Highlights

Well, we survived finals week. Dan's grades are in; mine are--well, I've been avoiding the stack of 20 something 10+ page research papers that my students submitted in lieu of a final exam on Friday. I have approximately 3 days to grade them all and get my grades in. Aren't you jealous? (But that's all I'm going to say about grading, even though it consumed a fair portion of my week).

Some highlights:

We put up the Christmas tree! (Actually, I put up the tree and Dan made dinner. Fair trade). And aside from the fact that none of the candy-canes are higher than chest height and the star on top leans a bit, it looks pretty good. Also, there was no swearing or yelling this year, so we did significantly better than last year.

Last week, with Bubby's help, Andrew wrote a nice letter to Santa, which we posted at our local grocery store (they have a fancy mailbox for Santa). This week, Andrew got his letter. I'd forgotten how much fun the whole Santa thing can be for little kids (it was never really part of my childhood--my dad told me the "truth" when I was five, and I'm not sure if my mom has forgiven him for it yet). Anyway, "Santa" told Andrew that he was at the top of his list for boys, a fact that Andrew proudly repeated to his friend Ike, who was at our house Thursday morning. Unfortunately, Ike promptly burst Andrew's bubble by telling Andrew that Santa also gives coal for naughty children (a part of the Santa legend Andrew had never heard), whereupon Andrew started to cry, worried that he was naughty and wouldn't get presents. While it probably doesn't hurt Andrew to reflect now and again on his behavior, I wasn't heartless enough to let him stew for long--so I told him that I'd let him know if he was in the danger zone behavior-wise. And mostly, he's been pretty good.

Yesterday was a busy day--we went down south to the temple while Bubby and Poppy watched the kids; we ran errands; and then came back in time for the girl's basketball game. I'm not sure that the kids actually watch much of the game (then again, I don't either), but they enjoy watching the crowd; Andrew likes shouting, "Go T-birds!"; and Evelyn likes dancing with the cheerleaders (should I be worried about this?). Of course, the game got a lot more interesting when cousins showed up: Dan's cousin Jodi and her crew were at the game, too, and came over and joined us after half-time.

After the game, we went to an alumni tailgaiting party (indoors, and family-oriented), where Santa made an appearance. Apparently, Andrew's losing confidence in his "good" status, because when Santa asked him if he'd been good, Andrew shrugged. "I guess," he said.

Some funny kid stories from the week.

The other night, I was putting Andrew to bed. Lately, putting Andrew to bed has seemed more like punishment for whichever parent gets him that night--not because he's bad (he's not), but because Dan made the mistake of making up a "munchie-munch-munchkin" story a couple of months ago, and now Andrew thinks he needs to hear a new story every night. And even though I *like* stories, it's hard making up a new one on the fly every other night.

I think I just lost the train of my original story. Well, here it is. It was my turn to put Andrew to bed. At some point, he finally said, "Mommy, can you turn it on now?" I was genuinely confused. "Turn what on?" 'The story."

Yesterday, Evelyn saw one of my bridal portraits. (I'm not sure why she's never noticed it before.) At any rate, she was very impressed by it, so I explained to her what it was, and then I showed her one of our wedding pictures, in front of the St. George temple. She said, "I wore a teeny, tiny white dress!" (meaning, at our wedding). I explained to her that she wasn't *at* the wedding (well, not physically anyway!), because it happened before she was born. But even this explanation didn't stump her for long. She thought for a minute, and then told me, "Mommy, I was born in the temple, like you and daddy!"

Well, she's not far off, at that. She might not have been born in the temple, but she certainly owes her existence to our marriage there.