:  Do you like getting presents?
Caroline:  Yeah.
Me:  Do you like Santa Claus?
Caroline:  NO!

I asked her where she thought Santa was and she said, "Santa Claus is at the workin' shoppin'."

Favorite presents from this year:
Walker - Sports Illustrated for Kids subscription
Ellie - Art case
Anderson - A mail box
Caroline - A sweeper
Parents - a mini-trip to Chicago and Mainly Stuff the Kids Say, hardback.  Pretty cool, now we can consider ourselves published authors (yeah, that's a stretch). 

Mostly Caroline's latest

Anderson:  Broccoli?  What's broccoli?  OH, Broccoligreentrees!

Caroline's current understanding of winter:
There are socks on our fireplace.
She loves "snow boats" (snow globes)
The first thing she said to me the other morning when she woke up:  My eyes are cold.

Also, she brought me some gloves and said, "Dad, here's your lady bugs!"
Me:  Thanks, they're called gloves.
Caroline:  OK, glumps.

File under miscellaneous:

• 1 - the most goats I've ever seen in the back of an Oldsmobile Silhouette.
• Political correctness displaces intelligence.  I heard on the radio the other day that a car dealership is giving away a free "Holiday Ham" with a test drive.  You know, so as to not alienate their Muslim and Jewish customers.
• That reminds me:  We went to a Mexican restaurant for lunch yesterday and they had a Christmas tree in the waiting area.  I said to a co-worker, "A Christmas tree?  They're Mexican."  He bit.

Name That Food

Okay, here we go.  See if you can guess the foods, as Caroline says them:
1. Wugoo
2. Chewie
3. Ochie
4. Betchoo
5. Mo
6. Choooo
7. Cheeee
8. Cukoo

Also, in case we haven't documented this yet, her names for her siblings are:
"Day" - Walker
"Baby" - Ellie
"Bye" - Anderson
Don't ask us why, we don't know.

A few new memories

You know how sometimes you're holding one of your kids and then you put it down and forget you were holding it and a little while later you're like "why is there poop on my arm?"

Recounting vacation before a cup of coffee:
So we just got back from as much of a vacation as you can take with a 7, 5, 3, and 1 year old.  Ellie asked me 9 times in 2 hours if we were almost there and said "this is the second most bored I've ever been in my whole life".  We spent Sunday and Monday nights at Great Wolf Lodge, which is a nice place to go if you don't care if your kids get stolen or drown in recycled bathtub water.  There's plenty of room on the floor for kids to puke, and your admission comes with a you'll-see-at-least-14-fat-people's-butt-cracks-or-your-money-back guarantee.  Tuesday, we went to Kelley's Island and got ice cream, played putt putt, and ate dinner (you know, things that we couldn't have possibly done save for the fact that we spent $70 to be surrounded by seagulls and polluted water).  And Wednesday, we spent 6 hours walking around in the sun from one giant animal toilet to the next, listening to and reading left-wing propaganda about deforestation and poaching kangaroos.  Walker hated it, Ellie loved it, Anderson tolerated it, and Caroline basically stared at people's butts all day, I guess.  We topped all that off with an Indians game, where Caroline got a cup of beer spilled on her right before she peed all over Carla, where Anderson kept kicking the guy in front of us until he left, where Ellie sat and colored and asked who we were playing in the 4th inning, where I fought off a migraine, and where a fat guy sat beside/on me the whole time.

Recounting vacation after a cup of coffee:
So we left Sunday morning for vacation, stopping at Cracker Barrel on the way (that's right, vacation from Jesus, too).  We all ate 'till we were stuffed full of eggs, french toast, bacon, sausage, biscuits, and greeits, then we headed out to Great Wolf Lodge, where we spent Sunday and Monday nights.  That place is really nice for little kids.  There are a bunch of giant, twisty water slides that almost everyone can go on, even Anderson.  He loved them, by the way, even the pitch-black tunnel ones.  There's a swimming pool/basketball court, a water/tree house thing, a baby pool with a couple of "weesides" for Gracie, a boring lazy river, and a "warmtub" that whole families are allowed to use.  There's story time for the kids every night in front of an animatronic forest thing (which Walker hated, Ellie loved, Anderson tolerated, and Caroline slept through, I think), and there's a pretty good (but expensive) breakfast buffet, where the wait staff just keeps bringing you food.  There's also an arcade area where we earned enough tickets (122) for a few handfuls of tootsie rolls.  We were only 16,878 tickets away from earning a Wii. 

Tuesday, we took the Jet Express, which the kids really enjoyed, from Sandusky to Kelley's Island.  Ellie especially liked it when we sat outside on the top deck so she could "see the views".  We rented a golf cart on the island, which was really nice.  Carla rode on the back with Walker, Anderson, and Caroline for the grand tour.  All three of those kids fell asleep on top of Carla while Ellie stayed wide eyed up front with me.  We visited the glacial grooves, which we decided Curious George would have loved because it looked like a giant bowling alley.  Then we played putt putt and went to dinner at the Kelley's Island brewery where we got great local perch and great local beer.  We made it back just in time to catch the Jet express back to the mainland and then drive to Cleveland.

Wednesday, we went to the Cleveland zoo and walked pretty much the whole thing.  We were there for a long time and saw just about everything.  Walker was the only one who really had a rough time.  He's not terribly interested in animals so he mainly complained about walking.  Ellie, on the other hand, could have run from one exhibit to the other for another couple hours.  She loved seeing all the different animals.  Finally, we went to the Tribe game, where we saw them crush the Tigers, where Jason Kipnis went 5-for-5 with a home run, where we got ice cream, saw Slider like 2 rows away from us, got to watch the car shoot T-shirts our way, and even got Gracie a cute little Indians cheer-leader outfit ('cause she peed all over Carla).  Best of all, I'll be the only one who remembers the horrible traffic/construction on the way home.

The moral of the story - Coffee makes everything better.

Anderson's latest (plus a bonus interpretation guide)

Anderson:  Mommy, there's a spider on the wall.
Carla:  No, that's just a fly.
Anderson:  Oh, is it gonna put it's lights on?
Carla:  No, flies don't have lights.
Anderson: Well, what about that one that's shaped like a cucumber?
Carla:  I'm not sure what that is, Anderson.
Anderson:  It's a night bee.
It was a fire fly.

Walker, playing Wii baseball:  Dad, I just got a grand slam!
Anderson:  And he got a home run, too!  I heard about that!

Anderson, riding in the car with Carla, put a green beaded necklace across his lap.
Anderson:  I put my safety on.  It's green?
Carla, not looking:  What?
Anderson:  I interviewed it on my list.
Carla:  What?
Anderson:  I X'd it up.
We still don't know exactly what he meant, especially about the interview.

Bonus Section:  Interpretation guide

If Anderson tells you that you look skinny he really means that you have too much skin showing somewhere on your body.

For example, If you were walking around the house in your underwear, he might say, "Mom you look skinny" because you have too much leg skin showing. 
                                                      OR
If you just shaved, he might come up to you, grab your face, rub it, and say, "Dad you look really skinny today."

So 2011, welcome to the new "skinny."