At 5

Sadie Cake turned 5 today! Some things about my favorite 5 year old.

This week she told me there were only 3 things she wanted for her birthday, "A real phone, an iPod, and a tissue box." Megan informed her that she could probably count on getting one of those.

She is our grossest child and finds great humor in bathroom words.

 

She is a superb multi-tasker. I can give her a list of five items, such as, pick up those socks, put them in the laundry, turn off the bathroom light, make your bed, and tell Jackson to clean his room, and she will do them. In order.

She has a knack for accents. She is especially good at English and Italian accents, but also can do a superb southern belle.

 

(bunny pose)

 

She HATES the smell of gum. HATES IT! If we are in the car and she smells it, she responds by saying, "Ug, the smell, I can't stand it" and if she is sitting next to you while you are chewing it she will move away quickly.

 

The other day she asked Eric, "So, have you put any thought into where we are going for dinner tonight?"

 

 

She is willing to try new foods.

She is seriously bossy when it comes to her siblings, but is a peacemaker when it comes to her friends.

 

 

She asks Eric to cuddle with her every night. She prefers Eric because he falls asleep while cuddling, while I stay for awhile and then leave. Plus she loves him big time.

She sleeps with Bedtime Bear (of Care Bears fame) every night.

 

 

The other night Eric shut the door to her room when she was going to bed because Tucker kept going in there. He told her he would open it when he went to bed and then he forgot. She wasn't too happy about it, and the next night when he went to shut it again and told her he would make sure he opened it, she responded with, "Yeah right! We all know how well that worked out last time."

Although she has no other problems with language, she says "No I am'nt" on a regular basis. As in, "Sadie you are going to bed now", and she responds with, "No I am'nt." I never correct her.

 

 

She totally gets sarcasm, and uses it often.

Megan nicknamed her Ebenezer Sadie this Christmas season and she has embraced it.

She says her favorite singer is Taylor Swift, but her favorite song is Gangnam style.

 

When asked her favorite colors, she responded with, "black, white and blue."

Her favorite food is pizza.

 

 

She really dislikes having her hair combed and protests loudly every day when we do it. This morning while combing her hair she said to me, "I can't believe you are torturing me on my birthday!"

She has an independent spirit and is quite fine with doing things alone.

 

 

She does not like to show most of her emotions. If she is sad or embarrassed she almost always forces herself not to cry or goes into another room so no one sees her.

Although anger is an emotion she strangely has no trouble showing.

 

 

Every morning after breakfast she eats a pickle, quickly followed by a Slim Jim.

 

She loves to play games but if it is a long one she usually quits before it is over. As I finished typing this sentence Sadie quit a games she was playing with Jackson and he told her, "You can't just keep quitting games Sadie!"

 

 

She is full of personality, humor, and love. We can't get enough of her.

Christmas Kindness 2012

Around Thanksgiving time I excitedly reminded the kids that it was almost December and we needed to start thinking about the acts of service and kindness we were going to perform. I was met with statements like this:

"What! We are doing that again?!"

And...

"I thought it was only a one time thing!"

And...

Lots of groaning.

I didn't take it too well.

I had to remind them (i.e. lecture) about what Christmas was all about, and maybe expressed how disappointed I was with their reactions.

They seemed to rally after my not so gentle reminding and proceeded with ideas.

One day they will be empathetic, kind-hearted and service oriented. Right?

1. For our first act I had the opportunity to go with my Adventure Angels group to serve breakfast to 300 women and children at Shade Tree (which is a shelter here in Las Vegas).



This is the type of activity that not so gently reminds you of how good you have it.

And now in no particular order:

2. We did quite a bit of geocaching in December and always made sure to leave mormon.org cards:




3. We also made sure to always put money in Salvation Army buckets whenever we came across them:

 

4. We decided to open doors for people whenever we had the opportunity. The kids were great at this and opened doors everywhere we went.

They even had the opportunity to hold open gates:



And doors to sleighs:



5. We put quarters in washing machines and soap dispensers at a laundromat:



6. We dropped change on a playground for kids to find, and hid some dollar bills on the equipment:

 

Soon after dropping the money a number of kids arrived at the park and started finding it. It was so fun to hear their delight.

7. We dropped off doughnuts to our local firefighters:



8. And took doughnuts to the office staff at the kids school:



9. Since we love and frequent Chipotle we decided to leave and extra large tip in their tip jar.

(I had a picture of Sade doing this, but it is on my other phone and I can't access it).

10. Megan provided the 10th act by baby-sitting for free!



When they went to pay her at the end of the night and she told them she was doing it for free, she said they didn't know how to react and tried really hard to give her the money. Then they tried to give the money to me when they dropped her off. I'm proud of her for doing this as it's hard to turn down money when your 12! Heck, it's hard to turn down money when your 35!

11. Number 11 goes to Jackson. Sadie was doing a lot of loud complaining and pestering about no one wanting to play dolls with her. And though I am positive Jackson did not want to play Barbies, he realized she was really sad and offered to play with her. All on his own! He is a good brother.




12. For our next act we decided to clean our neighbors yard:

Before:


 

After:



There was still a bit of weed covering that we couldn't pull up with our hands so we sprayed weed killer on it and waited for it to die.

This is the same next door neighbor that performs an act of service for us every single week! Although he is in his 80's he brings our garbage cans up from the street for us every Wednesday. As Eric is often out of town on Wednesdays I find this to be the nicest thing.

13. Decorating the Santa room for the Ward Christmas party:



Eric also performed an act of service for me by agreeing to be Santa! But it had a big pay-out as he loved doing it.

14. We bought and donated presents for the kids school toy drive:



15. We all chose one person to write thank-you cards to. Megan and I chose people that wrote us nice notes after giving talks in Sacrament meeting, Jackson chose his primary teacher, Eric chose people that worked on the ward Christmas party, and Sadie chose her pre-school teacher:



16. We eat at Chili's quite often. And there is always a balloon guy there. Always. We never get the balloons. Never. Mostly because I find it awkward to have him standing at the table making balloons when we are trying to eat. So for our 16th act we decided to get balloons (which could be considered act of kindness to the kids), and we tipped him much more than we usually would.



Megan performed and act of service for me by agreeing not to get one. It was taking forever!

17. This next one was my favorite! Have you ever been to Wal-Mart and arrived at the front of the store to find that they were all out of carts? I have, and it was usually when I had a small child with me that I had to carry back out of the parking lot to get one. So for this act we went to Wal-Mart on a really, really busy day before Christmas and brought carts to the front of the store:




When we brought our first load up we discovered they were indeed all out! These carts were all ones Megan and I brought from the parking lot.



18. Sadie originally was helping to bring carts in, but after hitting a car with one, we put her on garbage pick up duty. She performed in a stellar manner.



And don't worry, the guy whose car she hit saw her hit it and wasn't concerned (especially since there was no damage).

19. This year we decided to leave dollar bills attached to toys at the dollar store for people to find:

 

20. We also left quarters in all of the candy and toy machines at the front of the store:



21. I'm pretty sure this one was my kids favorite. Delivering a Secret Santa gift to other kids in the ward. The names of all kids in the ward under the age of 18 were put onto a tree. We were then asked to pick as many names as we wanted to off of the tree and then do something for that particular child. It could be a gift, and an act of service, anything. We were out of town when everyone chose names so we only ended up with one:



The kids loved it! They were especially excited when as they were hiding around the corner they heard the dad yell out, "Thank you Secret Santa!", and then were even more excited when I told them the person thanked their kids Secret Santa on facebook.

22. Last year we did homeless kits but this year we decided to buy gift cards to McDonald's to hand out to any homeless people we came across:



We ended up handing them off to people asking for money at stoplights. It's so nice to have something readily available to give.

23. Eric was able to help two different stranded motorists in December. One family that ran out of gas, and another whose car had overheated.

24. For our final act we purchased books to donate to a school in need. Although we purchased the books before school got out for Christmas vacation, we didn't get them delivered in time. But we plan on doing it as soon as school starts again next week!

There were quite a few others we planned to do and just didn't get to. I suppose there is no time like the present!

And although my kids complained a bit at first, they did rally and are hopefully slowly realizing what blessed lives they lead. Hopefully.