Conversations with Coulson

Whenever Coulson says something great, I write it down on a piece of paper and date.  These pieces of paper end up stashed away in the bottoms of drawers and re-surface from time to time.  I found this one while I was unpacking and of course I had to take a break from unpacking so I could post it here.

12/24/06 (Coulson was not quite three and Charlie was about 4 months old.  I think I was feeding Charlie during this conversation)

Coulson:  Sometimes I'm feeding Baby Bear.

Me:  Oh yeah, what does Baby Bear eat?

Coulson:  Ummm, chocolate milk.  It's from my boobs.

Me:  How do you get chocolate milk?

Coulson: I put it in the mixer and I mix it all up.

Me:  But how does the chocolate milk get in your boobs?

Coulson:  Ummm, it goes up the steps.  Up the steps.

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On the move

Casey's new job is paying for our move - thank goodness!  Last year when most of our friends were moving to their nice new houses and fancy jobs, I learned that you could pay for people to come to your house and not simply move your stuff, but actually pack it for you!  To me, this is like the greatest thing ever!  So whenever Casey went on a job interview, I nagged him to remember to ask if they covered moving expenses.  He did good for me.  The hospital has a contract with a local moving company, so we didn't even have to figure out which company to use or worry about paying the bill and getting reimbursed later and all those details. 

I was very happy when our contact with the moving company confirmed that they would pack our stuff for us.  And I was overly delighted when she said that they would have unpackers to help us unpack our stuff.  Unpackers!  I did't know that existed!  I was super excited about the unpackers for the longest time until last week when I was reading through the fine print in the moving brochure.  It states that "we provide labor to assist you with getting items out of the boxes.  We do not place these items into their designated areas...you do that.  We do take away all the paper and boxes."  My enthusiasm for the unpackers suddenly waned.  Wow, they help take stuff out of boxes - I have a 4-year-old who can do that for me.  I need help putting it away, not getting it out of a box.  Elsewhere in the packet they mention that people who are packing themselves can buy used boxes for $2 each.  So basically their unpacking services is just a means of getting used boxes to resell?  I'm hoping that I find the unpacking service much more valuable than I can currently perceive and that on Friday I'll eat my words and think that unpacking is just as great as packing.  We'll see...

I haven't done much to get the house ready for packing.  Casey thinks that the packing crew with freak out when they come tomorrow morning, but I figure that's their job and they probably deal with cluttered houses everyday.  I'm sure getting a nice clean,de-cluttered house to pack up is a breath of fresh air for them (and they won't be getting that fresh air tomorrow).

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Closed.

Yesterday we closed on our house so now we are officially home owners.  But we don't move in until next week because Casey still has to work, so we're in that unsettled state of mind where we really want to be somewhere else, but can't be there just yet.  Actually in some ways, we've been waiting for the past 8 years to get to this point - a real job (no more training for Casey, yea!), a potentially permanent position (no more moving every couple years, we hope), a nice house (with a guest room, come visit!) and this thing we've heard of called a disposable income, sounds like fun (and trouble).

Due to the logistics of childcare and our travel plans, we had Chester with us for the closing.  We were going to leave him in the car with the windows down and go out every now and then to check on him during the closing, but the receptionist told us to bring him in.  So Chester served as a witness to us signing our financial life away.  It was fun to have Chester with us in the meeting room, so out-of-place.  As there was no food involved, Chester was very well behaved.

On another note, congrats and best wishes to Anne, my roommate from college.

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A Moravian Prayer

This is a prayer that Coulson learned in his preschool last year at a Moravian Church.  Casey and I always loved it and I wanted to add it to the blog before I forgot it completely. 

 

Come Lord Jesus, Our guest to be

Bless these gifts bestowed by Thee.

Bless our dear ones everywhere,

And keep them in Thy loving care.  Amen.

 

It was really cute to hear a 2 1/2 year old saying Thee and Thy.  It took us a few weeks to decipher the words he was saying, but definitely worth the effort. (Currently he's into a singing prayer that he learned at his preschool this past year, sung to the tune of "Are you sleeping?" which isn't as endearing.)

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Boys will be boys

Sorry for the scarce blogging lately.  We close on our house next week and then we move in the following week, so the paucity of posts will probably continue through the next few weeks.

I mentioned in my previous post that I would write more about the Nintendo Wii.  I'm sure you remember the way I practically martyred my marriage in the ultimate gift of love.  (Casey, reading over my shoulder, says that I can't use the phrase "martyred my marriage" because it doesn't make sense.  Oh well, it makes perfect sense to me.)  So, for the past few months, Casey has been whining about getting a Wii.  Due to the forces of low supply and high demand, Wiis have been practically impossible to find in the stores.  So we made a serendipity pact.  If we happened to come across one in the store while out shopping, we could get it, but we weren't going to go out and actively search for one.  So Casey got in trouble when I checked on a text message he recieved while he was sleeping one morning, alerting him that Wiis were available a Sears.com.  Text alerts are not serendipity! 

Well, as we were packing for our trip to the OBX, Casey used a bag to pack a "special toy for Coulson."  I was surprised because Casey doesn't usually buy toys for the boys, but I shrugged it off with only mild curiosity.  Then as were packing other bags, I noticed that Casey had slipped in the battery charger.  I was confused because we weren't bringing the XBox (what we usually used rechargeables with) and our camera doesn't use batteries.  Something about the look on Casey's face when I asked him about the battery charger told me everything.  Sharp intake of breath - "You got a Wii!"

It turned out that he did in fact buy the Wii in a moment of serendipity while shopping for my mother's day present!  At least he had the sense not to give it to me for mother's day ;-)  But he was saving it as a surprise for the big family vacation.  But his brother also found a Wii and brought it to vacation, so we had two games going most of the time.  A big change from a family who spent all their family vacations in a small cottage without TV or A/C!

Casey had always maintained that the Wii is more of a family game and that's why he wanted it.  I must admit that we have had fun with it.  Coulson is actually pretty good at bowling and he's working on his tennis.  Casey and I can play tennis doubles together and fight each other in boxing (I've won twice and we tied once, do you think he's letting me win? Casey says no, it's not in his nature to let me win, so "Go girl!")

But best of all, he downloaded the old-school version of Kid Icarus, a game I loved to play in the Nintendo days of my youth.  My friend Bethany and I used to play this game for hours!  Her mom got it at a yard sale so we never had the instructions for the game, so we had to figure it out ourselves, which made it even more fun for us.  (If you're following my links, you can probably get a better idea if Kid Icarus from the Wikipedia site, but I just loved how old-school the first link is - the horrible graphics, the horrible background, the poor guy who's running a web shrine to a video game from 1987.)  Now Casey complains that my Kid Icarus playing cuts into his Halo time (on XBox), so now we apparently need another TV.

On a related note, Casey got a whoppie cushion for Coulson, which accounted for a lot of giggles during lunch today.

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OBX Vacation

We just returned from a week at the Outer Banks with Casey's family.  I'm always so tired after a vacation, that's why I rarely blog about my trips, but I thought I should at least share some pictures and stories of theme dinners.  We had a great week and the weather was perfect!  Not hot, not cold, nice and sunny for beachy days and only one rainy day. 

 

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We have a lot of fun with theme dinners.  Each family is in charge of one night for dinner, and lately (this was the 3rd annual Family OBX trip) we've gotten into theme dinners, often with special attire required and activities included.  Casey's brother and sister-in-law started the week with a French dinner. We were told to wear black or white shirts, and they provided black berets, red scarves, and eyeliner for some fancy moustaches.  After a delicious French dinner, our beach house hosted our own "French Open" tennis tournament, courtesy of Nintendo Wii Sports (more on that in another post!) Casey won and a got a great plastic trophy!

Casey's parents hosted a "Mystery Dinner" where we ordered our meal in 5 courses, but didn't really know what we ordered until our course was served, including utensils.  So I got to eat chocolate cake with jello and a napkin for my first course, had to eat jello and spaghetti with my fingers, but I could chose between a knife and a spoon to eat my meatballs.  (If you've never been to a mystery dinner before, this might be a bit confusing.)  Afterwards we watched some Agatha Christie mystery movie, apparently a torture that Casey and his siblings were subjected to when they were younger, and thus it held sentimental value to them.

 

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For our night, we requested that everyone come barefoot.  Then we provided bandanas, hoop earings, eye patches and tattoos to turn our guests into pirates!  We had grilled shrimp, scallops and vegetables on skewers, because pirates don't use utensils.  We also ate on paper plates because pirates don't do dishes either.  Coulson was very excited to eat with no manners - he even left the table to go to the bathroom without asking to be excused!  (The next day he realized that pirates probably don't wash their hands afterwards either, but sadly he was too late to take advanatge of this epiphany because it was no longer pirate night).

 

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Our after dinner activity was a lot of fun to plan and to do.  I made a scavenger hunt for them to work on in teams.  Casey hid 2 little treasure chests on the beach and marked them with our GPS.  While one team used the GPS to find a treasure chest, the other team was looking for a key, then they switched.  Unfortunately, another pirate must have found one of the treasure boxes (filled with plastic coins, spiderman stickers and coupons for Nestle products - they hit the jackpot there!) and absconded with it, so that dampened the spirits of one team.  But when they were waiting for dessert (ice cream sandwiches - no utensils, no dishes!) Coulson and Casey and I donned our best pirate gear and ambushed them with water balloons and squirt guns and tried to plunder the one treasure chest left.  We were unsuccessful, but Coulson had a great time trying.

We also had our annual Bingo Night.  Prizes were a mix of white elephant gifts and gift cards.  Casey and I pretty much cleaned up with 3 gift cards and no white elephant gifts!  Although Aunt Mary forgot to take home her foam windchime set that Coulson made at Vacation Bible School last year...

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An Outer Banks vacation is always a lot of fun.  Coulson is getting better about playing in the water, but he prefered the hot tub because the pool was too cold.  He also enjoyed chasing sand crabs.  Charlie liked the sand and water.  "G' to Ossin!" he would say (translation: Go to ocean!)  He was battling a slight cold, so he didn't enjoy it to the fullest, but he still had a great time.

 

 

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