Random

Parker finished Harry Potter last night so we rented the movie today and watched it together. I still think it's pretty lame, but it was nice to watch a movie with him since movies are not his thing. After that he watched Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which he has also read.  I did not watch that with him. Ick.  He does seem excited to read the next one.

Taking the girls to see the Oakland Ballet Nutcracker tomorrow. They are also excited and each was reading a nutcracker book at bedtime tonight.  One of Miranda's christmas presents is her own nutcracker.

It's raining a lot here. A lot.

School is out for two weeks.  We are hanging around here then going to the snow with Amy and her family and then back here until school starts up again.  I was looking forward to it, but with these last two weeks being stuck home with sick kids, I might go crazy with two more.

Elizabeth read a book last week that had poems in it. She really liked one of them and copied it 23 times to give to all her classmates. It was called the rainbow and it took her about a week to do. When I asked her how it went giving them out, she said, "Good except some kids just threw them in the trash." And then she teared up. It was heart breaking. We talked about it for a while afterwards and discussed strategies to make sure the other kids knew what is was better next time she passes something out.

I played Parker at chess tonight and it was just pitiful. I told him that I need to have a computer help me play next time. He liked that idea.

I also played Elizabeth at checkers. I was winning for a while, but she started to get a little sad so I let her win and she was very happy hugging me afterwards, saying, "I'm sorry you lost mommy.  I'll let you win next time."

Miranda has been asking for alone time lately.  If she doesn't get to play in her room alone with her animals for a good 30 minutes to an hour each day, she gets very cranky.

I went to Michael's office party last night. Everyone seemed to know me, but I can't keep them all straight. Michael refers to them not by name, but by activities, "She's the one who just got married." "She's the one going to costa rica." "He's the one on performance review."  "She's the jehovah's witness."  So when I said, "Oh are you the one who wore the sex pistols shirt to the client meeting?" it wasn't the best, since Michael wasn't at the meeting and only heard about it from his partner.  Ooops.