Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness."
He was sooooo right.
I should have had many more minutes of happiness today.


Emerson quotes could solve all the world's problems.

Dane: "Mom, did you know that 'flabbergastedly' is a word?"

Me, thinking for a moment..."Yes, I guess I did."

Dane: "Aw..." as in aw, shucks, didn't know something before mom.

LOL

In the other room I can hear Dane trying to persuade Ella to participate in a Pokemon battle with him. She doesn't want to and says:

"Why don't you ask Mom to do one with you?"

"Mom?" he scoffs loudly "She's not even in the club!"

Apparently, Cameron has been sharing too many anecdotes from his youth because Bryce has taken to sharing his own. Although most of his are made up, they begin like this (and I'm not kidding):

When I was a kid...

When I was little...

When I was a little baby...

When I was young...

But today's was so cute-->

"When I was a star...Mommy, when I was a star I went back up into the sky."

It seems like my kids are saying a lot of cute things lately, but may be I'm just listening.

One more thing from Bryce.

He always starts his prayers, "Heavenly Father, bless Jesus to come home..." I guess I just assumed he was talking about the second coming or something like that, but finally one of the other kids asked him what he was talking about or where Jesus should come home to and he said, "Jesus's home is in the TEM-ple!"

Several weeks ago, in the dark of his room Bryce was crying. I found the first binkie I could find and handed it to him and he shouted "I don't want the pokey one." Confounded, I stumbled back to bed and I'm still not sure what got him back to sleep that night. Days later, I discovered what he meant by "pokey." Turns out that Bryce had started chewing holes in his silicone pacifiers, including the brand-new ones Santa put in his stocking. When I warned him that if he kept chewing holes then I'd have to throw them all away and wouldn't buy any more, he decided he was done then and there.

This was not a big deal because he still had his "nigh-nigh" (aka Mommy's slip). He's pretty attached to that.

Last night, I had put the slip in the wash and it wasn't waiting for him in his bed...now here's the funny quote you read through this whole story for:

He said: Where's my nigh-nigh?

I said: I don't know (LIAR!)

He said: Blast it! (hitting his bed) I don't have a nigh-nigh!

Ok, well, it was late and it was really funny at the time. He's quite the character.

Reading teaches me things (duh, but that's what this post is about so I began this paragraph thus).

While I was reading one of my mysteries, set in post-Victorian England, and the phrase: "He's living in cloud cuckoo land" was used. I got pretty excited because this is also the title of the debut album of a group called The Lightening Seeds. I searched extensively for this album as a surprise for Cameron.

I also can't help but be excited about learning a new phrase or meaning of a phrase. Such a word worm!

For Your Information:

Cloud Cuckoo Land refers to an (unrealistically) idealistic state where everything is perfect. ("You're living in Cloud-cuckoo-land.") It hints that the person referred to is naïve, unaware of reality or deranged in holding such an optimistic belief.

Here are some more!

If the mountain won't come to Muhammad, Muhammad will go to the mountain--

an English phrase usually interpreted as "if one cannot get one's own way, one must bow to the inevitable".

There's many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip-- an old English proverb. It can mean that between the time we decide to do something and the time we do it, things often go wrong.

Dead to rights-- To be caught red-handed, in the very act of committing a crime or error. It implies that there is no possible way for a person to explain away their mistake or crime

Great Scott!--There was a famous American general named Scott, who did have the title of commander-in-chief of the US Army at the time of the outbreak of the Civil War, though he is best known as one of the two American heroes of the Mexican War of 1846-48. Oft times soldiers used their commanding officer's name as an oath.

This General Winfield Scott, known to his troops as Old Fuss and Feathers. (This piece goes on to say that he was a very heavy man later on in life and could not ride a horse and so a great Scott in a literal meaning of the phrase)

I find this particularly amusing because I use the phrase fuss and feathers as my reation when my kids are overreacting to something.

Yesterday, I asked my cute kids to draw a Christmas picture for Grandma and Grandpa Stringham (missionaries in Germany) to put in their Christmas package.

Dane drew an amazingly detailed Nativity that was very touching.

Ella was trying to figure out what to draw. She began with a circle, to make a ball ornament. Suddenly, she gasped and said:
"Mom, Love is Christmas!"
Then asked for help in drawing a big pink heart and a tracing of her hand.
Little Christmas miracles are all around