Manners

Every since Tatum has been old enough to look at books I have had several hard cover girly books on the coffee table. We read these books nearly every time she visits. One of the books was about manners and I never knew how much she listened until one day during Christmas.

I put the books away after Thanksgiving and brought out the Christmas books for her to enjoy. One day during the holidays she said, "Nana, I can't find my manners book." We were at her house when she said that and I thought it was a pretty good memory on her part. I just assumed it was this book because we read it alot and is a great book and the illustrations are amazing.



A few days ago when the Christmas books had long been put away for the year and her other books brought out again she exclaimed, "I found my manners book!" Yes, it too was a manners book that I had forgotten about because it had been put in the coffee table drawer. She was so excited and proceeded to climb onto the couch to read it.





I do believe that reading these books about saying thank you, please, excuse me and etc. she has established very good habits about using good manners. Just give Nana a "big 5" for teaching her something very important.

Annual Leaf Fun!

This is the sixth year I have pictures of the kids playing in the leaves. They just have so much fun racking the leaves into a pile and than running and jumping into them. This year Tatum and Bella had fun too. Bella would race several times around the leaves going a hundred miles an hour and then would just dive into the pile, make a tunnel, and end up on the other side. The boys were a little disturbed with her because she kept messing up their hard work of racking. So, Bella had to go inside the house for awhile.

i-lek'tra-kyoot'

Any of you know what that spells? Maybe Cooper might and Chandler for sure.

Electrocute - a noun - meaning to kill or execute with electricity (from Webster's dictionary)

That is just what Alvin almost did to himself the other day. This is what happened.
You must know that we have too many trees in our front and back yard that sheds too many leaves every winter. So, Alvin has a very strong high amps blower that he dearly loves. On yard days you can always see him using this precious piece of yard equipment.

We have a pool in our backyard and he was blowing the fallen leaves off the cooldeck. The wind was blowing a bit so he stepped back to get the ones that had blown into his already clean area. Two or three steps too many and he backed into the 47 degree swimming pool. His first thought was he was going to die but somehow he was able to throw the blower from his hands on to the cooldeck. That surely saved his life from electrocution. I am so glad you are still with us Alvin.

Happy New Year

For the second New Year's Day activity we rode the light rail to Phoenix. I was thinking this could be our "new tradition" but I am not so sure I can get anybody back on that train again. Last year we went on the 6th day it had opened. It was a very good experience - very clean, smelled very good and moderately busy. Today, it was probably clean enough but the first ride into Phoenix was rather smelly and we had to stand part of the way before we got seats. The ride back was not so crowded and we got seats right away with no smell. But, I still liked it and the kids seemed to like it too.

Our plan this year was to get off in downtown Phoenix and walk to "Cooperstown" which is just south of the Suns arena. Obviously this was Cooper's idea. It is a rather large sports bar with lots of local sports people honored throughout the building. It wasn't very busy; perhaps because of New Year's Day but also no sporting events happening either. In fact, the whole downtown area seemed like a ghost town. Just completely empty but still only a few places open.

We ate our early dinner and walked back to the train stop by Chase field and headed home. A four hour activity that I enjoyed and I hope everyone else did too.










The kids were absolutely wonderful children. Thanks, guys and girl!