At night at the Crosslands

My nightly routine with Christopher invariably includes reading a short book about Transformers (not on the NY Times bestseller list, but definitely on the Christopher Michael Crossland bestseller list), and then just laying in bed, singing and talking.

First, I sing him a song that my Dad used to sing to us when we were kids. I even think he was the songwriter on it:
"Oh it's time to go to bed, and get a good night's sleep, so we can get up tomorrow morning, and have a lot of fun. We had a good day, we want a good night, so please, Dear God, bless us all tonight." I realize not having the melody makes the song a little hard to truly envision, but work with it. Put your own melody to it. That's what my Dad would do.

Then, he sings me a song that his music teacher taught him for Mother's Day:
"Your Mom's a special lady, so hug her every day. She gives you lots of food to eat and takes you out to play. Your Mommy reads you stories and buys you sneakers too, Aren't you happy that you have a Mama who loves you?" Very very cute. Makes me tear up almost every night. Even the random line about buying you sneakers . . . . :)

Then, I ask him what the best part of his day was. Here's where it gets good.

Back in March, we went to the rodeo, and there was a carnival there. On that day, when I asked him that question, he said, "Going to the rodeo and the carnival." Very appropriate.

What is funny as hell is that every single night since then, when I ask him what his favorite part of his day is, he says, "Going to the rodeo and the carnival." and then bursts out laughing. Even sometimes when I start asking the question, he starts smirking . . . . "Going to the rodeo and the carnival." We get a good laugh. And sometimes I cannot get him to tell me any other part of his day because he is laughing so hard.

What a nut. Fits right into this family.

Posts without Pictures

I find myself not coming on here to write without some picture to dangle in front of everyone. But I decided that that train of thought would prevent me from the whole point of this blog, which is to write of the lives and times of our family. So, no pics today, just stories.

We went this weekend to San Angelo - to see Dewey's brother Ricky and all of his family - wife, kids, grandkids. They live on some property that includes geese, a horse, a donkey, some chickens - much like the petting zoos I remember growing up. My kids were enthralled with those animals, even though, bless their hearts, the animals are pretty mean. Especially the geese. (I remember a trip there once with Shelby, where one of those geese snapped at her through the chain link fence. She was none too happy.) So the kids had to watch Uncle Ricky and Aunt Tricia feed the animals from the back porch or from the window. Nevertheless, they loved being that close to real live animals.

Ricky's grandkids are close to my kids' age, so there were lots of toys and playmates. Christopher especially loved playing in the yard in his swimsuit in the mud (even though a storm blew in and the temps dropped - he didn't seem to care!). He also went on the swings with his cousin Brooke. She was pretty cute - she wanted him to marry her, but he had no part of it!

The whole drive took well over 6 hours - we went to Austin to pick up Dewey's mother, and took her with us. So it was 3 hours to Austin, brief stop, then 3 1/2 to San Angelo. Thank God for DVD players in the car - kept the kids occupied until they fell asleep. Overall, though, they tolerated the drive well.

We reversed the trip on Sunday (which was fine by us, as there were a lot of people in the house, so lots of stimulation, both for the kids and us) and got home about 8PM Sunday night. That kept us home on Monday to recuperate and relax. That was a great part of the weekend - to have that one extra day to do the laundry and just get back on schedule.

Hope your Memorial Day was as filled with good memories as ours was! Who knows, maybe my next post will go back to the picture thing . . . . .