Arthur vs. The Sixth Graders

Arthur is 6 years old. Arthur is in first grade. His birthday is in May, so he is one of the youngest first graders. He also has strong Thomas genes, which means, he's probably not going to have a future in the NBA. All this to paint the picture that Arthur Thomas Greene is a little guy.

 

This is also Arthur's first year at school, because he was homeschooled during his year of Kindergarten. It has been so interesting and entertaining to see him navigate this new world, and I look forward every afternoon to picking the kids up and getting a glimpse into these lives they lead outside of my view. 

Like yesterday, when Arthur acted out what he does when he goes to the bathroom at school. He told me that when there's a big kid in the bathroom, he is really still in the stall and doesn't make a sound. Unless the hand dryer is on then he'll go about his business, but once it turns off he freezes again until they leave. 👀

I wish you could see his reenactment- it's so funny! Like he's a little gazelle, and the 6th graders are these big lions to be wary of. (He did also mention the kid got a wad of wet toilet paper and threw it on the ceiling before he left though, so sounds like the classification of a wild animal is not too far off...) 

It also made my heart break just a tiny bit, to learn that he feels nervous and uneasy around the bigger kids. But I'm proud of him for figuring out a way to cope and be brave! Hiding in the grasslands is a totally valid means of survival. 

p.s. A quick footnote since I'm posting for the first time in five years... 

I haven't been great about documenting these longer anecdotes in my journals. (Writing by hand is hard??) And I hate the idea that these great memories are going to fade away- I mean the kids are growing SO FAST. While it feels like "of course I'm not going to forget that time Avery got so excited and dressed up to teach an art class to the kids in her class" - I might! I really might! 

So, "idea bomb" (an Arthurism also worth remembering)- resurrect my blog! I think I have 10 close friends and family following this, and they probably won't even notice that I'm posting (who follows blogs anymore??) so- it's ideal! The forthcoming content is going to be for only the biggest Avery and Arthur fans anyway. (Well, and I guess Tiffany and Sean fans are welcome too, but they say a lot less cute things...) Stay tuned to see if I actually keep making posts though??

p.p.s. Some pictures of Avery the Artiste! She's teaching them how to draw a cute bunny today. :)

Kevin Sorbo is Dreamy

I've blogged about my dreams before, so thought I'd go ahead and post this IM convo from today at work about my dream last night.

[‎1/‎26/‎2016 4:00 PM] Tiffany Greene:

so, know how I said I have dreams about things and then the next day something from that dream happens?

well, my dream last night was pretty great

like, the most random I've had in a while

it started in a high school, and something about the monsters from Monsters University were there

the girls' locker room was really big with tables in there full of pizza, which I thought was a weird place to eat lunch

and I met this sophomore kid named Chip who was actually this funny cool kid

well anyway, then the dream was that Xena (the warrior princess) really wanted Hercules (Kevin Sorbo version) to take her to Australia

so he opened up his eagle wings (??) and put them over her and did this magical swirl move

and they beamed to Australia

only it was all wilderness

and she was so bummed, she was like "this is not the Australia I've read about.. it's supposed to have beautiful boulevards! and charming lamp posts!" yada yada...

and he's like "well that's because Australia hasn't been civilized yet, that's a different time period"

and while they are talking, her horse runs away

and then CHIP! Chip pops out from behind a tree, because he had stowed away

... oh my gosh, like Chip on Beauty and the Beast! weird...

anyway, so they send Chip off to go find the horse

and uh, that's pretty much when Avery came in and woke me up

but the funny part is I got into work---

and saw that someone had used the "DISAPPOINTED" gif! With Kevin Sorbo!

I AM DREAM PSYCHIC.

(What better way to break back into blogging, amirite?! Everybody loves a good dream story...)

The Thank You Note

Tonight as we were leaving my parents' house, Avery was having a really hard time leaving my sister Brittany. They'd been having a really great time playing Princess Sofia, which was mostly Brittany singing a made-up song about Princess Sofia/Avery, while Avery danced along and acted out the words ("She has curly red hair" - Avery does a scrunch-your-hair dance move - "And polka dot pajamas" - she dances and pokes at the dots on her pants - "And big brown eyes"  - she stops and dramatically blinks her eyes and sort of rolls her head ---  my phone's battery always chooses the worst times to be out of memory! It was so great, it really needed to be on video. I am by no means a good-enough writer to capture how cute/hilarious/ingenious it all was.)

So anyway, needless to say, Avery was having such a good time, she was majorly bummed out that it was time to go. But we coerced her towards the door, and out of nowhere after she gave Brittany a hug she said "OH! I have to write you a thank you note!"

... No clue where this came from. No one had said anything about thank you notes at all that day. Or ever? So we all laughed at how cute and random it was, and then we headed out the door not really thinking much more of it.

Then, as Sean is buckling her in her car seat, she has my phone in her hand (part of the coercion) and she's very focused on what she's working on in the painting app. And as she's drawing, she says sort of under her breath and rather seriously "Thank.. you... for...the...food....". And Sean looks, and she's not drawing, she's writing! She had written "A U I". She wasn't joking about writing a thank you note.

Gives me hope that she's got a very polite future ahead of her.

And I don't have a picture, so here's a recent but not-really-related video, except that it a little bit shows off some of this girl's moves.

feat. Everett W.

Saturday Morning

9:00 AM.

"Mama! Maa Maaaa!"

I walk in to find her standing in her crib wearing her purple Princess Sofia pajama dress and rubbing sleep from her eyes. Her curly hair is poking up and matted in all the right places, "Princess Bedhead".

"You ready to get up?" I ask. She nods, and I lift her out of the crib. I know she is definitely old enough to have her bed turned into a "big girl" bed but if it ain't broke... Besides, I'm pretty sure she was just a little baby like last week.

I usher her into the bathroom, set her little ducky seat onto the toilet, and plop her on top. A few seconds later-- "Mama, I'm doing it!" She's been potty trained for three months now, but she still gets very proud of herself with every bathroom trip.

We finish up and she says "Mama, I have music?? I need to dance!" This has been a daily request for months. "You're not hungry?" I ask. "No, not hungry... I need to dance!"

So we walk into the living room, and I spot the bag from the dollar store with the little Princess Sofia painting set inside. I quickly toss it onto the couch because I know the second she sees it she's going to want to paint, and then we're never going to get around to eating breakfast. Getting Avery to eat these days is... tricky.

I turn the TV to Pandora ("Mama, right there! Music right there!"), and turn on my "Part of Your World" station. "When Will My Life Begin" from Tangled starts to play, and Avery starts to dance. Some leg swings here, dramatic arms there, bending over and sticking her leg straight up behind her, and a lot of skipping and jumping and twirling in her dress. Her musicality is impeccable.

Then, before the song even finishes, she spots it-- "OH! Mama! I don't need to dance anymore, I need to PAINT! Pleeeease???"

I probably should have just made her stop playing and eat breakfast right then and there but! I was tired. I did however make her clean up some of her toys that were out before she could paint. She was surprisingly more than happy to do so, singing to herself and even telling somebody on her toy phone as she walked into her room to put it away: "I gonna do some painting! You're gonna love it."

When she's all done I get out her little artist smock and get her all set up. She tells me she wants to start with pink for Princess Sofia's crown, and surprises me with how carefully she paints just the crown. It's not all within the lines, but it's close! Her technique is improving. However, it's not long before her artistic choices become more and more abstract and creative - "Mama! I'm painting the clouds green!" I think the cutest though is how anytime she paints, she says "Dada is going to looooove this!"

And then, after maybe 20 minutes of painting,  it happens. As she's stirring the paint brush in the water she stops and looks at me and says- "Mama? I'm reallly thirsty. And really hungry!" So I walk with her into the kitchen, she picks out some cereal (Cinnamon Toast Crunch), and without a single protest, she's eating!

I sit down across from her with my own bowl of cereal. She holds up her spoon, waiting for me to hold up mine. "Cheers!" we say, and pretend to tap our spoons together.

Saturdays are the best days.

(These are actually from a month ago, but here's the petite artiste in action.)

*********************************************************************************

2013 Year in Review

Merry Christmas! We are but days away, so it's looking like an actual physical card and/or letter isn't much of an option anymore. So instead, to make up for it, here's a recap of what we've been up to this past year!

This was my fourth year of working full time as a Project Lead at Ancestry.com. It is challenging but very interesting and rewarding work, and I have a great team; I love it! (For those who may not know, I work with the historical collections once they've been imaged &/or keyed, and do a lot of database management with SQL/Excel/etc. to make sure they're going to look good for the site.) We've been fortunate enough to have grandmas helping out during the day with Avery, and since September I've even been able to work from home twice a week which has been so great!

January marked Sean's first semester up at the U and then in May we found out he was accepted to the Architecture program! (Very competitive by the way, some wife bragging for you.) So this fall marked his first semester as a real, live, honest-to-goodness Architecture student. It's been kind of a long and funny road getting to this point, but I'm confident this is what he was born to do and so glad he made the switch. He is incredibly talented! (He even just got nominated for a design award, so that is an objective statement and not just more wife bragging.) But wow is this major just so incredibly demanding.  He has slept up at the school, oh, at least a dozen times? Well, usually without much sleeping. It's bonkers, but everyone says this semester is the hardest, so fingers crossed it maybe gets a little bit easier? (He just barely finished this semester last night at 3 A.M. so hooray for Christmas break!)

In August we moved out of our basement apartment close to UVU where we'd been for, believe-it-or-not, 3 years. What, really?! Blows my mind. But anyway, it was a totally random lead from a friend, and it's kind of funny how it all worked out. In March we were looking to buy a house and were even under contract for one place, but it didn't feel right. (We ended up deciding to wait until we know better where we're going to end up.) Then all summer we were trying to find somewhere else to rent, but things just kept falling through. Until the LAST week before fall semester started, this apartment worked out and it's been pretty close to perfect. Not super fancy or ginormous or anything, but nice and open and light and really just exactly what we needed. It's been great, and should work for us for the next couple years we think.

Avery Turns One!

Avery turned one on March 24th. And she has turned into the funniest, sweetest, cutest, jabbering little toddler. Some things she loves: dancing, The Little Mermaid, drawing, playing with other little kids, her baby doll (Baby Ariel), her stuffed animals, her "bankocks" (her two blankets), "Joooce?!" (juice), books, counting to 10, recognizing letters (she knows most of them now and gets really excited when she sees them, for example, outside of H&M), Bubble Guppies, "Jake and Finn?!" (Adventure Time), making funny faces, playing hide and seek, "getting" dad, brushing her teeth, "hang?!" (she hangs on Sean's rock climbing rings every night and he helps her do pull ups, she's gonna be crazy strong), Super Simple Songs, playing on smart phones/tablets, cheese and pickles and apples and bananas and "marnies" (Smarties), and as of the last couple weeks, she really loves baby Jesus, Danta Clawz, presents and surprises. We are getting very excited for Christmas! 

Speaking of which, here are some more pictures from her Santa photo shoot! (She LOOVED posing for the pictures, and the photographer was super impressed--"She's very obedient for not even being two!" There's a mom brag for you.)

SANTA PHOTOS!

So that's us kind of in a nutshell. It's been a whirlwind of a year, not a whole lot of down time, but it's been a good one!

And now I'll wrap this up by posting some photos from throughout the year.

HIGHLIGHT REEL

Train ride up to SLC to scout out the U's campus.

Avery doesn't trust some of these characters on TRAX.

Sister Brittany Thomas (aka Aunt KooKoo) leaves for Tacoma, Washington mission.

Lunch breaks with my baby.

Most un-romantic Valentine's Day to date. Marked the start of Avery's first time being really sick, turned out to be RSV. (Thought about posting the picture from Instagram of her hives she got from it, but I just can't. It's the saddest picture ever.)

Gotta have a naked baby picture. Walking about 10 steps at this point.

"Hoo hoo - Ah ah"

Easter!

Anniversary Trip to Zermatt, only five months late. First (and only) overnight away from Avery so far.

(The only photos we have are these from the amazing pizza/bagel place in Midway.)

Avery with Lumpy Space Princess (she makes her say "Hey Gurl!")

Taught primary for 3 years until we moved out of our last ward; our kids loved Avery!

The giant check! ... that we didn't win. We did this Amazing Home Race in March and even though we didn't win it was really fun! And we somehow managed to avoid getting a speeding ticket.

My favorite people coming to visit me at work!

Socializing (with her buddy Brayden).

Shopping for summer shades.

Summer meant hiking! This is Stewart Falls up behind Sundance.

These guys were there too.

Supporting the arts (Aunt Amy's choir performance).

Sitting like a lady at church.

Arrested Development Season 4 happened.

Emcee Noodle Hat (she busted out some beatboxing after I took this picture.)

More socialiazing (with McKinley.

Cheese face.

At dad's soccer game.

Rock Climbing at Maple Canyon.

Went to St George with my family; most of the pictures are on a hard drive up at Sean's school though, so here's the only one I have from my phone: sleeping in! (It's pretty great, because this picture could have been taken literally anywhere. Also, batman pajamas.)

Summer also means splash pads.

Sometimes people think she is my friend Michelle's child. I can't see why?

Bored in Primary.

Staying cool.

*Probably the funnest highlight: In July our little family took our first big vacation and went on a two-week road trip first to California with some friends, and then to Arizona to see Sean's sister and her family in Flagstaff. *

Vegas!

Earl of Sandwich! We meet again.

Hotel in Vegas.

Del Mar races!

The beach!

Disneyland!

Other places!

Griffith Observatory.

More beach! (Crystal Cove is beautiful!)

Taliesen West outside of Phoenix (Frank Lloyd Wright's school/residence in the winters.)

Flagstaff with cousins and Aunt "Bad-Guy"! This nickname came about later but I feel it appropriate to mention it here. (Her name is really Becca.)

24+ hours of driving altogether, but we made it!

(end of trip photo section)

Playing in the backyard.

She loves the tramp. And posing.

Mmmm, Rita's Ice. (Aunt Emily moonlighting as the Ice man.)

Ariel and arabesques.

"Toys?!"

Seven reasons she loves grandma's house.

"Fries?!"

Socializing (and practicing kissing already, yikes!) This is her good pal Everett.

Her favorite "toy" at Great Grandma and Great Grandpa's house was this incredibly heavy statue of a dog. He's really funny, as you can see.

She has too much fun at Grandma's house and sometimes fights her naps; a couple hours later this results in her conking out somewhere random, like this.

Halloween!

Annual murder mystery with my friends! This year it was Gatsby/1920's themed.

Velma Kelley (from Chicago) and Ernest Hemingway.

Halloween Carnival at work: Avery was Ariel!

She loved trick or treating!

With our good friends Mary Poppins and Bert the chimney sweep.

Sean's first big project for school.

This bench was installed in Green River, Utah by the Golden Ratio statue. The mayor of Green River dubbed it "The Double Date Bench".

First snow of 2013!

Can't get enough of that hat and those boots.She also loves her mittens. And also the episode of Bubble Guppies she's watching.

Going to the store is sometimes a gamble, and for a while there it was nearly impossible to go with her solo (she had big ideas about running around everywhere), but it's finally gotten to the point where it's doable again! And she's usually a very good little store companion. (That, or I've gotten better at convincing her the cart is a fun place to be?)

She really is just the best.

Trying hot chocolate for the first time; she's a big fan.

And I just posted this, but I love it; Avery telling Santa Steve what she wants for Christmas (my boss dresses up every year). She really likes this Santa guy!

*********************************************************************************

Well, I'm a little bummed because there are some real winner pictures that I don't have access to right at this moment (hits like "Cutest cousins at a Thai restaurant in Flagstaff!", and "Dinner at Club 33!"), but if you've made it this far I'm sure you're just a little bit relieved there's not more. You're a busy person! You've got things to do! So I'll just have to come back later and add them in, so I've got a good comprehensive recap of the year for future reference all in one place. (I've kind of stopped blogging because I spend more time writing in either my journal or the journal I keep for Avery- I know, I know, who does that?!) So if you're a real die-hard fan of the Greene family you could check back in a month and there will maybe be even MORE pictures for your viewing pleasure! 

But anyway, to wrap things up, it's been a busy but fun year, and we are excited to see what 2014 is going to bring. Here are some spoilers: more Ancestry.com and schooling at the U, but also The Return of Aunt KooKoo, a trip to Washington, and POTTY TRAINING! Dun dun dun...

Merry Christmas everyone! And a Happy New Year!