THE BOYS

Elias had a really long day yesterday. His day started with piano practice, chore, scriptures, then off to school. After school he had scouts, basketball practice, dinner, a practice lesson from the Missionaries and then a visit from our Home Teachers. After all that it was time for homework. As you can see the homework didn't get done.

Silas couldn't stand me taking a picture of Jude without him in it.

Once a week we have "Hygiene Day". We usually cut hair if it needs it, clip finger and toe nails, and clean out ears. On this particular Hygiene Day Isaac thought he was pretty funny!

Silas loves his ice cream! Apparently he can eat it by the gallon!

West Virginia Drivers

We have a shop in Buckhannon, West Virginia. There really isn't an airport close to the shop so I fly into Pittsburgh and then drive down to Buckhannon. I rented a car and headed out. I usually like to take the shortest quickest route from point A to point B but I was able to take a scenic route this time and Pennsylvania and West Virginia have some really neat small towns. I opted not to rent the GPS this time because I already knew where to go. I guess I remembered it different than last time. Good thing I had a map or else I would have been lost. I don't understand how people can be lost when they have a map and they know where they are. Tami calls it lost but I call it a short cut.

I was driving down the freeway once I was able to get back to it, and every time I would pass a car or truck, they would honk and flash their lights. After about the fifth time, I realized they weren't just welcoming me to their state. Usually, I get waved at by the one fingered person for a welcome when I am driving in Wyoming. I know there are a lot of oil field accidents where people lose their fingers but you wouldn't think they would all lose everything except their middle finger. Getting back to the story, the low air pressure light had been on since I left the airport so I assumed it was a flat tire. I pulled into the nearest quick stop and walked around the car to see what was wrong. I couldn't see anything so I got back in to take off. When I sat down, I could see that my lights weren't showing up on the quick stop wall. The dash lights were on but my headlights were not. Did anyone know that they still made cars that you have to turn the headlights on manually? Apparently, I had been driving down the freeway in complete darkness without my headlights on. The really sad part about this story is that I have done this before in Houston with another rental car. It's a good thing they have automatic windows because it was snowing and raining the entire way down and when the lot person gave me the car, the drivers side window was down!!!

My Fancy BIL (brother in law)

Thanks to Chris for fixing my photos! Here are a few of them!

Jude 4 months

We took a few pictures of Jude today. They could use a little photo shopping (Chris you seem to be an expert, are you interested?) but overall I think we found some keepers.


Check out those fat rolls!! I love it!

Big'n

One summer when Caleb was working as an Intern for Smith Int. a moving company was hired to move some office furniture. There were 3-4 men doing the work. The men all referred to the great big chubby guy as "Big'n" (pronounced biggin). Jude is officially our family's Big'n. Elias, Isaac and Silas always were in the 10-15th percentile for height and weight and 90th percentile for head circumference. Jude is in the 75th % for weight and head circumference and 90th% for height!!! We are so excited to finally have a baby with some meat on his bones.

Yelling at the Ref's

I know what all of you are thinking and I want you to back up and just give me the opportunity to explain myself. Nine year old basketball is very serious and sometimes you have to yell at the refs. I also want to make a disclaimer before I even get started. My mom used to always say that there aren't bad people, there are just good people that do bad things. Well, these two refs were great kids, they were just terrible refs.

I need to give everyone a visual so that this makes more sense. Picture two teenage boys in the chess club that always really wanted to play basketball but never really could. Now picture them decked out in skin tight under armor shirts, shorts and a whistle. By the way, these are probably the founders of the next Youtube, Google or Facebook type company. Anyway, back to the story. They showed up to ref our game. We have really been working with the boys so that they don't travel, double dribble, reach and all the other things kids do when they play basketball. On Saturday, that all went out the window.

We did the jump ball at the beginning of the game and then from there, it was mass chaos. One of the boys from the other team threw a pass that was going out of bounds so the ref caught the ball and handed it back to him so they could continue playing. Another time the ball went out of bounds on the base line and it was the other teams ball going the other way. He didn't even make the other team take the ball out. He handed the ball to them at the free throw line and they took it down the court. In a separate incident two kids were fighting over the ball on our end and I jumped up out of the chair and said, "Call jump ball!!!" The poor kid looked at me, nodded his head and took it to center court for a jump ball. I don't think he ever did blow that whistle and he never would say who's ball it was when it went out of bounds. I think we lost everything we had been teaching the kids in a matter of 20 minutes. They were back to all of their old habits. So when I say I was yelling at the refs, it was because I wanted them to call more than what they were, even on our team. Our entire team except one person played football together in the fall. I will sum it all up by saying that our team thrived in this type of situation.

After some deep thought and contemplation, I finally realized how smart those two kids were. If you don't have to take the ball out of bounds, the clock doesn't stop and the game goes quicker. If you don't have to pass the ball in bounds, you get the same result. Don't call fouls and you won't be stopping the clock either. These guys probably get paid around $10/game. It doesn't take long to see why they were doing this. They were trying to increase their hourly pay rate. In a normal game, they would have made about $10/hour. In this game they were making $40/hour. Since I am one of the volunteer coaches, my hourly rate went from negative $40/hour to only negative $10/hour so all in all, it seems like a pretty fair investment. On the other hand, practice is going to be much longer trying to break all the bad habits again. I guess the important thing is that we won. I mean, that we all had a fun time.

Leash Laws

Remember when I said I was quiting everything except bunko? Well that's still true. My "old" book club was having a planning meeting last Thurs. that I didn't intend to go to. However, Caleb decided to call his Dad that night so I figured I'd have at least 45 min. to go and get out for a while. I loaded up the baby and headed down the street when out between 2 parked cars came a little white dog...Thump, Thump....Yes, I hit and killed it. It was horrible. I drove about 3 houses down not really believing what happened. I scrambled to find my cell to call Caleb who was talking to his Dad so he didn't answer. So flipped a u-turn to go back and try to find the owners of this sad situation. As I turned I see a man pick up his dog and go lay him on the driveway. Did I mention I'm bawling during all this? I pull over and he comes to my window where I blubber repeatedly how sorry I am. He said he was sorry too and that the dog shouldn't have been in the road. Then I just go right back home, no book club. I should have known better than to try and add an extra back to my life. So what they say is true, if you really love your dog, leash him.

Defending My Honor

Alright, just because a man likes to cook doesn't mean you have to question his manhood. Now baking, I will admit is taking things to the next level. I am going to blame this on my childhood since that seems like the most popular thing to do these days. It really isn't my fault. When I was growing up, whoever made dinner didn't have to set the table or clean the kitchen. This usually only occured on Sunday. I enjoyed making the messes much more than I liked cleaning them up so I really started to enjoy cooking. One step led to another and then all of a sudden I was baking bread. I will warn all men out there that it is a very slippery slope. Once you start to experiment with something like this, you find that cooking just isn't enough. Slowly you move to baking a cake just to get your fix. Then, the next thing you know you are kneeding bread (in a mixer of course). I am already looking for my next fix and I don't know where I am going to get it. By the way, Tami doesn't have the cooking/no cleaning rule in our house but I do keep trying to implement it but I still have to ask "Is the mixer all cleaned up yet?"

What a Loaf!

I just read Jim's blog and his disclaimer about not being gay. I'm beginning to wonder about my "Marty Stewart" husband though. Check out his latest loaf!! Ha ha! As part of his New Year's health kick he's making his own bread again. I do have to say it's blue ribbon worthy.

Potty Humor

Silas decided today that he was actually drawing real things when he colored. It was so cute and I was really excited to finally see him take an interest in his work. First he drew a head, then he added eyes. Next he drew Dad's head and then it all went down hill. This was his final masterpiece... "A Bum With Some Poop" (he named it himself). I think we have a little Picasso on our hands.

So Proud

The older boys have been dying to cook something on their own. Caleb's Mom always lets them help her in the kitchen (which they LOVE). I have a lot less patience with their "help" when I'm trying to cook. On Sunday we finally let Elias make a cake from the box on his own. He used some old oil from the basement that used to be for our popcorn machine. It turned out NASTY and we threw it away. Yesterday was Isaac's turn to take a stab at it. He mixed all the ingredients (he even separated egg yolks all by himself) and the batter was quite thick. We figured out that he'd only added 1/4 C. water instead of 1 1/4 C. water, an easy fix. He followed all the directions perfectly other than that and it turned out good. Everyone had some for dessert last night. About an hour after dinner we caught Silas on the counter with a fork shredding the cake to crumbs...so Isaac's cake got thrown away too. But I'm still proud of them both (especially Isaac, he's only 7)!

Happy New Year!

This is the only picture I managed to take on NYE. I'll have to get my niece, Hannah, to email some to me!! This is Jude and his cousin Cedric having an awesome night.

Too Funny!

I had to share a link to an entry from my friend's blog. It is So Stinkin' Cute! http://erinlo.blogspot.com/2007/12/little-ears-are-always-listeningjeff.html Love it!