2013 Countdown to Christmas - Day 19-20!
December 21, 2013
EMMA: "Christmas is giving, Christmas is truth, Christmas is sharing (except for the juice)" (grins) MOM!
She immediately went toward the kitchen.
KARL: (following) the juice?
EMMA: Oh, yeah. You probably haven't seen my post-it notes yet.
(she opened the refrigerator)
Two things about this photo.
- She took a full apple juice out of the pantry and added it next to the 2/3 full one to claim them both. Tis the season.
- Her handwriting is, indeed, this atrocious when she's writing fast.
Seriously, though, on the handwriting. At the end of last year we got a notice that she had failed her Texas standardized test in writing and had to retake it over the summer. The scores were attached and she had received a ZERO in an entire section.
US: Emma, this is really surprising. You're a great writer. Did you finish the test?
EMMA: Yes, I finished it.
ME: Was it legible? Do you think they couldn't read it?
EMMA: Well . . . they did say that you could lose points if they couldn't read it. And I wrote really small to fit it in.
US: sigh.
She has two methods of writing - big, fast and sloppy, or neat and "grab your magnifying glass" small.
On the day of the district-wide retest, I picked her up after.
ME: How was the test? Were there a lot of kids there?
EMMA: A ton.
ME: Anyone you knew?
EMMA: Yeah, a kid I know from band was there. He said "What are YOU doing here?" when he saw me.
ME: Well it is a little surprising. Why did he fail the test?
EMMA: He said he was hung over.
ME: (shocked) Uh. . .not . . . cool. Moving on . . . did you write legibly?
EMMA: Yes.
When her retest scores came she scored a 98 or something like that. A vast improvement.
OK, back to the clues. As you can see, I taped Clue #20 to the apple juice. As they were removing it, Emma was reinforcing her claim to the juice.
EMMA: See these notes, Karl? Hands off! The apple juice is mine.
KARL: You bought it?
EMMA: No, but I claimed it.
KARL: You can't "claim" it. It's not land. You didn't conquer it. (in a mocking tone) "Oh, I am ON this land mass. Therefore I CLAIM this land mass. I OWN this land mass!"
EMMA: (grinning) Hey, you usually drink it all. It was worth a try! What's the clue say?
OK, this was a bit of a gimme. Two engineers decorating and you're going to find little areas of matching items, like a sofa table with all the snowman decorations grouped together.
They went straight to it.
KARL: The money is in this box, Emma. Geez, Mom. A box? You hid the money in a box?
ME: I was pressed for time.
EMMA: (examining the origami dollars) These are cute!
ME: They're rats.
We had to leave right after the clue hunts to get to appointments for the kids. In the car -
KARL: Dad, you have Siri on your phone, right?
JOHN: Yes, why?
KARL: Ask Siri "What does the fox say?"
JOHN: (presses Siri button) What does the fox say?
SIRI: We will never know. It's an ancient mystery.
Everyone laughs.
KARL: So that was worth update 7.0.2 or whatever.
JOHN: Ha! Exactly!
We entertained ourselves by asking Siri other questions, like "Why did the chicken cross the road?" and "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar?"
Good times!