No, It's Not Make-Up

I was playing "Guitar Hero" yesterday and Meghan was dancing to my guitar playing skills. Her version of dancing is turning in circles. Meghan got a not-so-sweet souvenir from that experience:

She got so dizzy she took a nice little header into our end table right in the eye. It looks a lot worse than it is. She cried pretty hard and it started to swell up immediately. Poor kid.

Pixie Dust

Yesterday my mom and I were hard at work re-doing the girls' room.

Shortly after Jason and I moved in our house in the summer of 2004, we did a lot of painting in various rooms throughout the house. That summer my mom and I painted one of the spare rooms and put up a nice border that helped it seem pretty inviting for a spare bedroom.

The girls have been using that room for quite some time now (it works wonderfully for their bunk bed), and I finally decided that we needed to change things to make it more like a little girl room instead of a spare room.

I found some adorable "Tinkerbell" border at Home Depot which matched wonderfully with our already green walls. My mom hosted an "Uppercase Living" party last month and got a wall decoration for free and decided to get something to go along with our "Tinkerbell" theme. The saying says, "All you need is faith, trust, and a little pixie dust." I am very excited with how it looks. Here is how it turned out:

This picture shows the border and some extra stickers I bought that went along with the border. I love the little saying. It is so cute and it works wonderfully for a little girls' room. Here are some more pictures of what we did:

I put these stickers on the wall by Audrey's bed. Meghan has one on her wall similar to Audrey's too:
The girls like how they each have their own Tinkerbell sticker by their bed. I am very pleased with how things look.

From Toothbrushes to Money

The other day Jason and I received a check in the mail for Christmas from his aunt and grandpa in California. It's kinda nice that they think to do things like this for us even when they don't have to. We ended up cashing the check and venturing out to find something on the day before Christmas. Thankfully it wasn't too crazy out there, but it was only 10:00 in the morning.

I ended up taking the girls with me to "Toys R Us" because I thought it would be fun for the girls to pick out their own presents. Not to mention I had no clue what to get for them. They have plenty of toys they don't play with as it is.

Here is my conversation with Meghan on our way to the store:

Me: Hey Meghan, do you want to go to a special store for Meghan and Audrey?

Meghan: For Meghan and Audrey??? Yeah! What kind of store?

Me: It's a surprise!

Meghan: Oh, I like surprises.

Me: Me too.

Meghan: What are we going to get at the special store?

Me: We are going to get a special surprise for Meghan and Audrey!

Meghan: For Meghan and Audrey??? All right! Is it food?

Me: Nope. It's better than food!

Meghan: Is it toothbrushes???

Me: No, Meghan. It's better than toothbrushes.

Meghan: Better than toothbrushes?

I'm glad to hear that Meghan sees her dental hygiene as something so wonderful and better than food. I couldn't help myself. I busted up laughing pretty hard at that one.

Then on the way home from the toy store, Meghan just said the funniest thing out of the blue:

Meghan: It's my money, and I need it now!

Me: Meghan, where did you hear that?

Meghan: From the TV.

For those of you who are not familiar with that phrase, there is this commercial that is on TV particularly early in the mornings when I am watching the news as I am getting ready for work. It's a commercial about this law firm that deals with helping its clients with structured settlements to try to get them into lump sum payments. Check out the commercial here. It's the last commercial at the bottom of the page.

School Answering Machine

This got sent to me as a forward in an e-mail recently...

For those of you who are not teachers or do not work in schools, this is a little glimpse into what I have to deal with often in my career. The thing about this message is that it's sad but true. Being a teacher is not an easy job, but I know that I am doing what God has called me to do. Hopefully you find this as amusing as I did.


SCHOOL ANSWERING MACHINE MESSAGE TO PARENTS

No wonder so many people were offended!

This is the message that the Pacific Palisades High School staff, a mostly well to do and mostly white area in California, supposedly voted unanimously to record on their school telephone answering machine.

This is supposedly the actual answering machine message for the school. This came about because they implemented a policy requiring students and parents to be responsible for their children's absences and missing homework.

The school and teachers are supposedly being sued by parents who want their children's failing grades changed to passing grades - even though those children were absent 15-30 times during the semester and did not complete enough school work to pass their classes.

The actual outgoing message:

Hello! You have reached the automated answering service of your school. In order to assist you in connecting to the right staff member, please listen to all the options before making a selection:

To lie about why your child is absent -Press 1

To make excuses for why your child did not do his work -Press 2

To complain about what we do - Press 3

To swear at staff members - Press 4

To ask why you didn't get information that was already enclosed in your newsletter and several fliers mailed to you - Press 5

If you want us to raise your child - Press 6

If you want to reach out and touch, slap or hit someone - Press 7

To request another teacher, for the third time this year - Press 8

To complain about bus transportation - Press 9

To complain about school lunches - Press 0

If you realize this is the real world and your child must be accountable and responsible for his/her own behavior, class work, homework and that it's not the teachers' fault for your child's lack of effort: Hang up and have a nice day!