More funny kids

The top funny things said by my kids today:

1. "I'm sorry I wasn't here yesterday, Miss Tice. I had pink eye, a cough, a sneeze, and lots of other stuff."

2. (We had to do the lock-down drill today to practice what to do if there's a bad guy in the school. We had a conversation about why we go outside during a fire drill, to the hallway for a tornado drill, and hide inside our locked classrooms for the bad guy drill. Afterwards a kid said this:) "So what would happen in the rare situation that we have a fire, a tornado, and a crazy guy all at the same time? Since all 3 are certain disaster, do we just run around in circles screaming?"

Beach Skimboarding

Untitled from Beth Tice on Vimeo.

A Video of Pascracio Eating a Cricket

Here is an incredibly entertaining video of Pascracio eating a cricket. It's mostly in Spanish, but you can still see the awesome little lizard being a mighty hunter!

Baltimore Weekend

Miguel and I went to Baltimore this weekend to visit Uncle Barry, Aunt Pam, Laurie, Carter, Ariel, Amy, Pierce, and Grandpa. Kathryn went too, but she went to visit Grandpa and go to a Ravens game with Mike. Miguel and arrived late on Saturday and we went with Amy to visit Grandpa in his new assisted living facility. It's really nice, with beautiful grounds and lots for the residents to do. It's too bad Grandma can't be there, because she would have loved it. On Sunday morning, Miguel and I went to one of those indoor inflatable playgrounds because it had been raining since Friday and we wanted to run around and play somewhere. Here are some pictures of it:

When the employees announced that it was time to leave, Miguel didn't want to go, so he stuck the masts from the inflatable pirate ship through the exit doorway to barricade himself in:

But the lady came over anyway and told him he had to remove the masts, unblock the exit,...and leave. You can see her in the exit door. So sad for Miguel. It was a nice try though.

Then we went to Ikea which was great fun. We had fun trying out EVERY chair, sofa, and bed in the entire store. We picked something out as a surprise for everyone. For Edith, we found a little stuffed cat wearing clothes. For Lucero, a rabbit. For Miguel, a big dog pillow that he has been carrying around with him everywhere. For Mama, a plant (she loves plants) in a beautiful pot and an ice cube tray that makes ice cubes in the shape of fish (she loves fish too). And the best was for Ivan, a white stuffed rat. He's really beautiful. Here's a picture of the white rat:

The white rat became my favorite thing of the day and I carried the white rat around everywhere. He even sat on my lap during the whole ride back in the car. We ate Swedish meatballs and princess cakes in Ikea, and then left to wander around the other stores in White Marsh. Here's me walking down the street with the white rat:
We found a corvette car show so we stopped to take pictures and get inside the cars! Here's my new car:
Check out this engine!!!
Finally we stopped back by Grandpa's to visit a little more. We watched the Ravens game and showed Grandpa pictures of what we've been doing the past few months. He's doing okay, he's just very weak. He says he's exhausted all the time. We don't know how much longer he has because his doctor has just diagnosed him with lung cancer that has gotten pretty advanced. It's already spread to his ribs. It's really sad and I want to try to spend as much time as I can with him over the next couple of months because I know he doesn't have much longer. I'll be heading up to Baltimore again really soon.

ooooowwwwwwww!

oooowwww my tongue my tongue! i cut my tongue! i was just opening a beautifully scrumptious cup of yogurt and i licked the foil top. IT CUT MY TONGUE!!! I grabbed my tongue and started screaming, "MY TONGUE MY TONGUE, I CUT MY TONGUE!" except I was kind of kidding. Then I took my hand away and tasted blood in my mouth and when I looked at my hand it had blood on it! I really cut it on a yogurt container. Now I'm in so much pain. I can't talk. I can't eat. It hurts to laugh and smile. My brother thinks the whole thing is the most hilarious thing he's ever seen in his life. He keeps bursting out laughing unable to control himself for like 5 minutes. He keeps shouting between bursts of laughter, "Where's the camera???? Tell me where the camera is!!!" My tongue is throbbing. Now the pain is spreading to my eye. It even hurts to walk now. Seriously I think I need to go to the hospital. I don't think I can go to school tomorrow...

funny kids today

The kids said some hilarious things today! Here were the top two:

1. At lunch in the cafeteria: "Miss Tice, I need you to help me eat because I'm about to go through puberty and I need to eat more."

2. While practicing multiplication flashcards: "Miss Tice! I have a great example of how failure can help you!"

That one made me laugh and laugh simply because he was so excited about his failure! Hahahahaha!

Washington DC!!!

My stepmom Diane, who lives in Maine, came down to Nothern Virginia this weekend for her high school reunion. She called and asked if I could come up and visit. Miguel wanted to come so we decided to have a weekend in Washington! We had a great visit with Diane (who I haven't seen in 3 years). We spent the night there and had breakfast with her the next morning. Then after taking her to the airport for her return trip home, I asked Miguel what he wanted to do. He said, "Let's go see the White House!" I don't think I've ever actually seen the White House so I was like, "Yeah! I have no idea where it is...so let's go!"

Here's the White House! It took us like an hour to find it, but then when we found it, we were like, "WHAT??? It was right there the whole time????" We didn't see Obama but we looked for him.
Miguel took random pictures of everybody walking with us on the way to seeing the White House. Here he is with the White House in the background.
We also went to the World War II Memorial and I explained to him why it was built and we went around and read all the states and quotes that are carved into the stone. We also saw the wall of stars with the carved stone that says, "Here we mark the price of freedom." We talked about what it meant and Miguel thought it was really cool.
Then we went to see the Washington Monument and the circle of flags.

He couldn't believe how tall the obelisk was! I told him it was even taller than the ones from Egypt.
We went to the Museum of Natural History too because he wanted to see the dinosaurs. He took a picture of me in front of a prehistoric moose!
In the museum, we saw some cousins of zorro!
Miguel really liked the lion and tiger models!
Here's a picture of us with Diane! We had a great weekend and it totally came up at the last minute! Miguel had never seen Washington before and I had never seen the White House. We wouldn't have gone if it hadn't been for Diane coming down! So thanks, Diane, for a great weekend!

More reasons (see post below)

Here are two more reasons:

9. Edith commenting about the order of our brothers: "Ivan is our first brother, Miguel is our last brother, and Zorro is our middle brother."

10. Miguel and I were talking about why one of his friends is a pretty good kid, but gets in to trouble a lot and doesn't make good decisions. I was helping him understand why he needed to be careful around that kid, to not get sucked into bad decisions as well. Finally Miguel said, "You know, I think he IS a good kid, he just doesn't have anyone to express it with." I asked him what he meant. He said, "Well, like me, I have Ivan, and I have you, and I have Mama. I have 3 people who I know love me and teach me how I'm supposed to be. You guys support me. But he doesn't have anyone. His mom's never home and his dad's hardly ever home and he's always drinking. He just doesn't have what I have." I thought, Wow. He was able to figure that out... Smart kid...

reasons why i have the best family ever:

Here are just some of the latest funny/sweet reasons why I love my family!

1. Kathryn was over at a friend's house when she saw her friend reach out towards her and she automatically ducked to protect herself. Her friend was like, "What's wrong with you?" She said, "I'm a younger sibling, what do you think?" (Sidenote: Contrary to popular belief, I did not attack her THAT MUCH when she was little.)

2. On the day of Back-to-School Night (the night when parents go to their kids' classes to meet their teachers), Edith came and asked me if I would go at 6:30 to meet her teacher. I told her I already knew her teacher, but she begged me to go anyway, so I went. When I got in her classroom, all the kids had written letters to their parents, starting with "Dear Mom" or "Dear Dad". I looked at Edith's and it said, "Dear Beth".

3. Lucero spent TWO HOURS telling me about how evil her teacher is. TWO HOURS. And what did I do? I politely sat there, listening to every word for TWO HOURS. Finally Miguel walked in and asked if I would take him and his friends to the Ice Park and I got up to put my shoes on. Lucero was outraged and said, "What??? You're not even going to listen to me??? I'm trying to tell you something!" I was like, "Dude, I just listened to you for TWO HOURS!" She said, "And I'm not done yet."

4. Even in stressful situations, Kathryn can find the humor. For example she's having yet another problem with her HP computer (DOWN WITH HP!!!) and she's very frustrated. Yet when she received an email from HP asking for her current address and potions, she was able to separate her frustration from the ridiculousness of that typing error. (Sidenote: We still have not figured out what HP meant by "potions".)

5. Edith came running in secretly to me with Mama right behind her. Edith whispered to me frantically, "Beth! If you tell Mama that YOU taught me to draw hearts, I'll give you a chocolate." hahahahahahaha

6. Mama bought me a leopard gecko after I was so sad that my blue-tailed skink and northern ringneck snake escaped somewhere in the house.

7. When I was having a particularly bad day, Ivan could tell that something was wrong. He asked, "Are you okay?" I shrugged and said, "Yeah." He said, "Yeah like yeah? Or yeah like there's something?"

8. On a rainy Thursday when my abnormally loud children were eating snack, Kathryn texts me with this message: "Just listened to bagpipes playing in the Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs." I looked at/heard the rain outside and my 20 noisy children and looked again at her message. I thought, "That's great. Just great."

car update

Okay my car has $5000 of damage, but it's not totaled! That's the good thing. The mechanic offered to buy my car from me so that I could buy a new car, but I don't want to do that. I would still need to have a loan and I don't want to owe more money right now. So they're going to fix it. They said it will take 2 to 2-1/2 weeks.

Pascracio

So it does seem like his name is going to be Pascracio. He ate 10 crickets tonight. It was his first time eating at home. We watched him eating all the crickets and it was totally cool! Here's Edith watching him. We are fascinated by him and we spent almost 2 hours watching him tonight and talking about him!

my beautiful car

Look. Just look. Look what happened to my beautiful car today. Too sad for my little car.

Leland's Birthday Party

Leland's Birthday 2009 from Beth Tice on Vimeo.

Here's a video of little Leland at his 2-year-old birthday party! His party was at a cool park in Waynesboro.

My leopard gecko!

Here's my new friend! I have a leopard gecko! Elvia (my second mom) and Miguel bought me a leopard gecko yesterday because we were so sad that the snake AND the blue-tailed skink escaped. Isn't he beautiful? He's really easy to take care of and he can't escape because he can't climb the walls of his tank. He eats crickets so we have to go buy him some tomorrow. He needs a proper leopard gecko name but we haven't thought of one yet. We're just calling him Pescracio for right now, but that's just a temporary name.

williamsburg to richmond

Ivan lost his game in Williamsburg today but who cares! Well he cares. And I care. And his team cares. Okay a lot of people care. We had a great time afterwards! We went to play laser tag and his team beat my team twice. It was awesome! Laser tag is cool cuz it's like you're IN a video game and you get to shoot people but nobody gets hurt. That's cool! I tried a great strategy to get more points and I ran to the other team's base to shoot their base. I waited until it was unprotected then I jumped out to shoot it. It was great except my gun was out of shots by the time I got there. So then I had to run back to recharge my gun. So that strategy didn't work. Then I decided another strategy would be to hide in the corner next to my team's base and wait for the other team to come over and then I can shoot them and they can't shoot me because I'm hiding behind a post in the corner. So I waited and waited, but nobody came. So sad. My strategies didn't work. Ivan did a good strategy though. He got 14,900 points and I only had 6,000. But I beat him 6 times in basketball and 4 times in air hockey, so we're even. Tomorrow he has a game in Richmond, so we'll see if his team wins tomorrow!

my poor poor lizard

so you know my snake that i caught? he escaped. we are so sad now. and then lucero caught a blue-tailed skink for me (which i had been wanting for like 3 months). and he was doing great, living a life of hand-delivered crickets in a climate-controlled environment. but then he escaped too. so i guess now we have a snake and a lizard running around in the house. so sad.

Random Recent Pics

Here are some random fairly recent pictures of events that have happened over the summer:

First, me and one of my little "bros" wearing our twin shirts:

Ivan beating me at a pinball game while waiting for a pizza to be ready:

Totally cool massage chair that costs $2000, but is free to go try it out! They even give you a free bottle of coke to enjoy while you get your 15-minute massage!

Edith chillin in the mall:

Me with the big Chic Fil A cow! I love the cow!

Lucero picking raspberries:

Ivan in his new office. He's going to be a lawyer.

Edith with bamboo and my hat:

Greensboro, NC

We spent the weekend in Greensboro, NC for Ivan's soccer tournament. Greensboro was pretty cool... Our hotel had an indoor and outdoor pool that was connected. You could swim from one to the other. It was right next to a 3-story mall. His team lost the tournament, but we still had fun! Next week we go to Williamsburg and Richmond. Here are some pictures from this weekend:

sweetest dream ever

Last night I had the sweetest dream ever! It was possibly the best dream of my life...even better than when I dream I can fly or when I dream that I can do 540's on a snowboard or even better than when I dreamed that a crocodile bit my arm off (really...it was awesome).

I dreamed that I was stuck inside a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! I couldn't escape because the peanut butter was so sticky and this giant guy was trying to close the sandwich with a gigantic piece of bread and I was screaming, "NOOOOOOOO!!!!" and pushing on the bread with my hands to keep it from coming down on me. Then I woke up.

Totally cool! I really hope I dream that one again!