The best day of the year

When I was a kid my sisters and I looked forward to Christmas cookie decorating day almost as much as Christmas day itself. I have tried to carry on with this tradition with my 2 girls. Decorating christmas cookies takes a certain amount mental preparation as a parent that it didn't require when I was child. Now, I'm the supervising adult, that is, the person who cleans up the rainbow frosting with sprinkles explosion that is left behind at the end. I never understood before as a kid why my Mom wasn't more excited about christmas cookies or why she aways seemed a little tired when it was over- I get it now, Mom. This was a really fun year. I only had to remind Ava once not to lick the frosting knife between cookies and I'm getting better at planning ways to minimize the amount of frosting that has to be scraped off the table and floor at the end too. It was a really fun cookie day- Anabelle said it was the best day of the year.


Ava tries to put all the different kinds of sprinkles on the same cookies every time. You can tell who made which cookie.

Anabelle very carefully spreading her frosting.
I don't know what Ava is doing here. I feel this way alot about Ava: "What is she doing?"



Heath usually decorates one cookie. It kind of looks like an alien or a fly this year- I got to eat it.






I usually do 3 or 4 really pretty ones and then start making them in mass so that the pile will get smaller faster so we can eat some.




This year I put the finished christmas cookies in the tin my Nana used. This tin is so loaded with memories for me of Nana bringing pie to Thanksgiving and cookies at Christmas. I think she would be really glad we're using it. It feels right- she spent alot of time baking and cooking for us. I tried to tell Anabelle and Ava about how she would decorate her cookies exactly the same every year for as long as I can remember. All the bells were exactly the same, the trees, the stars, the giant snowman, the camel (yeah, I have no idea where she found a camel cookie cutter). Nana helped me love baking, my Mom showed me how to not get crazy when process makes a colossal mess- I hope I can pass those on to my girls.

happy memory lane

Heath and I were just reading through some old blog posts and I cried my eyes out laughing so hard at this one. I decided to re-post it originally written by Heath 2 years ago. Ava was 2 and a half Anabelle was 4. You're going to love it!! :)

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Like a Chicken with Its Head Cut Off

On Tuesday afternoons Andrea goes to Dallas to tutor some Thai refugee children, and I get in some special "daddy and daughter" time. Our usual routine is to go to the park, the library, and then come home to eat eggs and biscuits. But, we have been eating eggs and biscuits every Tuesday for a while now, and a new Chick-fil-A opened up nearby with a killer playplace inside, so we went there today. It was interesting.

The place is packed because it is the new cool thing in town. We order our food, I get the drinks, and go get the girls seated at a table, and then go back to wait for the food. I order 12 nuggets and a regular chicken sandwich- fairly standard items- and it took almost 10 minutes. This is a long time when you have two precious sweeties at a table unsupervised and hungry.

I get the food and distribute it to the kids, settle in to my chair, and take a bite of my sandwich, where upon Anabelle informs me that she needs to "go tee-tee." So, we all go to the bathroom, she does her thing, and then we go back to our table. After about 5 minutes of peaceful eating, Anabelle knocks her drink over, spilling water all over the table. Fortunately, the lid did not come all the way off, so I managed to clean it up with only about 50 napkins. I was a little troubled by this, because this is the third time in the past two days Anabelle has knocked a full glass over. I took a deep breath and started to eat again. Anabelle said, "Daddy, thank you so much for cleaning up my spot." That made me really happy and warm inside, and I felt like the evening was taking a turn for the better. Feelings, however, are not always reliable.

After about 5 more minutes of eating, Ava knocked her drink off the table. I ordered small waters for the girls, but they were out of small cups, so this was a medium cup full of water. It hit the ground with such force that not only did the lid come off completely, but the bottom of the cup blew out as well, and 22 oz. of water and ice were all over the floor. Napkins would stand no chance facing this giant. So I went and asked a nice young guy who worked there if he would clean it up. He was very courteous, but I am not sure he had ever held a mop before. So he came over and sloshed it around and smeared it everywhere. I am pretty sure someone had just mopped around the fry vats with this mop, because the floor all around our table became very greasy and slick. Every time someone would walk by they would almost slip, and then glance over at me with a look that I interpreted as saying, "thanks alot buddy, because you can't keep your kids in line I almost broke my neck."

So we ate some more, and as we were finishing I thought to myself, "Heath, you need a challenge." So, I got the girls an ice cream cone. This was Ava's first ice cream cone ever. Anabelle methodically licked around the edges, making sure none dripped. Ave dispensed with such formalites, and after I handed it to her the first thing she did was smash it into her face, as if she were trying to get the whole cone in her mouth. She ate the rest of the cone like this, trying to smash it all into her mouth. It was so much fun to watch.

We finished our meal and headed into the play area. We got the shoes off, put away in the little secure cubby holes, and they started to play. Then Anabelle said, "Daddy, I need to go do gross." So, we got the shoes back on, and went back to the bathroom. Anabelle did her business, I did the closing paperwork, and we started to leave our stall. I was surprised to see a little boy (like 3 or 4 years old) waiting to come in the stall. He was by himself. Ava got in his face and, using her intimidating voice (the one she uses with Silas), said, "Hey, what are you doing in here?!" She proceeded to follow him back in the stall, and I had to go back and forcible remove her so this little guy could do his thing.

So , we went back to the play area and played happily for about 20 minutes, and then came home.

Several of you who read this blog from time to time have kids. Sometimes it is therapeutic to here about things like this, so hopefully this story will be of some benefit to someone. I hope to God that there is some redeeming value to this unfortunate series of events.

December week 1

This has been a christmas of several firsts for us. This was Heaths first year to ring the bell by hte red Salvation Army bucket out side our local Wal-Mart- also, our first year to put money in the bucket. It was about 34 degrees out that day :)



This was Ava's first year to not cry in her Christmas program. She was SO cute. I could hear her singing four or five rows back. So talented.


This is Anabelle's first year to play tic-tac-toe. She played about 30 games with Heath before Ava's christmas program.



This is actually the second attempt at putting the star on the tree. The first time the tree fell over. I'm sorry to say that it was not our first time to have our tree fall over...

I'm thankful for...

Sculpture I: Portrait Bust...

This is me and my friend Amber. It turns out that Amber and I have almost every thing in common including how smokin' hot we make these respirator masks and goggles look. Besides being unhealthy to breath, silicone smells like vinegar and sweat. It really is horrible.

Below is what I would look like with silicone all over my head- personally, I think its a little disturbing.

Andrea and Anabelle: the art show

Here are a few recent pieces of art Anabelle and I have done. Above is a wax waffle. I'm am finding that all of the art that I do that I think is good tends to be about food or coffee...


This is one of my favorite coffee cups. When ever I try out a medium I'm not comfortable with or haven't used much before I seem to use it to do this cup. This is oil pastel- which I really loved. Its like using oily crayons.



This is charcoal. I'm pretty comfortable with charcoal. This is actually the first drawing I've done of Anabelle and Ava and even though I like them I think I will NOT be drawing them again soon. They are tough critics: "Why aren't there any flowers on my scooter?" "Why am I smaller than Anabelle?" "Why didn't you put the basket on my scooter?" (I put a fake basket on Ava's scooter because she complained about it so much.)



This is an origami house collage by Anabelle. She is brilliant, as you can plainly see.


This is a graphite pencil drawing by Anabelle. This is a great piece and it has inspired me to do an owl myself soon.

A Post by Heath

This evening I took Anabelle, along with Ava, to her “Academic Night.” I am not sure what the point of this was. Parents got to watch their kids work a math problem in their classroom (I think Anabelle finished before all the others), and the rest of the time the teacher kept asking, to no avail, if anyone had any questions.

There were several interesting things I got to take note of, however. First, her teacher had the good idea of having all the kids write on a poster-sized piece of paper a few things about themselves. She then hung these around the room. While the kids were working the math problem (the other kids, that is, since Anabelle finished very quickly) I read them all. It was interesting to me that Anabelle is the only one in the class that wrote that she liked to play with her mom and dad. This doesn’t necessarily indicate that we are the best parents, but I think an objective assessment of this would have to include a strong implication in that direction.

Second, Ava has become very schizophrenic in terms of her public relations skills. Case in point: Last week we went to the park and Ava took the initiative to strike up a conversation with a total stranger at the park who was the mom of a girl in Anabelle’s class that was there playing as well. Ava enjoyed talking to her so much that she was still talking to her as I was pulling her away and getting her in the car. Tonight, this mom was there and said “hi” to Ava and Ava put her head down without saying anything. I said, “Ava, do you remember Mrs. Fedra from the park?” She nodded her head in agreement, but had a look of extreme tension on her face and started hugging my leg. Fedra again tried to make small talk with her, to which Ava proceeded again to nervously slink away from her. I don’t get it. Sometimes I wonder what the people think who are on the other end of these diametrically opposed conversational styles that Ava seems to embody.

After the classroom time was over we went to the cafeteria and got cookies, looked at the kids’ art, and then went out to the playground to swing for a bit. This leads me to my third interesting observation of the evening. While we were playing a father (or some such male guardian figure) and a couple of little boys came to play. At one point, one of the boys about Anabelle’s age ran away from the playground area into the middle of an open field (still in the fenced in playground area) where he proceeded to relieve his bladder of unnecessary pressure. He was, thankfully, facing away from the swings, but he was also facing the road where lots of cars were driving by. Now, I am no prude about this kind of thing. Outdoor urination is a classic pastime of good ole country boys, and it is good to see such a practice passed on to the next generation. On the other hand, this was at a playground where this kid presumably normally plays at. Does he do this during school? Do the teachers on duty have a laissez-faire attitude about this kind of thing? Perhaps more troubling was that the father was watching the whole thing, and he not only didn’t discourage it in any way, he also didn’t blink an eye.

All in all it was a fine time at the Watson Elementary School at Huntsville, Arkansas. Right now it is moments before I announce bedtime, and Anabelle is finally smelling Ava’s stincky sock after much pleading on Ava’s part for her to do so. Anabelle may be brilliant, but there are still some things she has to learn (like you only smell someone else’s stinky sock if they agree to smell yours at the same time).