Its My Birthday Present to Me

I'm so happy!*

Sam has a new favorite thing to do. He counts to 10. All. the. time. He wakes up counting, he lulls himself to sleep counting, he greets me with counting (and will bop anyone who dares to try to count with him), and the one and only way I can keep him even a little bit quiet in Sacrament Meeting is by writing "1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10" overandoverandover. Whenever he's sitting on my lap while I'm at the computer, he either names the letters or, shocker!, counts the numbers. So the other night I opened up good ol' Photobooth and caught him in action.

Please enjoy (note that the 2nd and 3rd times through he's saying "shee-shoo"--zero--because my computer is defective and doesn't have a "10" key):

Another current obsession of Sam's is any movie made by Leapfrog. We call them all "The Talking Frog Show," but we have a few of them. Well, there's this one (it has a real name, but I don't know what it is, and I sure as heck ain't getting up to go look) that has a song about punctuation. Woo! We sure know how to have a good time 'round here! So the song goes "Punc-punc, punc-punctuation...something something...big finish...YEAH!" And Sam. Oh Sam. Really just about my favorite thing right now is hearing him sing this. So this video is my attempt to get him to sing it for the camera. It took a little doing. There is about a minute I didn't include in the clip because all he was doing was...wait for it...counting.

Please pay special attention to the end when he gives the thumbs-up while saying "YEAH!" He is still a thumbs-upping novice, and he likes to check his work.

Also, I have to point out that Sam has both a lisp and a wonderfully husky lil singing voice. Those are two of the top reasons I don't ship him home to Grandma some days. (We just won't mention that, while either grandma would surely take him, they would just as surely ship him back promptly.)



*If you can correctly name the movie I'm quoting here, well, then I knew there was a reason I've always liked you so much!

Arabia: Old, New, and...Scandinavian?

Greetings from the Arabian peninsula! I managed to get internet connectivity long enough to post a few pictures.

Predating the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia by at least a century, this is the facade of a building that is part of a huge renovation project in a place called Dirayah, north of Riyadh, which was the original home of the Saudi family.

A much newer mosque nearby.


This very modern building, is comprised of a giant mall on the first three floors (the top floor of which is for women only), offices, and a restaurant in the main part of the tower, and the Four Seasons Hotel on the prongs of the "bottle opener."

A view of Riyadh from the sky-bridge on the "bottle opener."

A popular site downtown, the Masmak Castle, or Qasr Al-Masmak is the site of a battle where Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud returned to the region and took it by force, marking the beginning of what became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

When you have a lot of money--I mean a lot of money--you can buy whatever you want. You can drive your Rolls-Royce or Bentley to your palaces and castles, but you must have an ergonomic and comfortable way to furnish the lavish real estate, found here:

Because I Want You to Be as Happy As I Am Right Now

Today we went to a Halloween party. The younger three children dressed up. Thanks to Lydia and her dress-up box, I had to spend neither money nor effort on their costumes. Megan wanted to be an angel, and Lydia had a perfect white poofy dress for it. Megan was thrilled. And then she saw that there was also a silver star wand. So Megan is a fairy. Emma is a 50's girl. She still wants me to try to put together a Kit (the American Girl Doll) costume for the school party next week, but I'm thinking that I'm going to try to talk her into staying with the 50's costume. I'm thinking that promising her that she can wear make-up might just do the trick. Sam is wearing a gallabeya--traditional Egyptian clothing--that belonged to Lydia's son. All of them are very cute, but I will confess that Sam in his costume was my greatest source of joy today. Irrational amounts of joy, really.

Kevan snapped a couple of pics of the be-costumed ones on our way out the door, and I took several pictures of all of them at the party, but wasn't really happy with how any of the pictures I took came out, so I figured I would just wait until next week to show you their costumes. I hadn't seen any that Kevan had taken...until tonight when I emptied my camera onto my computer and started looking through the pictures.

There was one shot in particular that just cannot wait until next week. I have to share it right away so that you can have an even better day than I hope you are already having.

Now my joy is complete:

Why I Highly Recommend Not Being an Only Child

Exhibit A: So that you don't have to play board games with your children. Chutes and Ladders was out before this one. (Is there a worse game on the planet than Chutes and Ladders? I think that is only a game you give to the children of people you don't like.)Exhibit B: So that they have someone else to jump on.
Exhibit C: You know how kids like to sit on you and squish you and hold your face while they talk to you and wiggle a lot while they're doing it so that their bony little behinds* dig a hole straight through your flesh to your femur? Well, if you have siblings--your kids do it to them!
Ok, here's the back story: In July, I got an e-mail from my sister Emily saying, "Hey, I think David's in Egypt." Ok, more back story: I have this brother named David whom, while not technically my brother anymore (his mom and my dad used to be married), I still consider to be my brother. But aside from occasional e-mail forwards and intermittent Christmas cards, we had mostly lost touch, until this e-mail from Emily. So, to recap: she says, "I think David's in Egypt." So I e-mail Dave, "Are you in Egypt? Cuz {sic} I'm in Egypt," and he writes back, "Yes, I'm in Egypt, why are you in Egypt?" My thoughts exactly! Turns out he works for G.E. (which I knew) and had been working in Alexandria all summer supervising the building of a power plant (which I did not know). He was able to get away from work one weekend in August and came for a quick visit. Though, hello? Of all the places to meet up? Egypt? Go figure. Anyway, he just moved his family from Texas to Oman, where he'll be building another plant, but G.E. sent him back to the Egypt project until the end of Ramadan, and it just so worked out that his work there ended a full day before his flight home, so he came and spent the downtime with us. We went out to dinner, I made him a breakfast that included neither Pepsi nor Snickers (his usual fare when he was working here), the kids smothered him, fun was had by all.

One thing that I suspect Emma will want me to tell you is that she beat him at Clue. David, see, is really smart. Really really smart. I wish we had grown up together because I so would have made him do my math homework for me. That way I would have learned as much as I did, but I would have had better grades to show for it. But I digress. David = smart, and also = likes to win games. The man doesn't let anybody win, no matter how young and cute. So for Emma to win Clue was quite the feat on her part. Were she here she would also want me to let you know that she beat him at 2 out of 3 games of Uno the next morning. Since I am here, I will inform you that David is a sucker. But then, see, that's the beauty of having siblings! Your kids can sucker them into doing whatever they want with them (see also: indoor jungle gym, video games, sugar), and it works out great for everyone--kids get quality time with uncle, uncle gets to play with kids, you get left. alone.

Just for our viewing pleasure, this is what the rest of us were up to whilst the game-o-rama was going on: Jess was updating her ipod, and Kevan, well, you see that look on his face? That's right: Guitar Face.
Sam was trying out his favorite facial expression. And his shirt, it ain't just whistlin' the proverbial Dixie.
Sam went with Kevan the next morning when he took David to the airport and then for the next week every time we got in the car, Sam would say, "Bave 'ight back?" And to keep him from crying we would have to say, "Yes, Dave will be right back." Hopefully either we'll be able to make it to Oman or they'll be able to make it to Egypt before our year here is through, since, I mean, c'mon! It makes too good of a story not to! Oh, and it would be great to see them :)

*If you are a Lewis, this is more commonly referred to as "beeny bohind," following cousin Matthew Beale's pronunciation. At least I think I remember right that it was Matthew. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Hey Everybody, It's Family Night

That title is for Kristen, since she's the only reason I even know that song exists. Thanks. a. lot.

So tonight for Family Home Evening we had a little bit of fun. Kevan and the kids had an Uno-athon. That's where they play as many rounds of Uno as they can before we ship them off to bed. The kids looove them the Uno. Kevan likes Uno just fine. Me? Me no likey. So my job was to spin the tunes. I will neither confirm nor deny that every other song was from Wicked.

I was also tasked with Sam control. This is akin to crowd control, but harder. Tonight it involved dancing around to aforementioned tunes and throwing paper airplanes. Sam is sort of obsessed with paper airplanes. And you may not know this about Jacob, but he's a Paper Airplane Master. He is Sam's pusher. A frequent sight at our house is Sam running to Jacob with a piece of paper in hand hollering, "Heh-pane! Heh-pane!" And before you know it, you're getting bonked in the eye by Sam's plane.

Here are a few shots of the fun. As you can see, Emma and Megan take their Uno-ing very seriously.
For some reason Emma wanted me to take a picture of her 40 billion cards. I don't think she won that round.
Megan wanted a picture, too. No, I don't know what Emma is doing.
I may be wrong about this, but do you ever get the feeling that Emma's a bit of a, I don't know... ham? No? Me neither.
This is her celebration following a long-awaited win.
Occasionally Sam would bring a little of our fun over to theirs. Also he needed Jake to make him a few more planes.
Mostly he was just happy to keep to himself, tossing the planes about. I love his expression here.
Airborne!
Sometimes the other kids came over to toss a few themselves. (There's a plane aloft in the top right third of this pic.)
Or dance. At least I think that's what she's doing.
I kept trying to get Sam to show me his plane, but that proved a little difficult. I have a lot of shots like this.
And this. He is adept at moving away the second I press the button.
See?
And then there's this new thing we've been encountering with Sam. Most kids who, when they catch sight of a camera, smile or give some one next to them bunny ears or, well, Emma. But not Sam. No, he does this:
He thinks it is truly hilarious.

Finally I got a good shot. No, it is not fuzzy. You're just wiggly.
Now this one is fuzzy, but I'm including it because it makes me laugh. This picture was taken at the exact same moment that the camera got fwapped by Sam's plane.
Anytime you'd like to join us for a little FHE, come on over. Be prepared though--to survive with this crowd you need to have a taste for Uno, know all the words to Defying Gravity* (and have no qualms about jumping on the table to properly sing the end of it)(not that that happened or anything), and/or fold a mean paper airplane.

*High on my list of Things I Love About Megan is that she calls this song "Flying Off the Handlebars." If you don't know what that means, listen to the first line of it.

This time I do have a picture

So last week we're driving in the car (why, yes, we do finally have our car, thanks for asking!), one of the kids says something the others find hilarious, and they crack up. Once the laughter dies down, Megan speaks up.

"It's not funny, so I'm nooot laughin'!"

That cracks me up, the kids want to know what's so funny, I repeat it, we all laugh. Once that laughter dies dies down, we hear from Megan again.

"I'm still not laughin'."