Party in the Front...

Tonight at dinner we were talking about different hair styles and mullet was brought up by Phil. We were explaining to the kids that it would be Cannon's hair in the front and Miya's hair in the back. Cannon said, "it's a boy, girl." We all had a really great laugh at the new description of a mullet. No more business in the front, party in the back. It is just a "boy-girl" hair cut.

Thanks, Drew for the picture illustration!

Saying the right thing?

I often walk away from conversations with people or get off the phone with people and think, "why in the world did I say that?" Recently I have had a lot of friends and family going through challenges or being faced by challenges that they will be living with for a long time and I have been thinking a lot about "saying the right thing" when so often I don't. I have a distant cousin and his wife that had their little boy die this last summer and she has been keeping a blog and she talked about things people say to her and how often it is not the right thing.
What is the right thing?
I have a friend and a sister-in-law that recently had babies with down syndrome. I am happy for both of them and love them, but I also didn't want to negate the challenge and some of the pain they might be feeling right now. Maybe pain isn't the right word, it might be fear, or maybe just peace and happiness...I really don't know and I think that is why I am not sure what the right thing to say is. I do know that I love them both and that I will love both these beautiful babies. I hope that if I never say the right thing that as least I will be the good listener that they need and that even through the wrong words they can feel the love.

Tips

So I figure all of you amazing women that are keeping tabs on my blog would have a trick or two up your sleeve in the house keeping area. So if you are reading this blog write a quick little tip that would help me around the house.

My tip: Problem with fruit flies? Use a small amount of apple cider vinegar stir in a few drops of dish soap into the bowl. Leave it out over night and see how many you catch. If you have a lot you might have to do it twice.

Staples

There have been some really great things about Phil having knee surgery from Cannon's perspective.
1. Playing video games
2. Playing more video games
3. And even more video games.
Uncle Aaron brought over his Wii so Phil could play during his down time. Cannon isn't allowed to play video games without dad. I figured it would be an easy rule to set because Phil isn't around much during the day so it wouldn't be very hard to keep Cannon off video games. Cannon asked today when Phil would be going back to work. He was not happy that dad would be going back to work later today. It will be hard to say good-bye to the Wii, but nice to slowly getting back to a normal day.

The not so great thing about the surgery have been the PAIN! Phil has stopped taking any pain medication and is still able to manage so we feel we are moving in the right direction. Tomorrow these beautiful staples come out, HOORAY! I still don't like taking the bandage off and seeing these in his knee. They said the butterfly bandages would come off, but they haven't yet so they will need to pull them off tomorrow, because I WILL NOT be doing that.

Phil is doing his exercises many times during the day and we have to laugh at his quad. It doesn't really do anything besides quiver and then cramp at the end. It is amazing though at how things are looking better every day. The swelling has gone down a ton (his hair is even growing back)and he can straighten his leg and bring his knee up with his heel pulls. He can do most things by himself now and really only needs me to put on his socks. I only had to get up twice last night and one time was telling the kids to go back to bed because it was only 5:00 (time change doesn't always register to little ones).

Costumes

The kids wanted to show Grandma and Grandpa their cute costumes before getting ready for the trunk-or-treat.

I thought I would have a hard time getting Lyla into her mouse because she was acting afraid of it, but she was happy to put it on. I told her we would put it on and go get some candy so that made it a little more exciting to be a mouse. She didn't even want to take it off once we got home.

We took a bag for her to put her candy in, but she wanted to hold every piece and kept screaming "mine" if we put it in the bag. We have a few things to work on next year.

Cannon got to have a preschool party on Thursday and didn't want to wear his costume because he was feeling silly about being a monkey. We walked in the doors and his little friend Ethan said, "Cool, I love monkeys." Cannon was pretty excited about his costume then and was happy to get it out again for the trunk-or-treat.

My sweet Miya didn't even complain about not getting a new costume and went up to her dress-up stuff and pulled out her old fairy dress and was perfectly happy. We went over to Jamie's house for the Chloe Elementary school halloween parade and everyone from Miya's primary class goes to that school. They were all in the parade and she waved at all of them. Miya didn't have school yesterday and they didn't celebrate halloween at all. I asked Miya what she thought of the parade on the way home because I thought she might feel bad. She just said, "it would have been fun to be in the parade, but they didn't get hot chocolate and apple crisp." She is so good at seeing the positive in things, and thanks Jamie for the good treats that didn't make things so bad!