Daniel is No Longer a Pirate and other Miscellaneous Happenings

Daniel has had a gold crown on one of his teeth since college. The boys have each asked me when they were about 4 if their Dad use to be a pirate! Well, Daniel is a pirate no more. He had to have the crown replaced. It's too bad, I rather enjoyed being married to a pirate!

Speaking of pirates, Seth has decided that his nickname is now "Captain Chuck". Don't ask, because I have no answer!

The boys have been watching the 3 Musketeers and the 4 Musketeers movies. I sat down to watch this with them on their second viewing. I couldn't stand the movies! All it is is fighting and plotting and more fighting. It is such a boy movie! They were all engrossed in the movies and I was bored out of my mind. I figured that since it was keeping them quiet and entertained, that I couldn't ask for much more while they are off track and I am sick.

Yes, I am sick. This is busy season for Daniel's work, so he has been working long days. This would normally be a recipe for disaster, but I have been truly blessed with wonderful children. Daniel has been crawling into bed between 4 and 6 in the morning. I have been sleeping in because I feel lousy. Mark and Paul have made sure that Seth gets his breakfast and they have been playing quietly downstairs. They have even helped Seth get ready for preschool!

Thursdays are our computer days for the boys. They get to play the computer, Wii, or Game Cube for most of the day (when they are not in school). This morning I woke up around 10. I couldn't believe that I stayed asleep so long. The boys were downstairs watching a movie and playing computer games. There was a paper on the counter in the kitchen that had their computer times written out and a list of consequences for not following the rules they made. Works for me!

I am so grateful to my boys for being such good kids. I really would like to be getting up with them and helping them with breakfast, etc., but it feels good to know that they really are capable of doing things on their own.

A few more miscellaneous happenings:

Our family loves to eat sticky rice (sometimes called sweet rice). You have to soak the rice for at least 4 hours and then you steam the rice in a bamboo basket. We were all very excited for the dinner and sat at the table just waiting for the rice to finish. It wasn't cooking up right and Daniel just couldn't figure it out. It had been steaming for twice the normal time and still wasn't cooking up right. Daniel realized that he had used Jasmine rice instead of the sticky rice. Just so you know, you can steam Jasmine rice and it will cook. It just winds up being a lot like instant rice in the texture.

We were looking at the bag of sticky rice and found a typo. The back of the bag lists what we purchased as sricky rice!

Seth has amazed me with his math skills. He came up to me and said that 6+6=12. He has figured out basic addition. I am totally impressed with him! I am fearful that he will be bored in Kindergarten next year, so I'm going to have to work with him on keeping himself busy on his own.

Last night he told me and Daniel that Jesus Christ is a very good person and that we shouldn't call him names or let anyone else call him names. We agreed and then asked where he heard that. He said that he though it up himself. Then he widened his eyes and said "it is hard work thinking up all of these things by myself." What a sweetie!

I was teasing Mark and Seth about something. I can't recall what it was, but I was making it seam like I was going to have to do something terrible even though it was something good. (something like: If you keep being good like this, I'm going to be forced to make pizza for dinner tonight). Mark said that it was okay with him. Then Seth piped up and said, "That's okay, I have no mind!".