Scenes from Thanksgiving

Erin already did a great job posting about our Thanksgiving together at our parents' house in Dallas (here and here).  Here are just a few photos of the shenanigans that she skipped over.

Scooby and Scrappy Doo, cruisin' the driveway.

Look!  A monkey escaped from the zoo!

Why are pool noodles so much fun outside the pool?

A local motorcycle gang invaded Monticello Estates and wreaked havoc.

We taught Peter how to levitate.

Whew.  Andrew corralled the escaped monkeys back in their cage.

Charlotte liked to use Uncle Andrew as a chair.

The kids bellied up to the bar for all their meals.  It was awfully nice to eat at a completely separate table and not have to see the carnage up close.

We got parboiled in the hot tub.

It makes me smile to see Sonia wearing Charlotte's old shoes and jacket.

Erin does a mean elephant impression.

Charlotte hasn't seen a landline telephone in years, and apparently she thought this was what I meant when I told her tales of such archaic tools.

The kids were enamored with the little lettered tiles from the Scrabble game.

Charlotte helped me cheat (if you consider giving me the tip to "make a word using this letter, Mommy!" as cheating).

I won that game by the skin of my teeth, thanks to the insightful assistance of my illiterate daughter.

Snow bunny or artist? You decide!

Charlie Jo was helping me excavate the bin we use to store our winter accessories (like mittens and hats) and she pulled out Corey's old (and I do mean OLD) ski goggles that he hadn't worn in a good decade.  In my quest to put my children in as many goofy situations as possible (AND take pictures of it so they can curse me later), I couldn't pass up a chance to document this discovery.  She thought it was hilarious and wore the goggles happily for a few minutes before abandoning them for some other more interesting item.

Second random shot -- a Charlie Jo original.  For some reason, she is usually not interested in drawing anything but scribbles.  She is always demanding that I draw something or other for her (perhaps indicating she has a future in arts patronage?) instead of attempting to draw it herself.  When I found her drawing this little dude the other day, I was both tickled and surprised.  She evaded answering any questions about the artistic process or end product, but she did seem pleased that I hung him on the fridge.

All aboard!

We needed an outing on Saturday morning because Corey planned to work all day at the office.  I asked the kids if they wanted to go see a steam engine and they tried to climb in the Big Red Van before I could even get them dressed.  We sped up the road to Nashville's Centennial Park to see this big guy:

Both kids had to wear their engineer hats that Grandpa Spike got them.

Peter kept offering the train little handfuls of rocks and saying "here go, choo choo!"  He also said "all 'BOARD!" about 400 times.

This thing is seriously massive.  It was part of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St. Louis Railway.

"Here go, choo choo!"

There's also a plane from the Tennessee Air Guard on display.  Peter also loves to say "PAIN!!" (translation: "plane") a lot, so this was a big treat for him to see.  Charlotte wanted to know why it was on a big stick.

Alas, the plane didn't hold their attention so it was back to the engine.

My little choo choo ragamuffins.

There was a bunch of birds with a nest somewhere on top of the engine or something, because we heard lots of loud squawks every time we got near the train.  Somebody wasn't happy that we were encroaching on her territory.

Whoah.  That's one big choo choo.

After our visit to the park, we brought lunch to Corey at work.  We ate in the lunch room, which the kids thought was the coolest thing ever.

No trip to Daddy's office would be complete without playtime with Daddy's little cars.

Peter wasn't happy until we had inspected each and every car.

We had to wake Peter up after he napped for nearly three and a half hours.  It really wears a guy out to visit a choo choo AND Daddy's office all in one morning.

Peter's Top Ten

These are the top ten cutest things to hear Peter say:

10.  "RICE!" (translation: "SURPRISE!") -- Alicia and I heard him saying "RICE" over and over at us yesterday evening, and it took us a while to realize he was saying it after hiding briefly behind a curtain.  Today, he has been running up to me with pieces of paper bearing his artistic scribbles and presenting them to me while yelling "RICE!"

9.  "Joo" (translation: any liquid to be consumed) -- I suppose he always heard Charlotte referring to her sippy cup as "juice", and decided that "joo" must mean something that you drink.  He spits out juice whenever he tastes it and he vastly prefers drinking plain old water, but he still calls it "joo".

8.  "M'ow" (pronounced like a mashup of the two syllables of meow; translation: "meow" or "cat") -- Peter has a love/hate relationship with the cats.  In other words, he loves them and they hate him.  Peter's great love is to lie down on something soft and squishy (like his pillow pet bubba), and he figures cats fall into the acceptable squashing category.  The cats disagree.  Peter also thinks it is HILARIOUS to poke at Pacey when Pacey is up on his pillow (barely within Peter's reach if he stands on the rocking chair in our room) and for Pacey to hiss and smack at him.  Pacey disagrees.  Peter's idea of a good time is to try to drag Rocky around by his gorgeously fluffy tail.  Rocky sincerely disagrees.

7.  "Ree, GO!" (translation: "ready, set, go!") -- This one is made even more hysterical when accompanied by the visual of his stubby little legs pumping as fast as he can make them go as he races away.

6.  "FWEEEEEEEEEE!" (translation: an elephant's trumpeting sound) -- This was one of his very first animal noises, and he does a pretty darn good job making the sound while pretending his arm is a trunk.  Okay, so this isn't really a word, but he also uses it as a noun to refer to elephants.

5.  "Nonnie foo foo" (translation: "Connie dog") -- All dogs are "foo foo" to Peter.  That's also the sound he makes when you ask him what a dog says.  It's funny how Peter can say a hard "c" sound when he refers to his beloved "car-cars", but he says "Connie" as "Nonnie".

4.  "Wa' show" (translation: "watch show") -- Unfortunately, Peter watched much more TV much earlier than Charlie Jo.  He gets into crazy scary tantrums sometimes when the only thing that will calm him down is to watch a show.  These tantrums can't be soothed by cuddles, food, music, books, stuffed animals, time, or any other techniques that I have ever tried.  And believe me, I have tried it all.  He still absolutely adores books and his favorite time of day is cuddling story time before nap and bedtime, but the TV is sometimes the only magic trick to snap him out of a rage.

3.  "Rea' book" (translation: "read book") -- He's starting to learn how to weasel one more book out of me before I kiss him good night.  I spent so many months worrying about his speech delay that I can't help but obey a sweet request for another book.  He's such a dream to put down for naptime and bedtime (much easier than Charlie Jo, so Corey and I always sigh with relief when it is our turn with Peter at bedtime) that I haven't refused this request yet.  The books he likes are all pretty darn short, anyway.

2.  "Chah-yee" (translation: "Charlie/Charlotte") -- He says it probably 400 times a day, and I never get sick of hearing it.  It's especially cute when he says "'mon Chah-yee" ("come on, Charlie") and then motions for her to follow.

1.  "PEE-yoh" (translation: "Peter") -- He says it so fast it almost sounds like one syllable.  He love love loves to assign ownership to darn near everything, so it's common to find him pointing to the kids' sippy cups and saying "Chah-yee joo.  Pee-yoh joo.  Chah-yee joo.  Pee-yoh joo."

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Honorable mentions: "Wee-wee" (LiLi, aka Alicia), "Fay-fee" (Faithy, aka Faith Carol), "Babbee" (Abbey), "Beeee" (NanaB), "Ga'dah" (GrandDad), "Sho-nah" (Sonia), and today's newest word, "Shah-shun" (Madison).

Okay, so pretty much any words out of that child's mouth are enough to make me melt.  His speech has been later and slower in developing than his big sister's was, so I savor every semi-intelligible word he utters.  I know I will yearn for the wordless days sometime soon, but for now I'm enjoying the chatter.

Stringers at UT

This past weekend, Niki, Charlotte, Peter, and I traveled to Knoxville to stay with some friends of ours for a weekend.  The highlight for the weekend was attending the UT/MTSU game in Neyland Stadium.

On the way to the game, we walked past the SunSphere - the centerpiece for the 1982 World's Fair.

Here is the business school at UT.

 The band takes the field.  This stadium is HUGE!

Kay and Niki.

 The football team takes the field.

MTSU brought their band.  They had a great sound, but they never marched.

UT won, 24-0.  Niki and I after the game.

Lloyd and I.

Charlotte's Adventure in the Cobb Creek Woods

Okay, these pictures go back a few weeks.  After Charlotte went to her first cider mill, NanaB and GrandDad took her on an adventure in the woods, where she found four little pumpkins.

 

On her way into the woods . . .

up the hill . . .

and around the bend.

NanaB and GrandDad have been keeping up the adventure path.

GrandDad and his adventure path.

Charlotte finds the last pumpkin!

And off she goes back home.

Later on in the afternoon, she found this little berry.

NanaB and GrandDad.

On Saturday, Charlie made this picture and told NanaB a story while making it.  

Tea parties were a hit all weekend.

See anyone familiar?

Charlotte has a subscription to a bi-monthly magazine called "Turtle" (a gift from NanaB and GrandDad that she adores).  Each issue has a two-page spread called "Turtle's Pet Show" that features photos of readers with their animals.  When we got the most recent issue, we were all hanging out in Peter's room while Charlotte flipped through the magazine.  She suddenly said, "hey -- there's me, Mommy!"  I looked over her shoulder, and sure enough there she was in all her ballerina glory holding Rocky on the day he came to live with us at 5 weeks old.  (Click on the photo to make it larger.)

I couldn't stop giggling.  Even though I had uploaded the photo to the magazine's website a few months ago, I had forgotten about it and never really thought the photo would get in there anyway.  We Skyped with NanaB and GrandDad to show them and they were as tickled as we were.  Charlotte really wasn't exceptionally impressed.  After all, she has grown up with seeing herself plastered on the fridge, the walls, the internet, in photo albums, in those self-published photo books, etc.  This was just another piece of evidence to support her conclusion that the world revolves around Charlotte JoAnn Stringer.