Which one is the real Val?

Dinotrivia

Saturday morning I came into the living room to find Matthew and Ethan trying to set up a movie to watch, "The Land Before Time: The Mysterious Island". In an effort to distract me from noticing that they were putting on a movie without asking, Matthew started his filibustering. I know I'm using that word incorrectly, but he does sometimes remind me of a politician, and once he starts talking, good luck getting him to stop. Anyway, Matt's informative speech this morning rather impressed me, so I let them get away with it. After all, Russ was sleeping in and frankly, if they're watching a movie, at least they're not fighting.

Here's what he had to say: "Mom! They're going to get a ride home on an elasmosaurus! But, if it were a REAL elasmosaurus, it would probably EAT them! And there would be mosasaurs, too. But, Mom, all these dinosaurs lived at different times. They have a triceratops and an apatosaurus living at the same time, but apatosauruses are sauropods, and they lived during the Jurassic; but the triceratops lived during the Cretaceous. And, there are ceolophysis, but they lived in the Triassic!"

Huh, what? I can't even tell you the order of those periods of time. Matt reads the Dinosaur Encyclopedia like it's a fast-paced novel or something. That's what he brings for me to read to him for "bedtime stories".

This pic is from Feb 6, 2009. I had given them graham crackers for a snack, which Matt chose to eat into the shape of claws, so he could be a T-Rex. Or velociraptor. That's kind of gross and funny at the same time. I made him eat the rest of those graham crackers. Just kidding.

Tough as Bricks!

Yesterday I was at a friend's house (just finishing a Primary presidency meeting--I'm the new 2nd counselor since our branches combined), when all of a sudden we heard a big crash and guess what it was...my 5-yr-old son, Ethan, had snuck into their attic and fallen through the floor, onto their minivan in the garage and then onto the garage floor. He has a few goose eggs on his head, but seems none the worse for the wear. Good thing kids are tough. I told him that he must have a guardian angel protecting him, because he didn't break a bone and there was not one scratch on him.

New Trick

My first Velociraptor drawing:


The boys are very into dinosaurs these days. Well, they have been for a few years, alternating between them and Harry Potter and Transformers. But, since receiving a 3 disc set of the Ultimate Dinosaur Collection by BBC video for Christmas, they've been all but obsessed (thanks Nikki and Ed!). I do not know how many times they've watched those videos, which are similar to National Geographic documentaries, but the narrator goes back in time and sees (computer generated) prehistoric monsters. I'm not surprised to hear Matthew rehearsing some little known fact to me, or talking about dinosaurs I've never even heard of before. But, now even Ethan is coming to me with such tidbits as "Mommy, did you know that Ceolophysis was the first dinosaur?"

Matthew will spend all day in his room reading one of his numerous library books about dinos. One book showed how to draw some, so this morning he tried to draw it. Of course, he got extremely frustrated that he couldn't get it right, and was going through paper like there was no tomorrow. When I intervened, he shoved the book and paper at me and demanded that I draw him a velociraptor. Um, what? I can't even draw a rose that looks like a real rose. Not even close. It will look like a carnation on drugs. But, I can follow instructions, so I took the book and some time later... "wha-la". [How on earth do you spell that?] And I didn't even trace it. Matthew was asking me how I got to be such a good artist. Well, you know.