Ok, so Kimberly is a much better headline writer than I am. Like for that chart of chores for Libby (see the March 30 post), I just would have titled that thing “Libby’s Chores.” But that just goes to show how creative Kimberly is when she calls it “Look What I Can Do” and puts rainbows and flowers all over it. Me: I would have just printed an excel spreadsheet with the days of the week and written a check mark when she completed a chore. I love having such a creative wife!

Now, I have some articles that caught my eye this week.

The first article is about how the world’s tallest man got married. Take a guess WHERE the world’s tallest man lives…I never would have guessed! I also love the picture.

The second article is an update on the Chicago Bears fan who was going to have his name legally changed to Peyton Manning. This is for our blog’s weekly sports section

Enjoy! Have a great day!

Keith

Happy birthday to Keith!!  Have a wonderful day sweetie!

Okay, I rarely post about cool new products, but my friend Darcy (the same one who does the handwriting fonts now) just put out the cutest little thing!!   —>Chore Charts<— If you have a kid who needs to do their chores (um, don’t we all?) this is so adorable!  I printed mine up on photo paper and had it laminated and now Libby can just cross things off with a wipe off marker each day and at the end of the week we wipe it off and start over!  Super simple and easy!

The chart is 8.5×11 and comes in both landscape and portrait versions with a bunch of cute stickers to use for the chores for each day.  Libby’s chores are pretty simple- brush teeth, make bed, get dressed, clean up toys, brush teeth again!  But it also works for older kids!  So cute!!

I’m going to work on one for Katie too!

Here’s a quick little scrap from today!  And now I have to go pack for the ladies retreat!

I went out to lunch today with my sister Emily & some friends.  It was fun to have girlie-chit-chat time.  We headed over to a scrapbook store where they did a shoebox swap of cards.   I set up shop and scrapped a page on the laptop while they stamped.

I’m heading to a ladies retreat this weekend…. and I made the most yummy cookies! Some of us ladies were baking cookies so they can have treats for us when we check in our hotel room, and I had a penchant for snickerdoodles.  Yum!  Can you say YUMMY!?!  Delicious!

We celebrated Keith’s birthday tonight with dinner at our fave Chinese spot- chicken in garlic sauce + curry noodles.  Yum!  And cheap!  That place is the best value- it is like $6-7 a meal and they serve it family style– so we order 2 dishes for the family and that is enough for our dinner for all 4 of us and lunch for both Keith and I the next day.  Can’t beat $15+tip for 2 meals!

Here’s another page I did last night when I was up until 2 a.m.  (Why do I do that to myself?)

Stuff to think about:

1. Libby’s teacher has an important MRI (she has lung cancer) tomorrow.

2.  Our friend Amanda’s brother has  an important MRI tomorrow as well (he has brain cancer).

3.   My SIL was in a car accident yesterday and thankfully she was not seriously injured but she’s got quite a bit of pain.

Thanks so much!  We appreciate your thoughts on our behalf.

Have a wonderful Thursday!

Ahhh, sunshine is just what the dr. ordered!  I have missed taking natural light pics, winter makes that a little harder!  But we had some juicy sunshine pouring in the windows this morning- perfection!   Here’s a couple- I’m sure these will find theirway onto pages soon!  These might be a little large, sorry!

Our wonderful thing this week: Keith turns old on Friday!  Oops, I mean, he turns 28!  28!?!?! When did we get so close to the big 3-0??  He’s a whopping 6 months older than me, so I get to tease him about being old & moldy for another 180 days!   Happy birthday babe!!

Being the lovely wife that I am, I’m going to a women’s retreat with our group this weekend!  It wasn’t the best timing with his birthday, but we will make sure to celebrate with some First Chinese BBQ tomorrow night!  Yum!

What’s something wonderful in your week?

Sorry I didn’t come back and post mine!  Our wireless router failed and I spent several hours with tech support getting that fixed.  But woohoo, we are online again!

In the midst of that, my sweet mom came on and said “Soooooooooo, what are your top 10 mom-isms?”  Hehe!  Love you mom!   We both agreed that “hmm, we’ll see” is a good one.   It works in lots of situations- you know, kid comes up and wants to go to the water park and it is 55 degrees out.  “Hmm, we’ll see.”  Just so much nicer than no, but really, it means no.  LOL.  I know I eventually figured out that if mom said “we’ll see” I had about a 1.1% chance of actually getting what I’d asked for.

I find myself using it more and more.  “Can we make cookies after dinner?”  “Hmm, good idea.  We’ll see!”  (i.e. please please please let her forget about that before dinner!)  “Can we go to the park EVERY day in China?” “Ohhh, that would be fun.  Hmm, we’ll see!”  (i.e. riiiiiiight, fat chance of that!)

Okay, now my cynical 8 a.m. nature is highly visible.    The girls and I are going to do some photos this morning.  Libby needs some TLC, I do believe!

Parenting in general is a humbling thing.

I mean, you read all these books by Susie-PerfectParent that promise you that if you do X, Y, and Z, you will have a perfect, obedient, and charming child. If you follow Susie’s rules, even strangers will compliment you on your child’s behavior.

And so you have kids. And you do lots of good stuff, but then you make lots of mistakes too. And you have a great kid, but they aren’t perfect. And all of those books leave you feeling like you must have gone wrong at some point. Because after all, Susie-PerfectParen said her kids were angelic at ALL times.

You know what? Susie-PerfectParent is a liar. There is no perfect kid. We’ve all got flawed kids- ya know why? Cause we’re a flawed people, a flawed humanity. There is no such thing as a perfect mom, a perfect dad, a perfect kid. It just ain’t real. And I am sick and tired of Susie-PerfectParent anyway. I bet her friends think she’s annoying. I know I do! And I’m just betting that she’s the only one who believes the myth that her kids are perfect anyway. Her friends probably point and laugh behind her back.

I’m sure you’re rolling your eyes by now. Sorry, just having a moment here! Libby’s a good kid, she really is. And I do not expect her to be perfect, andI know there will be days and moments where we struggle in this journey of parenting with each of our kids. I’m in that place right now. It’s not big stuff- but we’re dealing with disrespecting authority (her teacher, me) at school. It’s not mean or physical stuff, just disobedience and disrespect. And that’s going to happen sometimes. And I just have to block out that little Susie voice in my head telling me that it is because I did something wrong somewhere.

Anyway, for today’s top ten list…. what are the top 10 things your mom said that you swore you’d never say and you ended up saying anyway? I’ll come back later and post them…. leave me yours!

And here was my scrap-therapy for this afternoon….

So today, a friend was discussing this game…. basically there is a letter cut from a famous logo…. and you have to figure out what logo the letter comes from. Don’t click this link unless you want to spend a good hour playing the game! My sister and I were playing it all day together between doing different jobs around our houses.

Keith and I made our own version tonight using logos from TV shows. All of the TV shows are network (ABC/NBC/CBS/FOX) and all are prime time shows. A few are retired but most are still current.  The answer key is HERE.   DO NOT click until you really want to see the answers!

NOTE: This file is low-quality- click it to see it full size!

Have fun with that! It is good to keep our brains working! And it gets us talking to people, right? Gather round the office watercooler (or the um, refrigerator for the stay at home moms– you know, the sippy-cup-refill station) and work on it!

Feel free to share this on other sites, but please please please save the photo and re-upload it. My site can’t handle too much bandwidth stealing!

Also, for those who asked- yes I used to sell/create custom handwriting fonts (i.e. your handwriting as a font). I no longer do them because of time and the big move, but my friend Darcy does at Blue Flombingo (<–link). She’s fab at it! I do still make some fonts, but just for fun now- just uploading them to dafont.com when I finish them! They take a few weeks to post them though!

Have a great day!

So Keith and I have been reading tons of books lately on all sorts of fun topics related to China.  One thing we have shamefully realized is that our knowledge of the geography of China is pretty pitiful.  We know the basics, but neither of us can label a map with all of the provinces in the correct spots.  Somewhere between Gansu, Ningxia, and Jiangxi, our little brains get warbled.

So we are hereby announcing the Great Province-a-thon 2007.  We have printed blank maps and labelled them and then we made ourselves translate all of the meanings of the provinces.  The Chinese have some smart names for things– like Shandong is east of the mountain and Shanxi is west of the mountain.   Henan and Hebei provinces are north of the river and south of the river.  Doesn’t that make sense to label things that way?  Anyway, we’re going to study our little brains out this week and by next Saturday we want to be able to label that map with proficency!

We took a journalism class in college that was pure and utter torture at the time, but part of the class was that we had to label each and every country worldwide.  The problem was, of course, that mid-semester some of the countries disbanded and had new names so we had to relearn them, LOL!   While I was bitter at the time that I was getting up at 5 a.m. and heading to Waffle House to do last minute study sessions over all the countries in Africa… I’m thankful for the basic world geography it ingrained in our brains.

So hopefully we haven’t forgotten our mad-memorization skillz!  Check with us next Saturday– we should have our Guizhous crossed and our Anhuis dotted!     Next on our list is the Great Capital-a-thon 2007 where we have to also learn the capitals of all of the provinces– for this time I think the provinces should be enough!

I scrapped a page this morning before our group meeting.  I’ve been meaning to get Libby’s imaginary friends captured in a page…. that girl is hilarious with all of these little people she has invented.  I just never know who is coming over to play each day- Feersa, Seersa, Psalty, Michael & Jane (from Mary Poppins, of course), etc…

Oh, and font lovers- I will have a couple new fonts up at dafont.com (free) in the next week or so.  I never know when they update their site, but I’ll try to remember to post when they go up!  I posted that You are Loved font on there a few weeks ago and have already had 37,000 people download it.  Wow!  The handwriting font on the journaling on this page will be going up there in this batch.  It is Joyful Juliana, named for a sweet California friend of mine!

By Keith

One of the things I love about China is seeing signs translated into English. You just never know how the translation is going to turn out. So, today I’ve decided to post a couple of pictures. The first is a sign at a national park, and the second is “safety” instructions that I’m assuming were in a pack of batteries. Now, if I tried to write something in Chinese, I’m sure I wouldn’t even come close to making sense at all…so at least give the people translating credit for getting the meaning across.