Funny Kids and Strange Traditions II

Funny Kids:
Sabrina was listening to Playhouse Disney and This Old Man, he played one... came on. She thought they were singing "Disco Man". Now we always sing "Disco man" instead. If you listen to it, it kind of sounds like that.

Elisa wasn't feeling well, but decided she would go to the store with me. She was sitting in the van with Sabrina before we left the driveway. Sabrina dropped something and it rolled too far away for her to reach so I asked Elisa to get it. She had to unbuckle and get it. Then we started leaving and she said, "I always have to do things when I'm sick." But she quickly said, "Oh, you have to do everything when you are sick, Mom. It's not that bad for me." (I guess that's more of a sweet thing, than a funny one.)

Sabrina asked me when we were going to the potato thingy in Salt Lake. I have a rule that we aren't supposed to use the word "thing" if we don't know what we want to say. They have to describe it. So she said, "You know the roads where there are lots of roads and some are up high." It took me a few seconds to figure it out, but then I said, "You mean the spaghetti bowl?" Yep, that was it. She knew it was food related.

I don't have any funny things about Alex right now because of my bad memory, so I'll say something good. I went to his midterm parent-teacher conferences yesterday and he is doing really well in all of his classes. His highest is a 105.05% in English and his lowest is 93.96% in pre-algebra. His band teacher said he is doing great with the trombone and he even asked if he could play the Darth Vader theme song (or something like that) for the class after he figured out how to play it on his own at home. His pre-algebra teacher said that maybe he should be in algebra instead, but usually only 8th and 9th graders take it. He always tells me the class is too easy. I wish I had that talent! His English teacher said that Alex should take honors English next year and that he scored second highest in the school on the reading level test. All my children love to read--at least for now. I won't brag about what every teacher said, but it was so nice to hear how great he is doing. Last year was a bit of a struggle for some reason.


Strange traditions:

Every night after Alex, Elisa and Sabrina say their prayers, I always sing a song to the tune of Frère Jacques. The words are: "Buenas noches. Buenas noches. Te amo. Te amo. Besos y abrazos. Besos y abrazos." And then kissing sounds instead of the bell sounds. I made it up when Alex and Elisa were little and still do it every night. Then I ask them to tell me the best and worst things about their day. They don't like to go to bed until we do both of them.

This is one the kids don't do as often now as they used to. When we used to be stopped at a red light they would chant, "Verde, verde", which means "green, green". Then if we were coming up to a light that we couldn't see yet they would chant, "Stay green if you are" over and over.

In order to encourage us to show love to each other and serve each other, I started a tradition a few years ago. I have a stuffed bear holding a box that has a lid. If you have the bear, you do something nice for someone in the family, write them a nice note and put it in the box with the bear. Then you put the bear on the person's bed. It is fun to see them do things for each other and to be so happy when they get to read the letter to them and fun for me too.