These Are A Few Of My Favorite Things

How Do I Respond to This?

Last night the home phone rang. Caller ID showed it as a Private Name & Number. As my in-laws show up as that, I answered it.

Me: Hello, Shepherds.
Lady: Hello?
Me: Hello...
Lady: I'm looking for Jason.
Me: He's not home from work yet. Can I take a message?
Lady: Yeah, my name is Stacy and I'm 3 months pregnant. Have him call me at this number.
Me: (Pausing and unable to think of anything better to say) Is this regarding Real Estate?
Lady: Nooo
Me: And you're looking for Jason who?
Lady: Jason Foothill.
Me: (slight giggle) Ah, you've got the wrong number...
Lady: Oh, bye (click)

How would you have handled that one???

You Can Be Replaced

Luke just informed me that he’s been thinking about replacing me and Jason with new parents who will clean up after him and do what he wants them to do. This was all said very matter-of-factly.

I feel sad. I already clean up after him…

Great Family Gift

Saturday we got the best gift from our Family Gift Exchange. It was a basket of sugar cookies with frosting and sprinkles and food markers and Wilton Colored Icing. We had an early Family Home Evening Sunday night and decorated the cookies.

This is Brooke using the food markers to "paint" her cookie.
Here's Luke showing off his sprinkled cookie - there was no frosting to hold them on, so it was short lived.
Jason had fun too!
I had Jason take a photo of me to prove I exist!
Here are the end results...

Flattery

Tonight Luke wanted help with something I knew he could do by himself. When I told him so, he replied "But I want you to help me because I'm extremely in love with you!"

What do you say to that?

Father & Son Time

Today Jason took Luke with him to Jazz shoot-around. As Luke is so fond of saying to me lately, sons were created to watch and enjoy Sports with their dads...While Jason was busy getting interviews with Andrei Kirilenko, Luke was busy getting high-fives from Mehmet Ocougar (aka Okur) and getting waved at by and hellos from Carlos Boozer.

Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving from the Shepherd Family!!

All I Want For Christmas...

Luke lost his second tooth tonight! It's been one week since the first one came out. I sure thought it would take longer, but it loosened up really quickly after the first one was gone.

Now I just have to get him to practice that little holiday song...

First Lost Tooth

Today Luke lost his first tooth! The one right next to it is loose, so we will have a second one gone soon. I tease him that he can sing "All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth". He's not impressed with me...

Petting Zoo

The other day I took the kids to Gardner Village to see the witches and my mom gave them money to go to the petting zoo there.

Luke was pretty brave, as you can tell, but Brooke wasn't so willing to touch...

I'm NOT Ready!!!

This morning I had to hit Wal-Mart at 8 am to get treats for Brooke's preschool class and I was greeted by Christmas trees all lit up. Then I flipped on the radio this afternoon and heard Christmas music playing!!!! NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!! It's too soon!!!

The Ninja Turtle and the Princess

The Witches of Gardner Village

Today Brooke's preschool had a field trip to Gardner Village to see the witches. I was able to go along and here are some photos I took.

What Mom Would Wish For

Last night for Family Night we did a "How Well Do You Know Your Child" quiz from an anti-drug booklet Luke brought home from school.

Jason and I took turns asking each other the questions about the kids and then checking with them to see if we got it right. I began asking the questions to the kids to see what they knew about us.

Things got interesting when the Jason asked Luke the following question about me:

Q: What would Mommy wish for is she saw a shooting star?

Luke’s A: “For me and Brooke to go away.” When Jason burst out laughing, Luke looked at me and said “What?? That’s what you always say when we wake you up!”

Stitches Count

Today's stitches count: 3

Curious Find

While perusing through the children’s music at the library, I flipped by a cover that made me think of another album I own, so I flipped back to give it a closer look.

Upon closer inspection I found out why it looked so much like my album. It was a remix of a bunch of The Cure’s songs called Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of The Cure . They styled the cover to look like The Cure’s album Wish. Here is the description from the back of the CD: “Rockabye Baby! transforms timeless rock songs into beautiful instrumental lullabies, sending your little one to a slumberland of sweet dreams. Delicate instruments such as the glockenspiel, vibraphone, mellotron, harp and bells create a soothing atmosphere of sound. These charming recordings are sophisticated enough for everyone to enjoy, yet gentle enough for your little angel. This is cherub rock for a new generation.”

Other albums they offer on the Baby Rocks website:
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Metallica
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Coldplay
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Radiohead
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Tool
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Pink Floyd
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of The Beach Boys
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Led Zeppelin
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Nirvana
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Queens of the Stone Age
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of The Eagles
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of U2
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of The Ramones
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Nine Inch Nails
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of No Doubt
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of The Beatles
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Bob Marley
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Björk
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Green Day
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of The Rolling Stones
Rockabye Baby! Lullaby Renditions of Christmas Rock Classics

(Click on any of the links to hear samples of the music)

100

Recently Luke has latched onto the number one hundred. He uses it in almost every sentence these days…

“Mom, I haven’t played on the computer for 100 days! I’m going to get on it now.”

“We haven’t looked at the toys in Wal-Mart for 100 weeks! Can we go tonight?”

“Mom, I haven’t eaten in 100 years!!! I’m starving and if you don’t give me something right now, I’m gonna die and you’ll miss me!!!”

School Picture Day

Ugg, today is school picture day. The battle began at 7:30 am. Son would not get up. Son didn't want to go to school. Son wouldn't choose shirt. Son wouldn't eat. Son has scratches on face and needs haircut. Son goes to school without money for photo because Mom doesn't want to waste money on school photo of pouting, scruffy child.

One hour after school starts: Dad answers phone call from school. Son has refused to have photo taken. Has also told substitute teacher that he has made diarrhea in his pants. Dad goes to get Son.

Dad returns sans Son. He hasn’t had an accident just knew that the D-word would get him out of school. Dad talks him into staying as the only other option is staying in his room all day. Dad is told photo can be re-taken later today. Dad says Son must have first school photo taken. He will supervise the process when he goes to pick Son up from school.

Mom writes out check to photographer and prays for the best.

Christmas Letter

Every year about this time I begin my annual Christmas Letter.

I know, I know it’s WAY early, but I try to get stuff put down “on paper” so I don’t miss anything fun or interesting that has happened to us during the year. It also takes me this long to agonize over how boring and the same my life is every year - I need time to come up with interesting things about us.

Sadly this year I realized that everything of interest is on our blog. I’m just rehashing what I post daily. I suppose there are some who don’t read the blog and the news I’m providing in letter format is new to them, but still…

Perhaps I could just send out Christmas letterhead with “See our latest news at http://jhshepherd.blogspot.com” printed in really big letters along with our family photo (which we need to get taken…)

For those of you who blog, how are you handling this little situation?

Bowling with Cosmo

For weeks all we've heard around our house was "I want to go bowling with Cosmo!!!" K-BYU (tv station) had created Cosmo's Kids Club and if you joined (among other things), you could attend events with Cosmo, the BYU mascot. This month's activity was bowling at the BYU Games Center.

The pestering worked, we finally joined. Then we waited for our shirts and membership cards to arrive. They didn’t. We called and were told to just go down and they’d have a card waiting for them there. They would then be able to bowl with Cosmo for $1.

After leaving late from home on a Friday night and getting caught in no less than 3 accidents on I-15, and construction in Provo, we made it to BYU at 6:15 p.m. The event was scheduled from 6-7 p.m. I then had to do the whole search for VISITORS parking, but ended up hoping that the signs weren’t tricking me when I parked in the Permit Parking lot that also sported the words “Faculty Parking Only 7 am – 4 pm”. At this point, I didn’t care if I got a ticket, I was parking there!

We headed for the Games Center inside the Wilkinson Center. At 6:20 it wasn’t super crowded, and the kids saw Cosmo and began freaking out (not in a good way). As I comforted them, I paid the $1 per kid to bowl (there was no membership card waiting BTW) and we headed out to find balls and get set up on our lane.

At this time, Brooke is freaking out. She has no desire to bowl and wants Cosmo to stay FAR away from her. While I try to put shoes on her she is shaking and crying to go home. Luke is overcome by his love of bowling and is willing to watch Cosmo from a distance as he has not yet discovered we are there.
So, Luke begins to bowl his turn and then I take Brooke out and together we bowl. As time goes on, she remembers that she likes bowling and mom’s assistance is no longer required. She is doing little dances to the Disney kids’ music they are playing. All the while, we are watching Cosmo visit with others.
Finally, Luke asks me when Cosmo is going to come over and say “hi” to him. I call Cosmo over and he and Luke high-five. Brooke sees that Luke hasn’t been harmed in any way and comes over for a high-five too. I am able to get 2 shots of them all together and then Cosmo watches Brooke bowl and congratulates her on hitting some pins.

My kids were in heaven! Cosmo wasn’t scary Mom! He was cool! As a treat, we went up to the Cougar Creamery and got ice cream cones. What did the kids have? LaVell’s Vanilla.

Loose Tooth

Luke woke us up yesterday yelling "I have a loose tooth!!!!"

Oh, my! Is it already time for that? I'm not sure I'm ready to see my little guy missing his front teeth (it's on the bottom). It's not super loose, so it will be a while (I think) before it goes, but still (sniff, sniff), it's going to go, his first baby tooth.

Vices

Last weekend while camping with my in-laws, Luke was asked what Mom & Dad would be doing while they were home alone.

"They're going to stay home and SMOKE."

Today, I told Luke to have Dad help him with breakfast. Luke threw a fit and said he didn’t like Dad because he does bad things. “Like what?” I asked in my most annoyed voice.

“He drinks alcohol!”

A very surprised Jason yelled from the kitchen “I have never touched alcohol in my life, son!!”

I sincerely hope our kids aren’t telling strangers and teachers this stuff!! Where they came up with these two vices for their parents, I’ll never know!!!

The World According to 5 Year Olds

This week I have been informed of some interesting facts about 5 year olds (by my 5 year old):

Fact: "Mom, did you know five year olds think carrots make you fart?"

Fact: "Five year olds don't have to go to Kindergarten!"

Fact: "Five year olds don't have to eat Noodle Roni (or whatever else they don't want to eat)!!"

It seems that five year olds have their own set of rules and ways of doing things that no other age has ever had before. This year should be very interesting!

Must Read

The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo

Identity Crisis

My daughter has informed me several times this evening that her name is Spinach Shepherd.

Gotta Dance!

Brooke started dance class today. She will be learning tap and ballet. She has been so excited to start. After class she told me she had SO MUCH FUN!!!

What a poser!

Thumbs Up!