Halloween

Here's JR getting ready to get on the bus this morning. He was fine with wearing the "train conductor's costume" as he called it. And was most excited when I told him he could wear his black boots.

Grandpa Gary arrived before the bus came, and Paw-Paw and Maw-Maw were here too. They (Maw-Maw and Paw-Paw) came with me to the Storybook Parade since Jason was on a flight home from Albuquerque. Jason made a big effort to arrange his work schedule so he would be home for Halloween night.

Here he is getting ready for the Storybook Parade. The kids were really cute carrying their books and waving to the parents. We definitely made the right decision in leaving the superhero costumes in the closet at home. It was about 82 degrees this afternoon and all the Spidermans (there were at least 20), Ninja Turtles, and Transformers were about to sweat to death. And those of you who know JR, know he has a real sweating problem....
If you are a regular to my blog, then you'll remember some of the kids I talked about from JR's class. Here he is with Cadence, who he referred to the other day as "my best friend in my class, Cadence".


You'll also remember me telling how JR doesn't like it when Miracle wears "balloon hair". I'm not sure if this qualifies as "balloon hair", but I thought it was definitely picture worthy!

We didn't do the trick-or-treat thing tonight. He really wanted to go to the Superhero Show at church. It was very cute, and they gave all the kids a big bag of candy. So without further ado, here is the Batman costume.....

And here's me in my version of Batgirl. This was the best I could do this year, I really don't think anybody wants to see spandex on somebody my size!

Tomorrow's the Big Day

We are gearing up for Halloween around here. Of course my house is a mixture of undecorated Christmas trees and Halloween decorations right now. Christmas decorations go up right after Halloween in these parts, and this year I thought an extra day or two wouldn't hurt. Plus I need all the time I can get to decorate since at my fastest I can only move in a slow waddle. JR has a "Storybook Parade" at school tomorrow. They are supposed to come dressed as a storybook character and then bring the book with them. I was going to go ahead and just send him up there dressed as a Power Ranger, but he brought home a note today saying that they have to "be able to use the restroom independently in their costumes". Well, those of you with boys know that all the superhero costumes have lots of pieces and they all zip up in the back. I was also worried about him getting too hot with the cape and mask and such, so I talked him into using a train engineer costume we have and taking a Thomas the Train book. I know Thomas can't compare to the coolness of the Power Rangers with the preschool crowd, but hopefully it won't scar him for life. I'm guessing Thomas is cooler than Nemo, because he was REALLY not interested in wearing his Nemo costume. All should be right with the world for Halloween night though, because then he will get to wear the all important Batman costume. And for those of you wanting to brush up on your Chinese, Batman's Chinese name is "Ban-Fu". That's the only one I would have ever been able to figure out, Spiderman and Superman's names don't sound like their English names at all. Hopefully I'll have some good pictures and even better stories for tomorrow!

JR?!

So my child who loves Power Rangers, Transformers, and all the "Mans" (Superman, Batman, Spiderman, etc.) has now found a new toy that he wants to play with all the time. He was in our office the other day and for some reason wanted to look at the nesting doll that Jason brought back from Russia. I showed him how it worked and he was immediately intrigued since it's "just like the people on Higllytown Heroes". (Those of you with little ones will understand that one). So for the past few days he has been obsessed with the nesting dolls. Which he calls "messing dolls". He lines them up and says, "I have them lined up smallest to largest just like we do in school." Then he will put them all back together again. He does this over and over again. I can't believe this is the same child who won't even go down and aisle in the toy store that has too many pink things on it because "that's girl stuff"! I just had to take a picture; I figure I can pull this out someday when he's being mean to his twin brothers.

Houston, We Have a Pumpkin Problem

So, I kept my promise to JR and got him a pumpkin carving kit. He was very excited about it and picked out an alien to carve. JR still doesn't like the pumpkin guts and screams out that they are "gross and stinky". Jason, of course, keeps asking him, "How are you going to gut a deer if you can't clean out a pumpkin?!" That one is up to Jason and JR to work out on their own, 'cause I guarantee I won't be around for that. Anyway, the latest pumpkin carving took place on Friday. For you non Texans out there, you will see that Jason and JR are both wearing shorts and short sleeves. It was still in the upper 80's (about 30 for our non American friends) until yesterday, when it finally cooled off. I didn't realize just how fast a carved pumpkin could rot in the Texas heat, but rot it did. It is now a pile of mush on my front porch (and it will just have to stay that way until Jason moves it, because I am not touching it). Now, you might be wondering why I don't have a picture of this alien carved into a pumpkin. Well, to make matters worse, while we were standing back admiring JR and Jason's pumpkin handy work, Harley(Jason's 15 year old blue heeler), walked up and bit off the alien's hand. And yes, she ate it. I guess pumpkin tastes good to big, old dogs because within the next day she had eaten the whole alien. So as the rotting process started, we basically had a pumpkin with just a big hole in the side of it. So much for a pumpkin patch!

Urban Cowboy

Jason's company picnic was Sunday at the Sam Houston Race Park. It was very nice, with tons of activities for the kids. There were plenty of bouncy castles to keep JR entertained for hours. They had hot dogs and hamburgers, clowns, rides, and games, but I thought the funniest thing was a mechanical bull that was just for kids. It was way too cute! Look at my little John Travolta; I think we're ready for Gilley's! (And for you non Texans, that would be a Urban Cowboy movie reference.)

This Week in Birthdays!

Happy Birthday to Granny Sherry!

October 21st

Jason Breaks His Little Toe

We took JR to his classmate, Mateo's, birthday party today (On a side note, all the kids in their class can't pronounce "Mateo" and they call him "Tomato"). The party was at Jump U, which for those of you without kids, is basically a place to have birthday parties. It's an indoor, air conditioned building that has a bunch of moon walks/bouncy castles. The kids play and eat cake, and then everybody goes home. It's fabulous. Anyway, Jason thought it would be a good idea to go down the big slide with JR. As my video evidence proves, not such a good idea. Be sure to keep an eye out for Jason's face plant when they get to the bottom. Jason and JR both got up limping, but Jason is still limping, and his little toe is completely purple. I touched the injured toe and I've never heard such yelping and squealing. Enjoy the video!

Fa La La La La

I can honestly tell you that I am worn out tonight. You might recall from one of my previous posts that I was "helping out" in JR's church choir class. Well, the "teacher" has been MIA for 3 weeks now, so I've been having a blast with 15-20 four year olds on Wednesday nights. (Can you hear the sarcasm?) We have been working on Away in the Manger and Jingle Bells (complete with bells for the kids) for the past few weeks. The kids are singing the Call to Worship in church on December 2nd, and remember we attend Second Baptist here in Houston, so when I say they are "singing in church" what that really means is "they're singing in front of about 2,000 people". So really, there's no pressure whatsoever. Now I know some of you are thinking that I might be exaggerating that I'm really responsible for that many 4 year olds by myself, so here's the proof....Here's a picture of the ones that were there tonight.





Count 'em...there's 16! You might also be thinking, "But look how sweet they look." Well, yes, in that posed picture they look pretty innocent. But here's what they look like when I'm trying to get them to sing Away in the Manger.

And just in case you still need more evidence, here they are in action. Since they were somewhat "good" tonight, I let them show off their best moves to the song Jazz Fly before they went home.

Every Wednesday I am reminded why I taught junior high and not elementry....Nighty-Night!

Pumpkin Time

Jason, JR, and Grandpa Gary carved their first pumpkin of the season yesterday. JR was super excited, and can't wait to carve some more. I told JR I would get him a pumpkin carving kit so hopefully their next pumpkins will be a little more intricate. After they finished, his favorite thing to do was lift the top off and say "Look, I pulled off his brains!" JR was still so thrilled over his pumpkin last night he had to call his Ayi and tell her all about it. We kept hearing him say "nan gua" (which is pumpkin). Luckily we used to carve pumpkins in China, so I know she understood what he was talking about.

Aeros Game

We took JR to the Aeros Hockey Game on Saturday night. JR is taking hockey lessons, so he really gets a kick out of going to the games. If you think about it, hockey combines lots of JR's favorite things: ice skating, fighting, and loudness. Our friends from China that worked for Caterpillar will be exited to know that your Peoria Rivermen beat our Houston Aeros 3-1. JR had been to his friend Wade's birthday party on Saturday afternoon and had a received a kazoo in his gift bag. And even though we lost, the kazoo got quite a workout at the game!









Here's JR enjoying the game!










After the game, JR got to go on the ice and try to score a goal. I was really impressed; if he had hit it just a bit harder it would have gone right into the net! And, yes, that's a cheerleader in the picture. Who knew hockey had cheerleaders?!

In one of the most exciting parts of the game, one of the players got slammed so hard into the wall that he knocked the glass panel out! As you can tell by the crowd's reaction, everybody really enjoyed that!

To JR's disappointment there weren't any good fights at this game. The referees were quick to put a stop to them, so this was about the best there was.


JR loves it when the players slam into the glass. There were lots of great "slams" last night, but I didn't do a very good job of getting them on video.

JR's Chinese Lessons

I get lots of questions about how we are "keeping up JR's Chinese". We've tried finding people to come over to the house to talk to him, we've tried 2 different Chinese schools, but what we have found that works best is just to let him talk to his Ayi in Beijing. They talk 2 or 3 times a week on Skype (so it doesn't cost us anything) and because he can see her on the computer, he will actually talk to her. Jason and I usually have no idea what they are talking about, but in this video I took the other night, I think they are talking about the "bad guy" from Automan (which is basically the Chinese version of the Power Rangers). At the end of the video I know he says "airplane", so I'm guessing at that point they are discussing Automan's airplane. Any of you Mandarin speakers out there are welcome to translate for me! The quality of the video is a little dark, but the sound is great, and if you look at JR's computer screen you can see our Ayi!

Lumberjack

When JR came in from his soccer game this Saturday I gave him a choice of relaxing by watching cartoons or going outside to help Daddy and Grandpa Gary split logs. So you can imagine my shock when he whipped off his shirt and ran outside to help split logs. To hear JR tell the story he did all the work.....Grandpa let him work the lever on the machine, but I have video evidence to prove that we aren't really making our 4 year old chop timber.

This Week in Birthdays!

Kari Potts-Friday, 10/12

Happy Birthday!

Back to Work!

I went back to work today! Okay, not really, but I am on the rotation to volunteer in JR's class. I "worked" from 9-11 today, and I was really impressed. I'm not sure how the teachers get all those 4 year olds to do all the activities they do. The best part was that I got to see all the kids JR has been talking about at home. JR talks about Kevin all the time, so when I would ask him what Kevin looked liked JR would say, "He looks like me." Well, I guess you can guess what Kevin looks like....that's right, he's Asian! I should have known since JR thinks he's Chinese! Miracle was there sporting her "balloon hair" as JR calls it. JR says he doesn't like it when Miracle wears "balloon hair". (Just so you know "balloon hair" is what I've always known as "Afro puffs") There's another kid named Hassad. JR hadn't talked about him, and I'm guessing all the other kids must be scared of him. He's almost as big as me. He has to be at least 7. I asked the classroom aid about him and she said, "Well, his parents say he's 5, so we have to go with what the parents say." If that kid is 5, he's the largest 5 year old in the world. The little girl who sits next to JR is named Cadence. She's very quiet and cute with long pigtails. Luckily, she doesn't seem bothered with JR's endless questions and comments. "Are you having fun, Cadence?" "Do you like this, Cadence?" "Look at my picture, Cadence." Thank goodness Cadence is patient! It was a fun time and I'm excited to be able to volunteer again. I guess I need to rest up, we have church choir tonight....That sure is a bunch of 4 year olds to deal with in one day!