Newspaper FAIL

Good morning, my friends. Welcome back to the office. Do you have a beverage in hand? Perhaps a hunk of one of the donuts someone brought in this morning? Maybe the whole donut? You do what you must to get through this day. No judgment here.

Meanwhile, back on the spelling blog, we're taking a look at a grammar issue, courtesy of Mom. Yay, Mom! Here's proof she reads the paper carefully every day:

Sorry. It's a little blurry. Totally my fault, and not Mom's. 

This is the caption on a photo of an article NEXT TO a job hunt article she cut out for me. It is sort of spectacularly clunky, isn't it? And that's not even considering that tragic "their selves" business. That's not even a word, newspaper. Also, it's garnered maybe my most favorite google response so far:

On yahoo answers, the question:

Whats the difference between their selves and themselves?
like why would you use one in a sentence instead of the other

And the top answer? It's awesome:

The use of their selves is frowned upon by grammarians or those who want to speak or write English correctly.

Translation: If you're cool with looking dumb, you go on and use their selves. LOVE THAT. ANYHOO, I think I would have said "Tomas, Ana, and Marta Pritchard make themselves at home at...". I think that works better, and I don't know why the ages of the kids are necessary. Is that an AP thing I don't know about? Who knows?

Lesson learned: Their selves? Not a word. DO NOT USE.

(Thanks, Mom!)