When is your birthday on the clock?

Ok, another little swing into my corkiness. So, at work I tend to notice this a lot, and I have no problem shouting it out to my desk mate, "It is my Birthday on the clock"...she humors me. You see, I always write the time down for each patient that clocks in, and this is why this time always sticks out to me. I will even go on to say, it EXCITES me.
(I almost never see this time at night though, I am usually in dreamland by this point.)

This would be Jamie's Birthday on the clock...by this time of the day, I am on my way to pick him up from daycare. He usually never sees his, birthday.

Then this brings me to Steven's Birthday...so usually by this time I have gotten Jamie in the car and headed to get Aubrey.

Aubrey's Birthday on the clock...she actually has her alarm set on her Ipod to remind her when her birthday is. Usually on Saturday's you can hear this eerie noise playing, almost sci-fi like noise playing, and you know that it is Aubrey's birthday on the clock.

Today it went off during lunch and Jamie yells out..."It is Aubrey's Birthday"!

I do realize that this all is a bit odd, but why not share another "Gray oddity"!
Another clock thing that we do, that you may already do, is to make a wish on the clock...so when the time has all the same digits, you can make a wish...but, after seeing the time and making the wish, you can't look back at the clock until after the time changes. If you look at the clock and it hasn't changed then you loose your wish. So, 1:11, 2:22, 3:33, 4:44, 5:55...you get!

Now for a bit about our week. We have been still enjoying our slow January. Not much to do in the afternoons. The weather has been very warm this January which has allowed us to enjoy being outside a bit more than normal.

One afternoon I was struck silly by this beautiful sunset. We were outside playing and I had to dart inside to grab my camera. These are not the greatest of images, however you can see God's beauty. I told Steven that any day that ends in a beautiful pink sunset, must have been a pretty awesome day!

With that really sweet sunset, let me show you our "Polly-lops"...hehehe...that is right, polly-lops, not lolly-pops! These are perfect for a little late night snack.
Not much to share, but just a little something sweet!

Here is a little art work from the week.
Aubrey usually comes home every afternoon with some sorta of drawing.

Jamie has gotten in to expressing himself through art. I am not sure what he was trying to say in this piece, but I am sure that there was not a color that was left behind.

Thursday night we meet the Elam crew out for dinner. Which actually turned out to be a pretty funny story. You see, "Cici's Pizza" was having a customer appreciate night, and they had pizza for $1.99 a person. We had agreed to meet the Elam's for dinner, but when we got there, I think the entire city of Burlington had the same idea. The line to get into the place we uber long and all we could do was laugh. It was pretty cold and there was no way that we wanted pizza that bad. So, off to Mexican we went. All in all, it turned out to be a great outing and it was great to check in on our little Kallie, and see how her arm was doing. Our prayers are with her this weekend as she heads to the doctor on Monday. She will have some x-rays done to see how things have progressed, I hope this sweet child can be castless on Monday!

Books this week, this has been Aubrey's pick of the week.

Jamie has selected this book from the store, something tells me we will be reading it tonight. Jamie is into dinosaurs something major, along with cars, tools, swords, trains,bikes, legos and gosh everything else!

Speaking of bikes, here is the Jamester riding in the hood. You see, with Aubrey and Jamie peddling so fast, I am having to either run or ride my bike. This particular day I had laced up the running shoes. Aubrey is not shown in this picture, because she left us. By the time we got back to our side of the circle, Jamie ditched his bike and we headed out on foot to follow Aubrey. Jamie and I bought ran at the top part of the neighborhood, it is amazing how far he can run with those little sticks (aka...legs).

Before I end this post I wanted to share one last image with you. This is an exciting thing in our house...it is a lemon. That is right, Steven's lemon tree is actually putting out a lemon. We will keep you updated as it grows.

Last night we had some guests over for dinner. With this being a long weekend, we thought we would ask the Woody crew to come have some dinner. I think Aubrey and Jamie would love to have them over every night. The dessert that Mrs. Janelle brought was totally over the top.

This morning after lounging around in our pj's, I had enough of legos. I wanted out of these four walls. So, we dressed in some warm clothes, and headed out to get cat food. We did not leave the house without our hot chocolate, we needed it for our ride into Burlington. While we were out, we thought that we would hit a few of our favorite spots.

We love going to the park, and today was a great day to get out of the house. It was chilli-willie but nothing we could not handle.

After a fun time at the park, we headed back to Graham. We had a "Rootbeer Float" in our thoughts. The Graham Soda Shop is where we landed.

I really love these 2 pics. They are so sweet and remind me that it would not so cool, if I began licking my straw in the soda shop.

After lunch we headed back home for nap time. The lazy kitties joined us.

Tonight after bedtime, we play a couple of games. Aubrey and Steven dug out Skip-Bo, while Jamie and I sat in his room playing a matching game.

Then, our most favorite time of all...bed time. We all jump into Jamie's bed for a book, here lately this has been the book they want the most. I am sure you see why. We can only do it like once a week, they get so wild. But, we love to hear their sweet giggles.

Dad even wears the proper attire.

Jamie with his silly face. It still doesn't keep off the tickle monster!

That ends another awesome day in the Gray House.

Crazy 8

So, I am going to do something out of the norm for me. I want to tell you about one of Jamie's favorite things right now. That would be the number 8. Now, I am not sure why, but that has been his favorite number. Aubrey always had a favorite number to leave out..."13" she always would skip that number, almost as though it did not exist. Jamie on the other hand...he always talks about the number 8.

This morning Steven cooked pigs in the blankets. Jamie asked if he could have 8 of them. If you were to tell Jamie that we needed to go home in 5 minutes, he would respond..."8 more minutes, okay". I could go on with his fetish with "8"...so I will! I am sure that this has something to do with Aubrey turning 8 this year, and this was a new number to him. She also received a magic 8 ball this year.

Or maybe... it is that the lights are off by 8. You know Steven and I have been able to sleep in until 8 on Sunday's. You know our house number is "1403"...add them up, you got 8. So, something tells me though, none of this even matters. It is all just a ploy. A way to avoid doing what he is supposed to.

You know this could be a bit of a scary thing...you see in Feng Shui... the number 8 is a symbol for a mystic knot...basically never ending! It is a good thing, that this is considered a lucky number, or we might just be up the creek 8 miles with a never ending number 8.

So 8...
8 pints make a gallon.
8 is the third number that stays the same when written upside down.
Some large car engines have 8 cylinders.
According to Indian mythology, the Earth is supported on the backs of 8 white elephants.
Before the rise of Christianity, there were 8 days in the Greek and Roman weeks.
A cube has 8 corners or vertices.
An octopus has 8 arms and an octet is a group of 8 musicians. (An octet of octopuses would therefore have 64 arms between them.)
An octagon is a figure with 8 sides and an octahedron has 8 faces.

Riddles of 8
I become infinite when I am asleep.
I am the cube of the littlest prime.
Thrice of me is twice a dozen.
I sound like the past of the solution to hunger.

So after going Feng Shui on you, and then a little mathematical...lets pull out little of the Bible. So the 8th day, refers back to the resurrection of Jesus. Our church has traditionally designed baptismal fonts as octagons, which reminds us of our 8th day or our new beginning. Wow, what a tangent of 8.
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As for this house full of 8 human feet and 8 mouse feet, we will continue on to our next favorite thing, but you'll have to stay tuned.