- How to make cute kids cry -

Ever wondered how to make some cute kids cry? We know how....
What you do is you take them bowling. Then you only let them play one game.
Ouch, aren't we the meanest ever? When they're hastily prevented from starting a whole new game, they realize their game is over and they all start to cry. All at once.
I don't know if I'd suggest trying it--it's a little traumatic!


We went bowling with our good friends from church--they have a 6 yr old boy and a 4 yr old girl who Max likes to play with. They had a blast bowling. I can't blame them for having so much fun, bumpers make a big difference! There's a chance I might've gotten higher that a 50 (ouch) with bumpers...
Anyway, we just bowled one game, but we had the kids and adults on separate lanes. The kids finished much faster than we did, and were devastated when their game was over. It was a good thing we were paying attention or else they would've started up a new game without anybody even knowing. It's too bad we couldn't play longer, but bowling sure is expensive these days. It doesn't seem like it used to be, does it?
Some of the kid's balls went soooo slow, one of the balls the four year old threw was so slow that the sweeper thing came down before her ball got to the pins. It was pretty funny. I can't figure out how their throws were that slow but they still finished before we did!
Imagine the below pictures playing out over a duration of about five minutes. (click to enlarge, as always)

It was fun. Hopefully we get to do it again soon. We're saving up our pennies.

+ Some Stuff +

So I'm thinking that maybe I'll put up a few book reviews/recommendations on this blog. I do a good amount of reading, and maybe there's somebody out there that might be interested in what I dig up--maybe. But more than my reading I especially want to give youguys heads up on some great kids books--good old classics and new ones both. I know I have friends out there with babies that will soon be little kids, and little kids LOVE good books!

So to start with I'd like to present to you, Snoozers by Sandra Boynton.

I would actually recommend anything and everything by Sandra Boynton. She makes some of the best board books that exist. They're all great. But Snoozers is a current favorite at our house. I love it for a few reasons. 1. because the illustrations are so funny 2. because it's 7 stories that are each just an open page long. 3. some of it rhymes 4. it's all about going to bed
5. one of the pages is just a contents page 6. it's short
Max likes it because he gets to pick the order we read the stories in from the contents page (we always just read them in order even though he insists on dictating the order) he loves the illustrations, and several of the stories have kid participation parts. Also I think his favorite part is that there's a song at the end. A really weird silly song. Really weird.
So if you want a quick fun read that'll make your kid laugh and yawn before bed check this one out! If you click on the title it'll take you to amazon.com's page for this book.

A special extra. Several of you have probably already seen this today because it was featured on a couple of different blogs, but I thought this was a really cool site.
It's called Freerice.com. Click here to go to it.
It's fun and interesting. It's like a huge vocabulary quiz. And every vocab word you pick the right definition for, this site donates 20 grains of rice to "the hungry" of the world. They have some details and explanations on the site as to where the rice goes and where it comes from.
I sat down for a few minutes earlier today and got up to a level 47 vocabulary rating--can anybody beat that??

} A Walk {

Here's somebody taking somebody else for a walk.  You tell me---who's walking who?

We had a couple of unseasonably warm days this week, which made us long for spring.  It's too bad since we're really just at the beginning of winter!  Hopefully we'll get some more good snowstorms in the next little while to make it all worth it.  We've got to take advantage of the awesome sledding hill in our neighborhood before we move away.  But still, I wouldn't complain if spring decided to come next week.

>> What kind of a jerk would <<

...steal somebody's outside Mama Fish*?
Remember our mama fish that lived on our porch?

We got her from our neighbors down the street. They had her sitting on their porch, and Max admired her every time we walked or drove by. He called their house the "Mama Fish House." One day we were walking by and the neighbors were outside. We introduced ourselves and then told them we thought their fish was great. They promptly gave it to us. Max was thrilled. That was probably back in May or June.
A couple of weeks ago I realized there was something wrong with the porch. I couldn't put my finger on it, until I finally realized that the Mama Fish was missing! I searched the front yard because we'd had a pretty strong wind storm that week, and I thought and hoped maybe she was somewhere in the yard. Nope. Kris searched when he got home too. No dice. She was long gone.

I was hoping Max wouldn't notice. But the other day he and Kris took a walk, and walked by what once was the mama fish house, which of course made Max think of her. He was pretty upset when they got home and he realized she was gone. I didn't have much to tell him, I told him we'd keep our eyes out for her and I hoped we'd find her! (I also told him maybe she had to go somewhere warm for the winter--I don't think that was the best thing to tell him, but I was at a total loss!!)

What kind of jerk steals a Mama Fish off someone's porch, seriously! Plus we had a whole bunch of other things on the porch, windchimes and stuff hanging up and everything else is still there. Isn't that weird?
So if anybody sees a patchwork Mama Fish swimming in the sea near you, please send her our way. There's a little boy here that would really like to see her!

***(special note: for those of you who don't know, Max has a stuffed animal fish that he calls the Mama Fish. She's been his best friend since Christmas 2004. You can actually see her in the 2nd picture of this post)

= New Additions =

I got to go shopping the day after Christmas to a few of my favorite stores and found some wonderful things at a wonderful 50% off. It was great. I was only sad that I had to put them away and that I couldn't do Christmas all over again just to show them off. Check out a few of them below.
Just click to see it closer if you feel the need.
I also was at Target earlier this week and realized all their Christmas stuff was 75% off. Wow! Who can pass of a box of Christmas lights for 50 cents? Not me, that's for sure. We're so set for next year.
And finally, my favorite new additions are two ornaments sent to us by people we love.
Kris's dad made the wonderful guitar ornament, which I think is so cool. My mom made the gorgeous bead snowflake. Something fun about that is that I found most of the beads she used at a little shop just a block away from my house. Then I sent them to her and she put that masterpiece together. We are so lucky to have such creative talent all through our families.
I love hanging these kind of ornaments on the tree, to me it's like hanging love up there. I know that sounds super cheesy, but it's how I feel.
I'll be sad to take the tree down this weekend, but it's time. Adios Christmas, hello yucky cold winter. Good thing we have a couple of birthdays to celebrate, they should tide us over into spring!

-> The Day itself <-

It's taken me so long to post about Christmas because I have a whole bunch of fun pictures of Christmas morning, and I was trying to figure out a way I could share a lot of them with you without the post ending up about 12 feet long. I think I've got it figured out, you'll have to tell me what you think once you get to them.
Now to the story:
We expected that Max would wake up pretty early Christmas morning, as he usually does every single other morning. However he slept in. At least an hour past when he usually gets up. It was really nice. But then we couldn't get him out of bed. He's funny because a lot of the time he calls to us to ask permission to get out of bed. He didn't used to do that, but now he does. It's funny. So anyway, he called out and said "Is it sunny?" Which is Max-speak for is it time to get up. We said yes and he should get out of bed and see if Santa came. He didn't get out of bed. Kris went into his room and said "Do you think that Santa came?" Max said no. He didn't think so. We were both like, "huh?" So weird. So anyway, once we finally got him out of bed and into the living room he was excited to see that Santa had eaten all his cookies and left him a note. He enjoyed his stocking too. Among other things he got a ball that's supposed to be easy to catch, and an orange. They both turned into Katamari balls almost immediately. Good job Santa!

Then we moved into the kitchen to eat what I'm told is the traditional Hendricks family Christmas breakfast. Captain Crunch with crunchberries. Or "Christmas cereal" as Max likes to call it.



Then, energized by all the vitamins and minerals in our breakfast we went back to tackle the presents.
I'm going to do my best to keep this post from turning into a list of the fabulous presents we received. Suffice it to say, our dear far away families took very good care of us, and we felt very well loved.
One of the things I really love about gift giving on Christmas is the opportunity to really think about the people we buy gifts for, and an excuse to spend money on them. It's usually really fun for me. I had a good time finding gifts for everybody this year, and it was obvious that others had done a lot of thinking about us. So fun!
So we went ahead and opened many fun presents, while taking numerous breaks for Max to play with his cool new toys.
Click on the pictures below to see them bigger if you want to.
Kelly and Lechelle came by right after lunch and we got to hang out for a while and swap gifts. It's fun to have them close, we always enjoy getting to be with them on special occasions. They gave Max a harmonica. It's almost driven me insane already, but not quite. He loves it and calls it a "furmonica."

After they left we turned on the video chat and got to watch everybody in my family open up the gifts we had gotten for them. It was fun to get to see that, it made us feel lots closer than we actually are, that's for sure.


After the chat we finished up our gifts so that we could get ready to go to our friends' house to have dinner. It was really really hard to tear Max away from his new loves.
My favorite thing that I got from Kris was an awesome ring that he made for me himself. It is so cool! I can't believe I get to wear something that 's so pretty that he made himself. I'm trying to encourage him to put up a post about how he made it sometime soon. We'll see.
It turns out this was a good Christmas for me as far as jewelry was concerned, check it out. The ring is in the lower left corner:

Between Kris my mom and Char I want for nothing!

We had a great time at dinner with our friends, and then headed home to go to bed. We were all pretty exhausted.
Thanks to all our family for all the hard work they did making us feel special and cared for. We really felt it. We missed all of you but we knew you were thinking of us!
I'll leave you with my favorite shot of the day. It's Max reading the directions to his new marble set very carefully and seriously. He "read" them like that for probably about ten minutes.

And to all a good night!

*Crazy-ness*

I can't believe it, but sunday was Max's last day in nursery at church. Ever.
It's about time really, because since his b-day is in February he's had to stay in nursery a year longer than a lot of kids that are a similar age. He's one of the very oldest kids in there, and by far the biggest.
One of the girls in our ward told me that when we first brought him in she thought that for sure he needed to be in primary, she thought he was like 5! That's a little bit of an exaggeration, but he is such a tall strong substantial guy that it looks funny for him to be in the nursery with all the little babies.

Here he is on his last day.
I am a little concerned about him coming in to primary though, because I'm one of the counselors in there and I often have to teach the lessons. We've had the new sunbeams in for the first few minutes of the meeting the last couple of weeks to get them used to it, and he can't stay in his chair. It's like he and I are magnets, I'm the bigger magnet, and he can only hold out for so long before the magnetism smashes him into me. I had to put him back in his chair probably 10 times in about 10 minutes on sunday, but by the end of the 10 minutes he was doing a little better.
I guess it'll just have to work out. I am glad that we'll be together, it could be really fun. I just hope he can behave, I'd love to be proud rather than be embarrassed!!
Congratulations on graduation Max, it's just the beginning! I just hope you don't miss the snacks and toys too much....sometimes growing up isn't all it's cracked up to be.

::Christmas Eve::

I just love Christmas Eve. It's such a great magical sort of day. We had a pretty good one this year. We started it out by visiting the gym, and then we went home and cleaned the house in preparation for the big day. After that Kris had to do some studying and Max and I hung out for a while. We were planning to go for a late lunch to one of our favorite Italian restaurants in town. We drove out there only to find out that they were closed! I guess that's what we get trying to go to a small family owned place. We were disappointed, and went back home to regroup. Luckily we got home just in time to meet some friends from the ward who dropped by with delicious Christmas treats. After we visited with them for a while we headed down to the Plaza to get burgers.
This is us waiting in the car while Kris ran into the grocery store to grab rolls for Christmas dinner.

Burgers were good, but Max had a tough time concentrating. The fact that his meal came in a little red wagon didn't help with the concentration, but did for sure add to the festive atmosphere of the evening.

You can see from this picture that monkey (oh whoops, I mean SOCK monkey, I get in trouble for that all the time) also came with us to dinner. He comes with us most places lately.
After dinner we headed home where Max opened up his Christmas Eve PJs and his last advents present. I have to say I'm really really pleased with how the advents presents turned out. They were really exciting for him and I think even helped him get a better idea of the passage of days in general. Also, the Playmobil nativity was great, I think it really helped him relate to the story. So I'm happy with how it turned out. (Oh yeah, except that the day after Christmas at bedtime he was very upset that he didn't have a "number present" to open. That was a little tough to explain.)
We read the Christmas story in the scriptures and then acted it out with the Playmobil.



After that we read the nativity pop up book that's a classic from when I was growing up (I was so excited when I found the book at a used book store a few years ago).
Then Max put out Santa's milk and cookies (yum) and hit the sack. Nice and early. Then we had the rest of the evening all to ourselves, just the way we like it!

We somehow convinced Sultan not to eat Santa's goods.
More Christmas to come!! I'm sure I'll finish with the reporting sometime before Easter rolls around.

...M.A.X...

We were driving in the car today and suddenly Max said from the back seat, "HEY!! M,A,X, on that bus!!"
See below:
And there it was. I'm impressed!! I call that reading. What a smarty pants! And how weird would it be to suddenly read your name on the side of a bus? Where's the Ginna bus? How is that fair?