Daddy's Little Tax Deductions

Todd loves tax time. I get excited to check the mail at Christmas time, he gets excited in January - waiting to see if we got any of the paperwork we need to file our taxes. Todd doesn't get bonuses, so our tax return kind of takes the place of one. It determines where we'll go on vacation, or if we'll go at all. It tells us if we can do a little project on the house, or maybe two. And more recently, if Ella will be staying at private school... When I was pregnant with Dawson, he kept teasing me that I messed up since my due date was January 14th, too late to claim him as a dependent. We got lucky when he arrived in December, and now we have 2 more Rufflings to add so he was happily clicking away on his little calculator. A word of caution though: DO NOT have babies just for the purpose of claiming them for the child tax credit. The cost of raising them/tax credit ratio is not in your favor, I guarantee you won't break even.

I started reading at Twilight and finished at the Break of Dawn

I did it!! I started in November and last week I finally finished the Twilight series and I really loved it. I read the first 3 super fast but was a little slower on the last. I was afraid I was going to hate the ending, but it was perfect. I haven't read a whole lot for pleasure the past several years. College ruined me in that department since I had a sick amount of reading to do every day. And since then, when I do pick up a book to read, it's usually been a pregnancy book, a parenting book or something "serious." So this was a great escape, something that had me heading to my spot on the couch once the kids were tucked into bed. All together it was about 3 thousand pages, yikes! Apparently this series was geared toward teenagers (not that I'd let my teens read it if I had any around) so I'm not sure what that says about me, but I don't care, so there (see how mature I am). Todd kept teasing me and comparing his vampire/werewolf expertise from movies to what was in the book. We'd argue over whose facts were "true." "What do you mean she saw herself in a mirror, vampires can't see their reflection," "Yes they can, what are you talking about!" And so on... I'm a sucker for a good love story and this fits the bill. It's a battle between the heart and mind - do you choose the one who is best for you, but that you don't love as passionately? The hunky werewolf, or the romantic, slender vampire? I was surprised at who I picked....

Random Acts of Cuteness

Just some pictures from the last month or so - in no particular order, for no particular reason other then I think they're cute.

Kindred Spirits

I love Ella, she is such a riot. I miss her now that she is in school everyday. I'm glad we made the decision to do just half-day Kindergarten 'cause I still need her around. One of the things I love most about Ella is that she gets me. We have fun together and she handles my weirdness in stride, and vice versa. One of our favorite things to do is break out into song or dance - some one's gotta keep things interesting around here. Usually we do some sort of duet, and this is our latest. We sing this when the babies are both fussing and crying at the same time. You'll have to channel Ursula for this one, a song from The Little Mermaid has been altered just slightly for our purposes...

Poor unfortunate sooouls, in pain, in need.

This one longing to be fed and that one longing to be changed,

And do I help them? Yes I do.

Last night we were singing this in our deepest, lusty voices to the boys (Todd just shakes his head at this point, he's past the stage of commenting and usually reserves his interjections for our dance moves) and Ella started shaking her shoulders back and forth and said "Mom, I don't have the boobies to shake like Ursula does, but you have the right kind so go ahead, shake 'em." I can't say I appreciate being compared to a sea witch, but if the shoe fits...

Dawson's Ditties

Dawson walking back from Aunt Steph's after borrowing "The Grinch" again...

We typically go out to dinner on Saturday night, it's my night off of K.P. and I look forward to it all week. Sometimes we do pizza or something like that, but I usually opt to get out of the house. So the kids are pretty good at restaurants, which is an important skill for a kid to have if you ask me. But this time things got ugly. Ella and Dawson weren't doing anything wrong per say, but by the end of the meal I think Todd could've used some pills. It went something like this... Ella had to go potty, but of course mentioned this after we had just got all 6 of us settled. So Todd had to get up to let Ella out, then I had to move the car seat sling out of the way and get out, then of course the reverse so Todd could sit back down. I took her to the bathroom, washed hands and then of course it was Todd up again, Mitch out of the way again... So we got all situated for the second time and Dawson's shoe fell off under the table, so Ella, trying to help, crawled under the table to get it. Okay, I'm not a complete germiphobe, but EWWW! So off to wash hands again which of course included more musical chairs. Then Dawson accidentally dropped the silverware out of the napkin, which hit the glass table top with a crash, which led to the awakening of the beast A.K.A Charlie. Then the screaming started. Usually the babies do okay, and I can console them either with toys, nursing, and any other number of scene changes. But this time all heck broke loose, with BOTH of them. So in the middle of the chaos our waitress (poor soul) came to refill our drinks and Ella said "do you know that you should have a soft heart? Because if you let your heart get hardened you'll do bad things." The waitress politely disguised her confusion and then Dawson added "yeah, then yer heart'll be 2 sizes too small yike Da Grinch." Of course we had no business telling anyone anything spiritual at this point since from a spectators perspective (by this point we had attracted a crowd of staring diners), we were eating out with Satan's spawn. Ahh, nothing like an evening out to make cooking and cleaning up dinner look like fun.

Dawson has always been pretty articulate, but lately he's been trading the word "our" for "we" which has led to some interesting sentences. This is my favorite: "we have to wash we hands after we wipe we bottoms, cuz we bottoms have we germs."

Dawson was laying on my chest and asked "what's that sound?" when I told him it was just my heart beating he said "no, I think it's the pipes to yer furnace, they're bein' loud."

Another day, while Dawson was laying on my chest again, he asked what my heart was saying. I said "my heart says Dawson, Dawson..." (I tell Ella that my heart says "Ella, Ella...") - he lifted his head up and said "then I must be makin' a mess in there!"

And of course here's a little something from Todd. After a ruff-housing session he said with a sigh "these kids are going to make me go broke then be the death of me."

Ahoy Landlubbers!

Shiver me timbers, what do you do when your kids' birthdays are 13 days apart AND fall in the same month as your anniversary and Christmas? A double party!! Combining their parties goes a long way toward preserving my sanity (what's left of it). Not sure if we'll be able to pull it off again, I'm expecting Ella to request a girly party before long. But the pirate party was a blast and my favorite part was actually the music! We downloaded the song from the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland then hid Ella's CD player in the treasure chest at the door and had it playing on the porch. I could almost smell the musty water, the seafood entrees being served at The Blue Bayou.... I had fun getting everything ready. From burning the edges of the invitations outside at midnight, to hanging red velvet fabric, "sails" and pirate flags from the ceiling. I always wondered who bought the hideous decorations at thrift stores, I'll tell you who, people who are throwing pirate parties. I was shocked at how much they wanted for some of those awful faux gold knick-knacks, you'd think they would offer to pay me to take it. My mom made the suede loot bags for the kids' favors, I don't have a sewing machine so she offered to make them and they were so cute. I'm not sure the parents appreciated all the candy jewelry and chocolate coins stuffed inside. May have been a rowdy ride home for some folks. The kids had so much fun playing with their buddies, and Dawson thoroughly enjoyed the snacks that were well within reach on the dining room table. The only thing I forgot was to do the Bilge Rat Toss game I'd put together, so now we have a bunch of squishy fake rats roaming around the house. The invitations said "keep yer treasure, these pirates have enough loot" - loosely translated from pirate jargon to English - NO GIFTS, but most of our friends were naughty and brought presents anyway, which was so sweet. So Captain Ella and Deckhand Dawson got more loot to load onto our ship. We ended the evening with cupcakes and ice cream, a perfect celebration for two of me greatest treasures, arggh...

Oh, and thank you Mom and Sis for taking all these pictures!