The Minton Family.com

The title pretty much says it. He’s 3 1/2 now, and trying to figure out if he’s the man around here. He’s talking back quite a bit, manhandles Jonah at every opportunity, and is testing the waters with Lana. Jada is still so much stronger he can only take her with a blind shot but if I were her, I’d be on the lookout.

The other day, he picked up a whiffle ball bat and Jonah ran and hid under the train table. That tells you what Jonah thought was going to happen next. I took the bat from him, but not without a struggle.

Tonight, he popped 3 or 4 keys off of Jackie’s (relatively new) laptop. He broke one of them, and I couldn’t get another one to work after popping it back on, so I went ahead and ordered a new one. After shipping it was about $45. Let’s just hope I can get it changed without breaking something else. If there’s one type of computer I hate working on physically, it’s a laptop.

“Gas Day”, days where I get gas, have turned into “Gas and Doughnut Day”. I like the kids to have little things to look forward to, little surprises and such, and the last couple of times I’ve stopped to get gas on the way to work, I’ve gone in and gotten the boys doughnuts. They of course love that, and while I don’t get myself any, I do love hearing how excited they are all the way to daycare over something as simple as doughnuts.

Levi and Jonah have been saying more and more funny things lately. I can’t remember them all, but this morning, Levi was singing “Cars! Cars!” followed by what I assume to be the rest of the song, but I couldn’t understand it. After 4 times in, Jonah begins saying “Lebi, ‘ats noying”. I think that’s hilarious.

Last night, Jackie was correcting Levi and the way he says certain letters. As he came walking over to her, she told him to say something and shaking his hand left & right, he said “I can say it, don’t worry about it.”. We were cracking up.

10 new kid videos were just uploaded, as well as family pictures, and pictures Jada and Lana took. Be sure to check them out!

When Jada was in kindergarten, kids in her class started losing their teeth. Jada, however, did not. She has been waiting patiently for over 2 years to lose a tooth. She will be 8 in April! It has been wiggly since right before Christmas and today it finally twisted out! It happened while she was at school. She was pushing it with her tongue and another student told her to twist it. She did and out it came! She was very excited to show me when I picked her up from school. Bill could barely get in the door and she was rushing to show him!

Lana has a wiggly tooth as well. She really wanted to beat Jada and lose hers first, but it just didn’t happen. She has been wiggling it like crazy. I suspect it will be out by the end of the week as well!

Jada posted a story about it on her blog, read it and send her some comments!

On our way home from Wal-Mart, the kids were being very loud and driving us nuts.  We repeatedly asked them to be quiet.  Levi kept making a high-pitched weird sound.  Here is the conversation that occurred as a result:

Billy:  Levi, do you want me to spank you?

Levi:  You can’t

Billy:  Yes, I can!

Levi: No, you can’t.  You are to far away.  You can’t reach me!

When do the kids get smarter than the parents?  I thought we’d at least make it past 3!

We had a great Christmas break.  We had dinner at home on Christmas Eve and the kids were thrilled to get to eat off of “real” plates and not the plastic ones.  Then we listened to a recording by Grandpa of “Twas the Night Before Christmas”.  Jonah wasn’t overly interested in sitting and listening…he wanted to open his “pesants”.  We all got lots of goodies from each other.  Jada and Lana were very excited to get American Girl dolls from Grandpa and Gram.  Then it was off to bed to await Santa.  Surprisingly, the kids didn’t wake up until almost 8 am!  Lana got an Easy Bake Oven…which she and Daddy cooked with the week following Christmas.  Jada took lots of pictures with her camera.  The boys loved their train table!  Then it was off to Grammy’s….we surprised her by coming a day early!

At Grammy’s, the kids got lots of fun stuff and had  a blast playing with Tracey’s dogs…all we heard for a week was “Can we get a dog?”!

We made it back home mid-week and Grandma Nita came!  Then it was back to school

Since we have been back to school, I have had 2 snow days.  The girls still had school on those days.  Jada and Levi played in the snow quite a bit.  Lana did some, but Jonah wouldn’t get in it at all!

This week has been nutty too.  On Monday, Bill stayed home with Lana because she had a bad headache.  On Tuesday, we sent her to school.  The school called at about 10:30 saying that she was running a fever.  Earlier that morning, Levi woke up saying his ear hurt, and he had drainage.  So, Bill took Lana and Levi to Priority Care to get fixed up.  Lana is on antibiotic for a sinus infection and Levi is on ear drops for an ear infection.  Since Lana had been sent home with a fever, she couldn’t go to school the next day.  So…we went out to breakfast, then dropped Jada off at school and then went shopping!  On Thursday, everyone was where they were supposed to be, but on Friday….the babysitter called Bill saying that Levi had thrown up!!!!  He seems just fine now, but we don’t know what the problem was.

Hopefully, the weekend will be a bit calmer!

Guess what got uploaded? Better go check them out – Bill & Jackie’s, Jada’s Pictures, Lana’s Pictures.

With Christmas coming in a few days, I needed the camera cleaned off. I uploaded close to 150 pictures and a couple of kid videos last night. Enjoy.

I got the idea from Cranky Geeks to let Jada and Lana have their own “show”. Within about 30 minutes, I had thought of the idea, told them about it, and began recording with our little Flip video recorder. They aren’t overly comfortable in front of the camera just yet, but they sure are cute!

Below is a video of them explaining what the Build a Bear Workshop in the mall is. We did about 4 or 5 videos, but this one was the latest (and probably smoothest) so far.

It’s November 7th, and today was a pretty nice day. It was sunny, got up to about 73 degrees, and I got a lot of leaves cleaned up. I think today was the 3rd leaf day, but there’ll be one more. The kids have been begging to camp out recently, and as much as I really wasn’t wanting to, I decided to go ahead and get things setup so we could.

I’m glad I did. The girls are very excited, as is Levi. Jonah will probably sit this one out, but it may be the last one he misses out on. It’s supposed to get down to around 54 tonight, which, will be chilly, but with plenty of covers and some snuggling, I’m sure we’ll be fine. Twice in the past we’ve camped out with it dropping into the 50s. The 2nd time, we were more prepared and had extra covers. I don’t think anyone got cold until coming out of the tent the following morning.