Tag: funny

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rePost: 50 Things to do for Christmas

I posted this last year, but thought it was worth reposting:

Inspired by my friend Heather Zempel who posted a similar list, I decided to create my own list of things everyone should experience sometime in their lives during the Christmas season. I have already experienced some of these, but some are things I hope to experience.

The Best Christmas Movie ever made!

50 Things to do during Christmas:

1. Watch “A Christmas Story” 5 times in a row on TBS.

2. Sit in Santa’s lap for a picture. It still counts if you cry your way through it.

3. Adopt a child (or 2 or 3) from the “Angel Tree” at church, buy gifts for him/her, and deliver them.

4. Cut down your own Christmas tree.

5. Decorate a Christmas tree with ornaments that have memories attached to them. Never waste your time making the tree look pretty or having matching ornaments.

6. Let your kids eat the strands of popcorn/fruit loops that you decorated the tree with.

7. Cut and decorate Christmas cookies with colored icing, sprinkles, red hots, etc. (Or just eat the ones your Aunt makes.)

8. Build a fire in the fireplace (yes, even if it’s 80 degrees outside) and read the Christmas story as a family.

9. Let the kids unwrap one gift on Christmas Eve, but make sure they get that same gift every year so there’s still no surprise.

10. Be intentional about spending some time reflecting on Emmanuel (God with Us) – Jesus.

Miranda, Kasen, and I - 2007

11. Participate in a live nativity.

12. Spend at least 100 hours placing exactly 6 colored stars on tree cookies made of green tasteless dough which you will sell to the nearest Christmas Tree Farm to make $$ for Christmas gifts. (This was for you, Laurie.)

13. Go Christmas caroling.

14. Be surprised when someone kisses you under the mistletoe.

15. Attend a candlelight service with your family.

16. Incur some kind of injury Christmas afternoon as you play with your new toy. (“You’ll shoot your eye out kid.”)

17. Give a memory to someone. Experience something together.

18. Unwrap “the ball” with your family. (It’s a tape ball with small gifts wrapped inside. The ball gets passed around a circle and you get to keep what you unwrap. You keep unwrapping until the next person rolls a 6 with a pair of dice.)

19. Leave cookies out for Santa.

20. Eat cookies left for Santa.

That's me with the beard.

21. Dress up as Santa Claus so that a child believes at least one more year.

22. Instead of buying gifts, give $$ to your favorite charity.

23. Go to the trouble (in spite of the traffic) to take the kids to see some spectacular Christmas lights.

24. Go on a hayride.

25. Sustain an injury and get frustrated as you ignore the instructions and attempt to assemble the things Santa left your kids.

26. Take family pictures.

27. Re-gift. Or use gift cards to buy gifts for others.

28. Watch the eyes of someone you love as they open a special gift.

My dad playing football with my cousins and I.

29. Play football in the yard with the whole family on Christmas afternoon.

30. Put pumpkin pie on your shoe, pretend you came in from outside, and then when someone notices the “poop,” wipe it off with your finger and eat it. (My brother’s idea – and it was hilarious! My grandma is the one who noticed.)

31. Use an advent calendar where you get to do something (Ex: eat a chocolate, hang an ornament, etc.) each day leading up to Christmas.

32. Arrange for your children to play “Jesus” in some sort of local Christmas production. Bonus if you are Mary and Joseph.

Andrew Peterson's Behold the Lamb of God CD

33. See Andrew Peterson’s “Behold the Lamb” Christmas production (or at least listen to the recording each year.)

34. Display a nativity scene in your house and teach your children about the characters. (Last night, my 2-yr-old son Kasen, took “baby Jesus” to bed with him.)

35. Wake up way too early as your kids anticipation gets the best of them.

36. Secretly open a gift, seal it back up, and then act surprised on Christmas morning.

nativity story37. Watch the “Nativity Story” movie.

38. Use baby powder to leave footprints from the fireplace to the place where Santa left the gifts. (But make sure you make the footprints go back too – my parents missed that last part.)

39. Count the number of Jesus figurines you can find at grandma’s house.

40. Ask your grandma/grandpa about how they remember spending Christmas as kids.

41. Eat monkey bread.

42. Enjoy a “White Christmas” and do some sledding, have a snowball fight, or build a snowman.

1996 - My dad's last Christmas Ski Trip

43. Take the family skiing in Colorado over the Christmas break.

44. Take the family to an old barn and read the Christmas story there among the animals and smells.

45. Bluebell Peppermint Ice Cream – it’s only made during the holidays.

46. Search the sky for Santa’s sleigh.

47. Get stranded due to icy/closed roads in some random west Texas town on the way to a ski trip. End up having to sleep with the animals ’cause there is “no room at the inn.” (It was Quanah, TX and the people of First Baptist Church were very gracious with their gym. They even let traveling pets sleep there.) Here’s a post about this experience: No Room at the Inn

48. Drive all over the country trying to see all your relatives and in-laws on Christmas Day.

49. Snack on Homemade Chex Mix and Peppermint Bark.

50. Celebrate Emmanuel!!! (Jesus = Emmanuel = “God with Us”)

Things not to do:

1. Get so busy trying to do the things on this list that you forget #50.

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Fruck in Fractor

Here are a few funny words that my kids use. I hope you’re not easily offended. (especially with the 1st one.)

Kasen:

“Fruck in Fractor” = “Truck and Tractor” – Example: As we drive down the highway, Kasen says, “Hey daddy! There’s another one “fruck in fractor.” (He also uses the phrase “another one” instead of just saying “another.”)

“Bwink” = “Drink” – Example: In his most whiny voice, “I wanna brink.”

“Yesday” = “Yesterday” but it also means any day that has already past. – Example: As we read a book about Jesus, Kasen says, “We saw Him yesday.” referring to the live nativity we saw this past Christmas.

“Chawket” = “Chocolate” – Example: “I want some chawket milk.”

“Yogurt” = “Ogre” – Example: “Daddy, Why Shrek is a yogurt?”

“Pissin” = “Fishing” – Example: “Daddy, get my biderman pissin pole.” (“biderman” = “Spiderman”)

“G-aired” = “Scared” – Example: When he’s stalling and trying not to go to bed, he says, “Daddy, I’m g-aired somebody.”

“Uh-wy-ee” = “Hawaii” – Example: “Daddy, we go kating in Uh-wy-ee someday?” (“kating” = “skating” which also = “surfing”)

“Opane” = “Airplane” – Example: “My opane is fying!” (“fying” = “flying”)

“Mintin” = “Mint” – Example: “Mommy, I want a mintin?”

“Meese” = “Please”

“Kee-in” = “Skiing” – Example: “Daddy is kee-in with mommy in that picture.”

“Pwate” = “Plate”

Kesleigh: (Isn’t too verbal just yet, but she’s learning more everyday.)

“Yeah – sssss” = “Yes” – Kesleigh used to say “Yeah” until Miranda began correcting her. Now she still says “Yeah” but then remembers and adds the “ssss” on the end.

“Rash” = “Trash” – Example: When Kesleigh finishes her gogurt, she grabs the wrapper and says, “rash” as she heads to the trash can.

“Icccccce” = “Ice” – She says it correctly, but hangs on the “sss” sound a little long. Example: Holding her cup up when I’m standing at the fridge, she says, “Iccccce.”

“Yight” = “Light” – She points to the light fixtures and says, “Yight.”

“Bubba” = “Brother”

“Case” = “Kasen”

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Ice Cream Run

This pic was taken just a few moments before the ice cream incident. I added the fig leaf so he won't kill me when he's a teenager.

Today, I experienced one of the most hilarious parenting moments of my career so far. Kasen (2yrs old) has become great friends with our neighbor’s kids, Collin and Peyton. Anyway, they have decided that they like peeing outside and Kasen (as well as Collin) is in the early potty training stages. Today, he took off his diaper and was attempting to pee when he heard the ice cream man coming down the street. Before I realized it, he was chasing the truck down the street wearing nothing but his t-shirt!! I was laughing too hard (and looking for the video camera) to run very fast and so he made it at least 6 houses down the street before I caught him. The only reason he stopped is ’cause the ice cream man saw him in his rearview mirror and stopped for a good laugh himself.

PS – Kasen got some ice cream – a bubble gum popsicle.

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A Secret

It was an intimate moment. Miranda cupped her hand and leaned in to the ear of our 2yr old son, Kasen. She spoke gently, “Kasen, I have a secret.” He watched her intently. Drawing it out and emphasizing each word, she said, “I. . . love. . . you!” Kasen pushed in close to her saying, “Mommy, I have a secret.” Miranda anticipated the approaching moment and heightened her sense of awareness. She wanted to remember every detail of this one. With the same slow emphasizing pace, Kasen said, “I. . .want. . .candy!”

Ha! Ha! I think it’s hilarious and just had to share it with everyone.

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Creativity in Schools

I’m not sure what I think of all of this, but it’s really interesting to me. I’m planning on asking my alternative certification teachers about it. As public school teachers, would they be offended or do they see some of the same things themselves? I know that in my observations, I’ve seen teachers who are very concerned about the well-being of all their students. The “condemning mistakes” idea in the video may be true of the system, but I don’t think I’d say it’s true within the classroom – at least not the ones I’ve seen. Anyway, as a future teacher myself, I’m just wrestling with all these issues for the first time  and hope to hear back from more experienced teachers with their reactions to this video.

Ken Robinson says this in his TED talk. (Click the link or scroll to the bottom to watch the video. It’s about 20min, but it’s really interesting stuff.)

Creativity is as important as literacy and should be treated with the same status.

If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. If you’re not prepared to be wrong. . . and by the time they are adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They become frightened to be wrong, and we run our companies like this, by the way, we stigmatize mistakes. And we’re now running national education systems where mistakes are the worst thing you can make. The result is that we are educating people out of their creative capacities. Picasso said this: “All children are born artists. The problem is to remain an artist as we grow up.” I believe this passionately – that “We don’t grow into creativity. We grow out of it.” or rather, we get educated out of it. . . . .

If you were to visit the education system as an alien and say, What’s it for? (Public Education) I think you’d have to conclude that, if you look at the output, you know, Who really succeeds by this? Who does everything they should? Who gets all the brownie points? You know, Who are the winners? I think you’d have to conclude the whole purpose of public education throughout the world is to produce university professors. . . . And I like university professors. I used to be one, but there’s something curious about them. Not all of them, but typically, they live in their heads. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. It’s a way of getting their head to meetings. . .

The whole education system is predicated on the idea of academic ability. And there’s a reason, the whole system was invented. . . Around the world there were no public systems of education really before the 19th century. They all came into being to meet the needs of industrialism. . . You were probably steered benignly away from things at school when you were a kid, things you liked, on the grounds that you’d never get a job doing that. Is that right? Don’t do music. You’re not gonna be a musician. Don’t do art. You’re not gonna be an artist. Benign advise. . . Universities designed the system in their own image. The consequence is that many highly talented, brilliant, creative people think they’re not. Because the thing they were good at in school wasn’t valued or was actually stigmatized. And I think we can’t afford to go on that way. . .

We need to radically rethink our view of intelligence. We know three things about intelligence: 1) It’s diverse. We think about the world in all the ways that we experience it. We think visually. We think it sound. We think kinesthetically. We think in abstract terms. We think in movement. 2) Intelligence is dynamic. If you look at the interactions of the human brain, intelligence is wonderfully interactive. The brain isn’t divided into compartments. In fact, creativity . . . more often than not comes about by the interaction of interdisciplinary ways of seeing things. . .3) Intelligence is distinct. . .

Our educational system has mined our minds in the way that we strip mine the earth – for a certain commodity. And for the future, it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principals on which we are educating our children.

I have been studying to be a teacher. I want to be a teacher who is able to encourage students in every way – one who is able to recognize different gifts and abilities – even outside the realm of the subject I am hired to teach. I have also learned in my years of church work that sometimes the best education is the one that comes through mistakes. If it’s true that in order to be creative, one has to be willing to make mistakes, then maybe we should be celebrating mistakes from students those who are actually trying. I wonder how I can foster these kinds of attitudes in my classroom?

Here’s the video:

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Chocolate Milk & Walking Videos

These are just a few recent videos of the kids. Yeah – I’m one of those guys – the proud father who makes all his friends endure the antics of his children. Anyway, Kasen is learning to talk and some of his words are pretty funny. He’s very careful to speak words separately. “Chocolate . . .pause . . . Milk.” Kesleigh is so close to being able to walk – she’s got the strength and balance, but she just won’t do it. I’ll keep trying.

Chocolate Milk from Steve Corn on Vimeo.

Kasen really wanted chocolate milk tonight.

Daddy trying to get Kesleigh to Walk from Steve Corn on Vimeo.

Kesleigh with Walker from Steve Corn on Vimeo.

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Kasen Sings with Daddy

The other night I was reading to Kasen before he went to bed. He chose one of his “song” books and so I started singing. For the first time, he decided to join me and sing along. Miranda captured the moment here. Pretty funny stuff. It was actually kinda hard for me to keep singing ’cause all I wanted to do is laugh. I especially like the way he pauses before his last note.

Kasen Singing with Daddy from Steve Corn on Vimeo.

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Evidence

Kasen placed his toy phone in our REAL phone charger.
Kasen placed his toy phone in our REAL phone charger.

Here’s a quick pic I thought I’d share of the kinds of things Miranda and I find around the house. It’s truly evidence that you have a 20 month old in your house when you see things like this.

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Dunking, Cooking, or Baptism?

Yesterday, Miranda and I drove up to Pearland for a special day. Miranda’s brother (Jared) and Sister-in-law (Tiffany) were going to be baptized, and Mike (Miranda’s dad) was going to perform the baptism. Cool stuff huh? Well, as it turns out, it wasn’t very “cool” at all – it was actually very hot. When Tiffany stepped into the water, you could see her face immediately struggling. As the pastor, Mike was wearing waders (so as not to get wet) and so he was oblivious to the temperature of the water. He started explaining the story of how she came to this decision, and she just stood in the water literally “cooking.” Finally Mike caught on and he dunked her as quickly as possible and got her out of the water. Jared went so fast, I don’t think he actually got dunked all the way under water. A nurse was called to the holding room afterward and after about 30 minutes she released them to come to their seats. When Miranda and I saw them, their legs were still red and burned. This will be one of those stories that gets passed down through the family each and every time we gather together. It wasn’t funny at the time, but we’ve had a lot of good laughs about it already.

I guess those Baptists really wanna know who’s serious about getting baptized.

PS – Evidently something was wrong with the heating element and no one checked the temperature before the service. I can’t imagine what kinds of lawsuits there might be if there had been children to baptize that day.

Sorry, we didn’t snap any pictures. No one even thought about it ’cause we were all so concerned about their safety and burns.