Yesterday our 6 year old made a major decision. She came home and told mom that she wanted to try hot lunch today.
So, this morning, for the first time ever Megan didn’t take a lunch to school. Instead she had a snack and $2.25.
She was brave and she tried something new… very un-McLane if you ask me. And she loved it. She ate some sort of chicken thing and peaches. She came home and told Kristen all about it. Then when I came home she told me all about it. So, we’ll try it again tomorrow.
Both of our children take after me with their dramatic abilities. While I do my best to limit my dramatic presentations to the stage, the kids stage is their life.
Here are 2 quick examples of Paul’s acting abilities from the past 36 hours.
Of course, Megan is an equally good actress. I’ll have to remember to document her roles. She has an amazing ability to turn the tears on and off on a moments notice.
The day after Christmas I went to my local GameStop to buy a video game. I was itching to buy Madden 2008 and was really disappointed that they didn’t have it in stock.
I asked the clerk, “Of the games you have in stock, which is the best?” The clerk looked at me and said, “You want Mario Galaxy, it’s the best game for the Wii, period.”
It was the “period” that he said that was connected to my credit card. I bought it and brought it home.
Within 10 minutes my kids were hooked. Not only is it a fun game to play with loads of levels and a 3 dimensional world of play, it’s also easy for kids to play as player 2. Get this, the main player controls where Mario goes with the Wii remote and nunchuck accessory. But with the second Wii remote a second player can help Mario pick things up. Best yet, the second player can help you but not hurt you. The result is that Megan (6) and Paul (4) feel like they are playing the game… and they really are helping! It’s brilliant.
On top of that cool feature, the game is a blast to play. For anyone like me who grew up with Super Mario Brothers (OK, I played Donkey Kong too) this is a throwback experience on steroids.
If you’ve got a Wii, you need to look into Mario Galaxy. It’s the best game for the Wii.
Megan was bouncing around (literally) after church in the foyer. What can I say, she is a bundle of energy… hopping all over.
She was messing around in the resource center while I was talking to people and hopped while under the counter, resulting in a major “thud” quickly followed by a howling cry. She did pretty good to not make a major scene and mom did her best impression of a nurse.
She is fine. She has a major headache and a nice bandage on her forehead. Hopefully this was a lesson learned. And hopefully the bruising will go down before she goes back to school on Thursday.
Classic stuff here. My kids are gun shy about pictures, but this captures the “Adam” in all of them. Way to go Autumn for leading the way.
Without sounding overly dramatic, K Mart saved our Christmas day. After the service last night I took a gander at our food situation. Let’s just say the cupboards were bare and the day had been so insane that we hadn’t had the chance to get groceries.
A quick search on Google maps determined that every grocery store in our area closed at 7:00 PM. Unphased by that reality and in search of anything that could be assembled into a Christmas dinner I started driving around.
If you’ve never had to shop on Christmas eve, plan on doing it in 2008. It’s a trip. A lot of gas stations are closed. Any type of grocery store is closed. Most pharmacies are closed. Specialty stores are closed. Pretty much everything closes on Christmas eve at 7:00 PM. (I know, I checked!) Wal*Mart. Miejer. Kroger. Vince & Joes. Sheenah’s. Everything.
So this left me with two choices. Liquor stores or KMart. Every liquor store in Michigan was open late last night… but I figured that my hopes of getting mashed potatoes, ham, and other items for a Christmas dinner were slightly better at KMart. (Serving the kids Slim Jim’s and Molson Ice for Christmas seemed a little like child abuse. I wasn’t quite that desperate… yet.) So I pulled into the KMart parking lot at 23 & Van Dyke at 8:45 PM.
The place was packed!
And it was filled with tons of people just like me. Did you know that KMart has a grocery section? They don’t have much of one… but they have one. It was getting tribal in the grocery aisle as we were all looking for the same thing, meat! As I contemplated spam and ham cold cuts for Christmas dinner… the aisle filled with people looking for “one thing” they forgot to purchase. A conversation quickly erupted of the places we saw that were open that might have sour cream, yams, or fresh
fruit. I settled on pot roast and mashed potatoes then walked around looking for other things. After double checking the store for a spare ham in a can and walking around to snag some last minute stocking stuffers, I headed the check out where a scantly clad checkout girl scanned everything and I headed home. (She must have thought it was Halloween. Brrr.)
I just want to add. Had a grocery store stayed open until 10 last night they would have done quite well. While I had fun trying to put together “something” for a Christmas feast… it would have been so much better at a grocery store.
I kept thinking about Charles Dickens’s Scrooge. Where did he get that goose and all those presents on Christmas morning? It must have all come from KMart– open until 10 on Christmas eve.
Shopping yesterday Paul and I ran across the perfect gift for our yellow Lab, Stoney.
You may remember this Spring I lamented about how Stoney longed to kill and eat on of the squirrels that haunts his backyard. So Stoney went into training and even went jogging with Kristen for a while to try to get fast enough to catch a squirrel. Even once, in early summer Stony actually had a squirrel in his mouth… but it got away. The rest of summer Stoney was depressed and refused to chase the black squirrel in the backyard.
Well, we bought Stoney a squirrel for Christmas. Sure it’s fake. But I’d like to think that he’ll enjoy killing it just the same. Perhaps it will even help him come out of his depression and begin training again.
In other news, the Christmas eve service was fun tonight. The MainStreet portion was a trip. It was the first (and last) time we did something without a rehearsal… and we pulled off most of the elements of it just fine. I kind of made up a character on the spot to match a video… which was pretty fun. It wasn’t a MainStreet with any content, but it was definitely a lot of fun to do. And I think the audience enjoyed it. The second half of the night was our regular Christmas eve. Jimmy and Jason did a very nice job.
As Kristen mentioned, yesterday we had a Wii bowling competition in our family. 4 competitors, 4 controllers, boys vs. girls.
The entire game Paul (4) is talking mega-smack to mommy and Megan (6). We are all pretty good at bowling, but Megan and I are the best. I routinely get above 200 and Megan averages about 185.
Megan would get a spare. Paul would get a strike. Mommy would get a strike. Daddy would get a spare. On and on this went, neck and neck. It was supremely close.
In the last frame dad, mom, and Megan finished. We did a little quick math and discovered that they boys and girls were both tied. This meant that if Paul got a single pin, the boys would win.
Paul stood up proudly, soaked in the situation, and proclaimed “it’s showtime.” He then proceeded to dial in a strike and win the game for the boys in style. Then he walked over to mom and Megan and told them, “That’s right. The boys rule the Wii!”
Megan (first born, dominant) was quick to want to play again. I’m guessing this won’t be the last battle in our house with boys vs. girls.
Kristen and I woke up this morning secretly hoping for a snow day. It didn’t happen. There’s just something about having a Saturday morning on a Wednesday and we were kind of hoping for that relaxed-ness this morning. So instead today is a normal morning. Megan is off to school and Paul is already playing video games on the computer.
In completely random news: Stoney (our 4 year old yellow lab) is a pathetic beast. He carries around his blanket to sleep on and is hopelessly in love with Kristen. Whenever she leaves he just kind of wonders around and cries. He sits by the back steps and just stares out the window and every once in a while you hear him wimper.