Dude! Where's Your Manners!

Three Things This Thursday

1. When you raise children, you spend a lot of time with children. Yours, relatives, their friends, kids from church, neighbors, the list goes on.

Charlie is 8 and is a friend to everyone. So, I spend a lot of time with his friends. I have found this thing out about 6-10 year old boys: they say dude a lot. Charlie doesn't. We used to call him Big Dude when he was a baby, but he never took to using the word too much.

I don't really have any big problem with boys saying dude. But here's a couple things that kind of bother me:

1. Some kids seem to use it so often I wonder if they even know each others names.

2. Some kids address me as dude.

This may not be as rude as it seems to me sometimes as in many ways I act like a big kid. I try to relate to kids on their own level, I talk to them about things that I think they might be interested in like Star Wars, or baseball. But still it does bother me. Sometimes I just want to say to them hey, that's Mr. Dude!

2. Opening another Lucyism

My MIL has a neat tradition with our kid's birthdays. Instead of buying them a present, she goes shopping with them for some presents and takes them out for lunch. The kids really enjoy this special time with Grandma.

Since this year was Lucy's first shopping expedition with Grandma, I tagged along. Lucy thought she might be lonely with just Grandma. Lucy had a great time. She picked out an umbrella, a Lego horse set, and some baby tiger dolls.

On our way to McDonald's, I told Lucy that when we got to Grandma's she could open one of her presents. She replied, "I'll open my umbrella."

It's good to know the Lucyisms haven't come to an end just because she turned 4!

3. Sky High watch out!


Our local high school made the news this week. According to the school district's website they set the Guinness book of World Record for most people assembled dressed as superheroes. With the effort they Smashed the previous record of 1,016 by a fantastic 400 (pun definitely intended). More notably they raised almost $2,000 in cash and almost 1,000 food items were donated to our local food pantry.

Congratulations to the kids at DCHS! I just wish I had known about it before hand, they would have had 4 more heroes to contend with!

Those are the three things This Thursday. Next Week is our themed edition. With Christmas coming it is called 3 Gifts This Thursday. Think about participating.

You can participate this week by blogging about 3 things and linking your post to Mr. Linky below.




Next Time: Hello Sports Fans

Christmas On The Radio

Amy and I both enjoy the theatre. While neither of us has seen a Broadway show, Amy has seen several shows in London and I have seen fine performances at other cities with a tradition of stage excellence such as Khabarovsk, Russia and Louisville, Kentucky.


We also like to see shows in Elgin, Illinois and it's little sister city, Chicago. Amy will sometimes give her family members the gift of going to a show. Last year, she bought tickets for her Mom and Aunt to see a stage production of the movie "It's a Wonderful Life", performed as a radio play. Say that with a cookie in your mouth!


I mean it! Go get a cookie! I'll wait.



Amy's Mom and Aunt both enjoyed the show and I thought it might be a nice one for Amy and I to attend at some point.



So, this summer, when I saw the 2009 schedule for an Elgin theatre, I was glad to see they were putting on "It's A Wonderful Life" on December 5th, I bought 2 tickets for the 2:00 show and decided to surprise Amy with them as an early Christmas present.

By definition, as a surprise, Amy did not know about it beforehand, In retrospect, I should have done some sort of save the date thing. Amy scheduled Lucy's Chuck-E-Cheese birthday party at the exact same time and I didn't notice the double booking until we had already sent out the invites.

Providentially, there were two shows and I was able to switch our tickets to the late show without giving away the surprise to Amy. On Saturday after Lucy's party, Amy and I went out to a dice dinner and then I took her to the play.

The premise of the show is that it's Christmas time in the 1940's and a radio station is about to do a live performance of "It's A Wonderful Life." A snow storm keeps the majority of the cast from getting to the station. We are told at the onset, that if the show does not go on, the radio station will fail. This forces 2 of the support staff and 2 of the actors to play all the roles and to do the sounds.

What followed was a delight for all in attendance. It's one thing to hear a drama on the radio, but to watch actors literally having a conversation with themselves as they play two roles is astounding. Amy especially liked watching the actors make use of facial expressions and other body language while performing their lines. I liked watching the actors running from one mike to another or to the sound table to make sure the scene got properly executed. It was very interesting to be both behind the scenes and in the audience at the same exact moment.

Next Time: Dude! Where's Your Manners?