Just call me Lynn Raisman.

I'm not sure how you parents of children in highly competitive sports do it. This weekend was the Candy Cane Shiah at the boys' karate dojo, and the boys each competed in a kata and a weapons division. The whole time I was a bundle of nerves and it was the Candy Cane Shiah, a very friendly and fun competiton. I felt like Aly Raisman's mother, except all that dialogue was going on in my head and also, I didn't really know the routines that they were doing. STICK IT STICK IT YEAHHHHHH. Mark got a bronze in kata and a silver in weapons in his division, and Jake got a silver in kata and a GOLD in weapons. This is what he looked like after winning:

So that was pretty fun. The entire day they walked around the house wearing their medals, like they medaled in an actual Olympic event. It was a constant jangle all day long.

This photo says everything about their personalities. Last night the boys were working on math sheets, practicing for unit tests on Tuesday. I looked over Mark's word problems, which were all correct but just had the answers written down, no setting up of the problem, no work.

Me: Mark, you have to show your work. 801 is the correct answer, but how did you get it?

Mark: Um, I regrouped. In my head.

Jake was working on greater than/ less than problems, and the question specifically asked "How do you know?". Jake wrote "Because I know math." Partial credit?

The weekend before last we decorated our gingerbread house, and I feel like we've made gargantuan strides in this area. Part of this is the fact that I buy the pre-made house with the pre-mixed frosting and the pre-cut-out gingerbread characters, and before you say well, YEAH, you have to be an idiot not to make something decent out of that much pre-fabricated festivity, I invite you to see the house from 2011. But look at this year's offerings! I am going to admit that this is the year that I have had the least involvement with the decoration, and it is also our best house ever. Possible correlation. I was too busy making the gingerbread Christmas tree to really fuss over the frosting lines on the roof, but it turns out my husband is remarkably competent in this area.

Those are my husband's hands, not mine, wielding the frosting.

 

That is supposed to be me, in gingerbread woman-form. Aren't I lovely?

See, the little tree was taking up all my efforts. And the red snowman...I don't know. It wouldn't be a gingerbread house in the Boyhouse if there wasn't some kind of dead/ bloody/ blown up/ violent component.

Mark made a smiley face on the side of the house - the windows are the eyes. Jake put that blob of red frosting there, showing where the nuclear explosion was. I should maybe be concerned.