A List for Friday

• Signs your children are growing up in the age of technology:

Caedmon loves to draw pictures, but he will often ask if you want just a picture, or a picture and an audiobook.  If you go the audiobook route, it means you are possessed with infinite patience and/or have twenty minutes of your time to sacrifice to a meandering story about super heroes and lightning coming out of fingertips and hot lava.  There is always hot lava.

Recently when he posed this choice to me, I went the audiobook route.  I don't really remember why I did this to myself, but I'm fairly certain guilt was involved.  Caedmon drew his picture full of swords and lightning and stick figures with disturbingly large fists.  He wrote a bunch of random letters and a few short words on the reverse of the piece of paper; this was the audiobook portion.  Then he brought the paper over to me, allowed me to view his masterpiece, then flipped it over and prepared to recite a tale of lava and derring-do.

Before he began, however, he said, "Oh, wait, there's an Ad before the audiobook can start.  But you can Skip it if you want to."

Methinks we've been watching too many YouTube videos.

Caedmon loves audiobooks, but will still deign to listen to a paper version.

• Signs your children have fantastic teachers:

In Atticus's kindergarten class they have this thing called "magic words."  There is a list of a few magic words every week, and every time the kids hear or use one of these words, they are to tug on their ear.

Atticus thinks this is pretty much the greatest thing ever.  I think this is pretty much the greatest thing ever, because it has him using words he didn't previously, all while wiggling his earlobe with his fingers and looking meaningfully at me with a smile:  "He is such a RASCAL," *smile wiggle wiggle*, or "I was FRIGHTENED the frisbee was lost," *smile wiggle wiggle*.  

I love the way he says these words in an announcer's voice, enunciating each consonant, but there was the week I learned I overuse the word "finally"; I worried our son's ear was going to fall clean off from all the tugging he had to do.

Atticus also has a fantastic coach, although it isn't his ear that sees plenty of action during soccer- it's his tongue, which evidently must bask in the light of day for him to successfully kick the ball.

Click to embiggen all these to see his Soccer Tongue.

Two Soccer Tongues!

And here's Atticus and Derek, looking very... coachly.  I say if "kingly" is a word, "coachly" can be, too.

• Signs your family has faces more suited to those strange mugs with faces than to a glossy magazine cover:

You know, this kind:

Looks like a Crisler

These are the faces our family makes whilst playing mini-golf together:

Neither Adelaide nor I are able to remain composed when we make a bad putt.  And when you ask Caedmon to make a "pirate face," because we were playing at Pirate's Cove?

I Should Frame These Anyway

All I wanted was a nice photo of Adelaide smiling with Table Rock lake and a slice of the Ozarks in the background.

Instead she found a big bug on her arm.

Fancy, Fancy, Fancy

The reason behind last week's vacation was the celebration of Derek's folks' 40th wedding anniversary (Congratulations to the Crislers!  The other Crislers, I mean!).  While exploring possible ways to celebrate, they asked Derek and his sister if they could gather their families and meet them in Branson at this super-fancy house the family always stays at while visiting the Ozarks.  (They belong to a vacation club/ time share-type thingy.)  For our part, we hemmed and hawed and thought about it for exactly two seconds before saying, "UM, YES YES YES A MILLION TIMES YES."  Because we love that house.  (Actually, it's a couple rows of duplexes on the edge of Table Rock lake, but the're pretty much identical inside and I hate to call them duplexes because what comes to my mind when the word "duplex" is uttered is most assuredly not what these are.  They're like duplexes on steroids who've been assaulted by an interior decorator.  We still just call them "the Branson house," and everyone in the family knows what we mean.  Also, is the plural of duplex actually duplexes?  Duplices?  Who came up with that word, anyway?  I assume it's derived from "complex," so a complex of two would be a duplex?  I'm sure it's driving you crazy, too.)

Anyway.  I didn't take as many photos while we there as I meant to- I never do- but here are some of our Favorite Things, Branson Edition.

See that?  Not Mr. Incredible; well, that is Mr. Incredible, but that's not the point- nor is that awesome poster of Kevin Costner in Dances With Wolves.  I have no idea who picked which movie posters would go in here, but rest assured it's extremely random.

OH MY GOSH.  It's not random at all.  They're all camping/fishing/wildlife related, continuing the theme of the rest of the house.  This is the kind of thing everyone else probably got about five visits ago, but has just occurred to me.  It's also the kind of thing that prompts Derek to say, "You really shouldn't tell people these things."  Which could really be one of the motifs of our marriage.

ANYWAY.  So that is Mr. Incredible on the screen and the entirely-appropriate Dances With Wolves movie poster next to him, but the point is...

...there's a movie room in the basement!  Now, maybe some of you have movie rooms in your actual homes, but we definitely do not, so this kind of thing is intensely exciting for peasants like us.  

Another favorite is the pool that's a short hike up the hill.  Atticus and Adelaide were afraid to even be carried out to the edge at first.

You really should click to embiggen.

It's one of those pools that appears to spill right into the lake, but when you swim out to the edge and peer over you find it empties into a trough.  Not like a feed trough (man, words are hard today), but a nice tiled trough with a pump and drain and probably something else to make the whole contraption work.  There was a hot tub that did the same thing.  Lots of fanciness here.  

We went mini golfing a couple times.  The boys loved it.  Adelaide brought a book along to read instead.  I was okay with that.  

The first course had a pirate theme, with animatronic pirates in the building where you paid and collected your clubs and balls.  Atticus took one step in, freaked out, and had to be slowly coaxed back in.  (It also probably didn't help that when he first looked in the door, he saw a big, wooden pirate, asked Derek if there were any more pirates in there, and Derek jokingly said, "Yeah, right after there," gesturing toward to the two people working behind the counter, upon which Atticus shot out the door.)  He loved the golfing, but was scared enough to skip the hole situated in a cave with a pirate prison cell.  

We don't have any photos of our zip lining adventures; they took plenty of digital photos of us, some of which were pretty entertaining to behold, but we thought THIRTEEN DOLLARS PER PICTURE was a teensy bit steep.  And highway robbery.

It was good times all around.  Now it's back to a normal schedule, especially with school starting Monday.  I'm not ready for Adelaide to go back to school.  She decided last night that she is.  The end.