As I said in a much earlier post about the “no peeing” sign, when Aliya asks me a question, I usually answer it very honestly because I always want her to come to me with her questions. But nobody’s perfect, right?

When we were putting up the Christmas tree Ben cooked a beef tenderloin for dinner. When we took it out of the package it turned out to be two long skinny pieces of beef that had been marinated. Aliya was like, “Ew! What’s that?!” I told her that it was cow tongue. She said that she didn’t like cow tongue and I told her that it’s a Christmas tradition that I always cook cow tongue when we put up the tree. She said, “Did I eat it last year?” I assured her that she did and promptly forgot all about it. I guess she must have eaten it because I didn’t notice her hiding it under her broccoli or feeding it to the dog.

A couple of weeks later we were on the way to school and she started talking about traditions. I think they had been talking about them in class. She said, “I know one of our traditions! We always eat cow tongue when we’re putting up the Christmas tree!” I laughed so hard. The poor thing. I hope she didn’t throw that one out during the class discussion.
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I can’t believe this. I was doing end-of-year cleaning on the blog and I found a draft of a post about our annual weekend at camp with the Libbys! I still can’t believe that I never posted these pictures but I’ve searched the posts and I guess I never completed it. I’m sorry Libbys!!!

Written in September:

I’ve finally recovered sufficiently from the 2nd annual Libderrazak weekend at camp to post the photos. Actually…considering that we packed 11 people and a dog into 600 square feet for 4 days, there were only a few minor altercations and nobody threw up this year which is a definite improvement over last year. The kids did a lot of fishing and kayaking, the grown-ups mostly sat around and drank sangria. For me the highlight of each day was R & R…rest and reading. We had a really fun scavenger hunt which was won by the all-male team of Jarod, Adlani, and Ben. Ben learned all about nature, like what moss and ferns are and where to find worms. It was a great time and yes, Libby’s…you can come back next year!

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It’s been such a hectic month that there are lots of things I haven’t had time to post on the blog. One of those things is a huge THANK YOU!!!! to all of my coworkers, friends, and family members who participated in the holiday gift drive for the Pathways Family Shelter. A few weeks ago we had brunch at our house so everyone could drop off their gifts and get everything wrapped. I was overwhelmed with the generosity of everyone involved…I had to go back to the shelter and ask if they had any extra kids because we had so many people willing to be sponsors. The grand total was 32 kids and 14 parents who received gifts and stocking stuffers (small gifts and gift cards for the parents). I sincerely appreciate everyone’s efforts to make this happen.

Some photos from brunch:

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After our trip on the Polar Express we drove over to Portland to see Uncle Josh & Auntie Rachael. They had no electricity so they came over to our hotel for a little while and then we went out for Mexican. The next day we went to the Children’s Museum and had Thai take-out at their apartment and visited for a few hours. We drove home that night by way of Petco, where we had to hunt down some pee remover because Norah peed on Auntie Rachael’s couch. Simple Solution pee remover rocks!!

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