Be warned bipedal peanuts, you are not wanted at the community center. *Warning, Bad Pun Ahead*
You'll have to take your LEGumes elsewhere.
Friday, January 31, 2014
Awww, Nuts!
I took David John and Benjamin to the kids fit class at our community center today. As we walked past the daycare, David John noticed a sign letting parents know that the daycare was a nut-free zone due to some children with nut allergies. There was a picture accompanying the sign that looked something like this:
David John pointed to it and laughed. He said, "Mom! Look! That's a funny rule. It says no walking peanuts! Why would they have that rule, right?"
Be warned bipedal peanuts, you are not wanted at the community center. *Warning, Bad Pun Ahead*
You'll have to take your LEGumes elsewhere.
Be warned bipedal peanuts, you are not wanted at the community center. *Warning, Bad Pun Ahead*
You'll have to take your LEGumes elsewhere.
Feast Upon the Word
This baby loves his scriptures. All the boys got their own copy of the Book of Mormon with their name embossed on it from their Oma for Christmas. We've been using them for family scripture study each night and Tobias just can't get enough of his. He cries when we put it away and its the only book that I've seen him interact with without attempting to tear the pages. I hope he loves it this much when he's older.
Yay! My Book of Mormon!
Let's see.... where was I?
Come and partake of the scriptures with me.
I have a comment about what we just read...
It's on the tip of my tongue...
Ahh. The Word of God never tasted so sweet.
Funny Boys
These boys make us laugh. Here are a few cute pictures and quotes from this month:
TOBIAS
Tobias discovered that the self-inking stamps his brothers got in their Christmas stockings are so delicious! Tobias will seek them out, even opening his brother's desk to get to them. I'm sure those things are non-toxic. Right? I mean, anything made in China has to be high quality and extremely safe. I didn't even bother to call poison control this time. I'm tired of them giggling on the other end of the line.
Tobias doesn't have any quotable quotes yet, but he does have an adorable way of whistling when he is really focused on something. He purses his lips and a faints whistle sound occurs when he breathes in and out.
BENJAMIN
We could not convince Benjamin that the glasses were on upside down. He was so proud of himself!
Benjamin said the following in a prayer:
"Please bless the food. Bless us to not steal fruit snacks and not steal tomatoes and not steal cheese and not steal crackers and not steal carrots and not steal grape jelly and not steal butter and not steal candy and not steal chips and not steal bread. Bless us to not fight and not go to jail."
We've discovered that his prayers are a useful catalog of sins. It often answers questions for us like, "who made the giant toilet paper mess in the bathroom? I wasn't even aware that he had been "stealing" some of those things. Good grief. We are going to have to get a padlock for the fridge at this rate.
DAVID JOHN
David John decided to use the aforementioned self-inking stamps to stamp his face. His unfortunate choice of a red stamp coupled with the placement gave him a devilish appearance complete with little horns and beard. It did not wash off very well, so he was the devil for a few days.
I also discovered this lovely selfie on my cell phone. Lovely.
David John was acting as if he was uncomfortable one day, so I asked him what was bothering him.
"Oh, it's nothing. My underwear is just hurting me. Sometimes, when you are a big kid, your underwear just hurts you."
"Hmmm. Can I try to help you? Is there an itchy tag or something? Can I try and straighten them for you?"
"No. It's because they have poke-a-dots. If there are poke-a-dots it just pokes you. I'll be fine, Mom."
ELIJAH
Elijah made this amazing paper mache hat at school. I particulary love the q-tips detail on the back.
Both boys often come home from school with little songs or rhymes that I remember from my own school days. Sometimes they are slightly different from the versions I learned, but I had to smile when I heard the changes Elijah made to the "made ya look" rhyme.
"Major look! Major look! Now you're in the baby book!"
GABRIEL
Gabriel also made a hat at school, albeit of a different variety. I love that he misspelled his name on the front. He's such a perfectionist and a bit of a know-it-all so it is refreshing to see him do something imperfectly sometimes. I also like the shiny glue spots where you can tell the candies he had glued to his hat somehow didn't stay on for very long.....
Gabriel came home from school on the day after Martin Luther King Day with an interesting history lesson. I had talked to the boys on MLK Day about Dr. King and his legacy and racial equality but apparently Gabriel wasn't listening very well to me or to his teacher.
"Today we talked about Leather Junior King. He lived a long time ago when there were only black people and white people on the earth. No other kinds of people. The white people were not being very nice so he had to talk to everyone in Tennessee or something."
Don't worry, we set him straight.. after I had a good laugh. I love my funny boys.
TOBIAS
Tobias discovered that the self-inking stamps his brothers got in their Christmas stockings are so delicious! Tobias will seek them out, even opening his brother's desk to get to them. I'm sure those things are non-toxic. Right? I mean, anything made in China has to be high quality and extremely safe. I didn't even bother to call poison control this time. I'm tired of them giggling on the other end of the line.
Tobias doesn't have any quotable quotes yet, but he does have an adorable way of whistling when he is really focused on something. He purses his lips and a faints whistle sound occurs when he breathes in and out.
BENJAMIN
We could not convince Benjamin that the glasses were on upside down. He was so proud of himself!
Benjamin said the following in a prayer:
"Please bless the food. Bless us to not steal fruit snacks and not steal tomatoes and not steal cheese and not steal crackers and not steal carrots and not steal grape jelly and not steal butter and not steal candy and not steal chips and not steal bread. Bless us to not fight and not go to jail."
We've discovered that his prayers are a useful catalog of sins. It often answers questions for us like, "who made the giant toilet paper mess in the bathroom? I wasn't even aware that he had been "stealing" some of those things. Good grief. We are going to have to get a padlock for the fridge at this rate.
DAVID JOHN
David John decided to use the aforementioned self-inking stamps to stamp his face. His unfortunate choice of a red stamp coupled with the placement gave him a devilish appearance complete with little horns and beard. It did not wash off very well, so he was the devil for a few days.
I also discovered this lovely selfie on my cell phone. Lovely.
David John was acting as if he was uncomfortable one day, so I asked him what was bothering him.
"Oh, it's nothing. My underwear is just hurting me. Sometimes, when you are a big kid, your underwear just hurts you."
"Hmmm. Can I try to help you? Is there an itchy tag or something? Can I try and straighten them for you?"
"No. It's because they have poke-a-dots. If there are poke-a-dots it just pokes you. I'll be fine, Mom."
ELIJAH
Elijah made this amazing paper mache hat at school. I particulary love the q-tips detail on the back.
Both boys often come home from school with little songs or rhymes that I remember from my own school days. Sometimes they are slightly different from the versions I learned, but I had to smile when I heard the changes Elijah made to the "made ya look" rhyme.
"Major look! Major look! Now you're in the baby book!"
GABRIEL
Gabriel also made a hat at school, albeit of a different variety. I love that he misspelled his name on the front. He's such a perfectionist and a bit of a know-it-all so it is refreshing to see him do something imperfectly sometimes. I also like the shiny glue spots where you can tell the candies he had glued to his hat somehow didn't stay on for very long.....
Gabriel came home from school on the day after Martin Luther King Day with an interesting history lesson. I had talked to the boys on MLK Day about Dr. King and his legacy and racial equality but apparently Gabriel wasn't listening very well to me or to his teacher.
"Today we talked about Leather Junior King. He lived a long time ago when there were only black people and white people on the earth. No other kinds of people. The white people were not being very nice so he had to talk to everyone in Tennessee or something."
Don't worry, we set him straight.. after I had a good laugh. I love my funny boys.
unreFINEd DINING
I love this photo. When my boys are playing and giggling together, I feel so fulfilled. I'm not sure what game they were playing when they made this little impromptu pyramid, but I'm so glad I caught this silly moment. However, I almost didn't post it. You see, posting this photo is a public admission that we are uncouth barbarians who never even attempt to use our dining room for, well, dining.
See the folded clothes stacked to the edge of the table on the left part of the picture? See the unfolded clean clothes heaped on the chair waiting to be folded? See Tobias' little ride-on car on the floor? And, oh my, the lovely vomit bowl thrown casually to the side on the right? Clearly, this is not a room in which we dine.
Why, you may ask, is our dining room neglected so? We have a lovely table and chairs, we have a cabinet full of "chinina" dishes, we have a beautiful sideboard full of silverware and serving dishes. What is stopping us from joining the civilized masses who enjoy their dinner in a dining room?
WELL, let me tell you.
1. We don't "dine" at all. We eat. The word "dine" conjures images of persons politely taking small bites of food in between polite conversation. The word "dine" suggests that there are multiple utensils on the table and that there are napkins actually being used. No, we do not dine. We eat. And when we eat, it does not reflect the first definition of the word in the dictionary: "eat- verb, to take in through the mouth as food: ingest chew and swallow in turn" but I suggest that when my family eats it looks more like the second defintion: "eat- verb, to destroy consume or waste by or as if by eating". What we need is an "eating room". A room in which it is acceptable to stuff huge quantities of food in one's mouth and then attempt to talk. A room in which potty talk is a preferred topic of conversation. A room where utensils may lie forgotten on the table while everything is eaten with hands- this includes soup, ranch dressing, grape jelly and salsa. A room where pants and sleeves are used in lieu of napkins. A room where food may be ingested, chewed, and then taken out of one's mouth to see just what partially-masticated food looks like. A room where some items may be ingested and swallowed without being chewed at all. Come to think of it, I know someone who had a room like this where her twin toddlers ate most meals- it was called the bathtub. It was certainly NOT the dining room.
2. The table in the dining room is never available for eating at because there is always laundry. It never ends. Never. And it is never all folded and put away at any given minute on any given day. There is SOMETHING folded and waiting to be put away on that table. And no, I can't just put my folded laundry somewhere else! Don't you know we have a very grabby baby around here?!? That table is the one place, aside from kitchen surfaces that his grabby little hands can't reach up pull down all those lovely folded shirts and pants. Forget about it.
3. My boys are not patient enough to eat in an area that is a whopping ten feet away from the food preparation area. If I had to stand up and walk ten feet to the kitchen and then back every time someone needed more food I would never get to take a bite from my own plate. Between the five of them, someone needs a napkin, a drink, a utensil, a second helping, a third helping, condiments, etc. every 30-60 seconds. What was that? Put the food on the table!? Are you crazy? Clearly you have not taken into account that putting food on the table inevitably leads to disaster. Food sitting on the table as opposed to food that stays on the stove-top or counter is 100% more likely to have milk spilled on it, to be knocked onto the floor, to be sneezed on, to have generous amounts of salt added to it or to be thoroughly squashed when the baby wiggles out of his highchair straps, stands on his tray and belly flops dramatically onto our dinner. True story.
4. The last and greatest reason we cannot use our dining room for dining is evident in the above photo. Look closely at the floor. What do you see? Hardwood floors? Tile perhaps? No. No, of course not. You see carpet. CARPET, people! Who's idea was that? Why in all of creation would you ever put carpet in a dining room? Have you seen the floor at our house after a meal? I am pretty sure my boys supported an entire civilization of ants and a family of mice with their leavings at our house in Cleveland. There are probably enough calories on our floor to support several dogs. Anyway, seriously, who started the trend to carpet dining rooms? Was it women trying to one-up each other? (My children eat so neatly that the ants in our house had to start a soup kitchen. Oh, yeah? My children eat so neatly that we have carpet in our dining room! *Gasp. No! Oh, yes sister. You better believe it.) Our house was built in 1956, so I did a little interior design research. Carpet was IN in a big way in 1956. Post war Americans were all about having all of the comforts of life they did without during the war and that included carpet. I get it. What's more comfortable than eating comfort food on a padded chair while your feet rest on some plush carpet? Who wouldn't want to wriggle their toes into carpet that is housing an impressive collection of bacteria, molds and fungi from all of the crumbs that lodged themselves in the fibers? How luxurious! Let's not forget about how beautiful it looks. Each new stain is a reminder of a meal shared with family and friends. "See that irregular yellow blob? That was from the time we had bratwurst and Uncle Bob squeezed the mustard too hard. Ooh, look! There's the chocolate ice cream splotch from Jane's birthday." The more I think about it, dining room carpets are a veritable goldmine of anthropological data! They could tell us so much about the dietary habits of their owners. Perhaps we are doing future historians a disservice by not eating over our dining room carpet. All of that data is being swept into the trash after every meal when it could be preserved for posterity in the depths of the carpet pads and fibers!
I will think on this. Perhaps our dining room should become our eating room after all. I have hope that someday we will dine together in the finer sense of the word. I dream of a day when the lessons we are trying to hard to teach about manners finally sink in. Until then, we will enjoy the room as it is- the laundry/play/sewing/project room that happens to be next to the kitchen.
Why, you may ask, is our dining room neglected so? We have a lovely table and chairs, we have a cabinet full of "chinina" dishes, we have a beautiful sideboard full of silverware and serving dishes. What is stopping us from joining the civilized masses who enjoy their dinner in a dining room?
WELL, let me tell you.
1. We don't "dine" at all. We eat. The word "dine" conjures images of persons politely taking small bites of food in between polite conversation. The word "dine" suggests that there are multiple utensils on the table and that there are napkins actually being used. No, we do not dine. We eat. And when we eat, it does not reflect the first definition of the word in the dictionary: "eat- verb, to take in through the mouth as food: ingest chew and swallow in turn" but I suggest that when my family eats it looks more like the second defintion: "eat- verb, to destroy consume or waste by or as if by eating". What we need is an "eating room". A room in which it is acceptable to stuff huge quantities of food in one's mouth and then attempt to talk. A room in which potty talk is a preferred topic of conversation. A room where utensils may lie forgotten on the table while everything is eaten with hands- this includes soup, ranch dressing, grape jelly and salsa. A room where pants and sleeves are used in lieu of napkins. A room where food may be ingested, chewed, and then taken out of one's mouth to see just what partially-masticated food looks like. A room where some items may be ingested and swallowed without being chewed at all. Come to think of it, I know someone who had a room like this where her twin toddlers ate most meals- it was called the bathtub. It was certainly NOT the dining room.
2. The table in the dining room is never available for eating at because there is always laundry. It never ends. Never. And it is never all folded and put away at any given minute on any given day. There is SOMETHING folded and waiting to be put away on that table. And no, I can't just put my folded laundry somewhere else! Don't you know we have a very grabby baby around here?!? That table is the one place, aside from kitchen surfaces that his grabby little hands can't reach up pull down all those lovely folded shirts and pants. Forget about it.
3. My boys are not patient enough to eat in an area that is a whopping ten feet away from the food preparation area. If I had to stand up and walk ten feet to the kitchen and then back every time someone needed more food I would never get to take a bite from my own plate. Between the five of them, someone needs a napkin, a drink, a utensil, a second helping, a third helping, condiments, etc. every 30-60 seconds. What was that? Put the food on the table!? Are you crazy? Clearly you have not taken into account that putting food on the table inevitably leads to disaster. Food sitting on the table as opposed to food that stays on the stove-top or counter is 100% more likely to have milk spilled on it, to be knocked onto the floor, to be sneezed on, to have generous amounts of salt added to it or to be thoroughly squashed when the baby wiggles out of his highchair straps, stands on his tray and belly flops dramatically onto our dinner. True story.
4. The last and greatest reason we cannot use our dining room for dining is evident in the above photo. Look closely at the floor. What do you see? Hardwood floors? Tile perhaps? No. No, of course not. You see carpet. CARPET, people! Who's idea was that? Why in all of creation would you ever put carpet in a dining room? Have you seen the floor at our house after a meal? I am pretty sure my boys supported an entire civilization of ants and a family of mice with their leavings at our house in Cleveland. There are probably enough calories on our floor to support several dogs. Anyway, seriously, who started the trend to carpet dining rooms? Was it women trying to one-up each other? (My children eat so neatly that the ants in our house had to start a soup kitchen. Oh, yeah? My children eat so neatly that we have carpet in our dining room! *Gasp. No! Oh, yes sister. You better believe it.) Our house was built in 1956, so I did a little interior design research. Carpet was IN in a big way in 1956. Post war Americans were all about having all of the comforts of life they did without during the war and that included carpet. I get it. What's more comfortable than eating comfort food on a padded chair while your feet rest on some plush carpet? Who wouldn't want to wriggle their toes into carpet that is housing an impressive collection of bacteria, molds and fungi from all of the crumbs that lodged themselves in the fibers? How luxurious! Let's not forget about how beautiful it looks. Each new stain is a reminder of a meal shared with family and friends. "See that irregular yellow blob? That was from the time we had bratwurst and Uncle Bob squeezed the mustard too hard. Ooh, look! There's the chocolate ice cream splotch from Jane's birthday." The more I think about it, dining room carpets are a veritable goldmine of anthropological data! They could tell us so much about the dietary habits of their owners. Perhaps we are doing future historians a disservice by not eating over our dining room carpet. All of that data is being swept into the trash after every meal when it could be preserved for posterity in the depths of the carpet pads and fibers!
I will think on this. Perhaps our dining room should become our eating room after all. I have hope that someday we will dine together in the finer sense of the word. I dream of a day when the lessons we are trying to hard to teach about manners finally sink in. Until then, we will enjoy the room as it is- the laundry/play/sewing/project room that happens to be next to the kitchen.
Wednesday, January 29, 2014
Just Chillin'
I know I've mentioned this before- but it gets cold here. I thought these cold temperatures might be hard for me to live with, but for some reason I really haven't been bothered by it. In fact, I find myself adjusting to the cold in ways that I thought impossible. If you had told me a year ago that I would find a sunny, 28 degree day to be warm and pleasant and that I would happily play outside with my children for more than an hour, I would have attempted to raise my eyebrow at you. I can't actually raise just one, but I would have imagined that I was making a quizzical expression while my forehead scrunched up in an attempt to get just one eyebrow to move by itself. This playing outside in the cold thing, however, happened! It was lovely. I have pictures to prove it.
Also, the cold can bring beauty with it. I've often marveled at the sparkling ice-rimmed trees, and the beautiful snow-covered hills in the park behind our house where our boys sled. The cold weather brought me my first experience of seeing what locals call a "sun-dog". It's like a rainbow, but the light is being refracted by ice crystals suspended in the air instead of by raindrops. As a result, the colors form a partial or complete halo around the sun. I don't have a picture of one yet, but there are plenty of pictures online if you don't know what I'm talking about. The point is, they are super cool. Pun intended.
Anyway, here are some pictures of my boys at the playground in our balmy 28 degree weather a week and a half ago. Watching how much fun they were having makes me wish I'd gotten to play on a playground in my snowsuit. You definitely get some awesome speed on the slides. This is us, just chillin' in ND.
Also, the cold can bring beauty with it. I've often marveled at the sparkling ice-rimmed trees, and the beautiful snow-covered hills in the park behind our house where our boys sled. The cold weather brought me my first experience of seeing what locals call a "sun-dog". It's like a rainbow, but the light is being refracted by ice crystals suspended in the air instead of by raindrops. As a result, the colors form a partial or complete halo around the sun. I don't have a picture of one yet, but there are plenty of pictures online if you don't know what I'm talking about. The point is, they are super cool. Pun intended.
Anyway, here are some pictures of my boys at the playground in our balmy 28 degree weather a week and a half ago. Watching how much fun they were having makes me wish I'd gotten to play on a playground in my snowsuit. You definitely get some awesome speed on the slides. This is us, just chillin' in ND.
Monday, January 13, 2014
What's New?
What's new around here besides the new year? I'm glad you asked.
After we got back to North Dakota from our Utah adventure, we needed some food. I went to the local grocery store only to find that it had taken on a new identity. Our beloved Dan's had turned into something called Econoofoods. I think the store is supposed to be called Econofoods, but there is an orange in the logo that looks like an "o" so we are sticking with the Econoofoods version.
Anyway, the community seems none too pleased with this change and not just because the store has a lame name and logo. Their prices are expensive, their sales not so great and they don't make the same fabulous dressings and chicken that Dan's was famous for. Trading a locally-owned store for a big chain? Boo. The most depressing part is that our only other grocery choice is Super Walmart. *sigh* I am hoping that next year when I report what's new, I'll be telling you about the awesome new Costco they just built! (If there are any Costco execs reading this, I promise if you come to Dickinson we will keep you in business. We will probably be able to singlehandedly fund your store once our boys are teenagers.)
Moving on, of course the New Year brings resolutions and new ideas. The boys and I had a meeting about what kinds of things they want to do and learn this year and how we could make our family even stronger this year. What problems need to be solved?
The boys had a lot of ideas, some of them good and some of them, well, special. All of the boys agreed that there is too much fighting among the boys in our house but no one had any ideas about how to decrease the conflicts. David John, however also presented another serious problem. "It's a problem when people put their hands in the toilet," he said. "Hmm, I replied, what can we do about that problem?" "Umm, probably not put our hands in the toilet?" "Yep, good idea."
Here are some of the other ideas our boys had about what they want to do in 2014:
Eat ice cream
Learn about monstrous animals
Climb the walls and the ceiling like a spider
Color big gigantic pictures
Do handstands and gymnastics tricks
Learn about Jesus and Heavenly Father
Climb a mountain
Learn how to play Lego Lord of the Rings
Drink
Hang upside-down from the ceiling
Roller skate
Learn about skunks, elephants, teddy bears and zombies
"Thief the fruit snacks dead" (this one is Benjamin's goal- he loves to steal and rapidly consume fruit snacks)
Clean up stuff
Build buildings
Learn about pigs
I tried to take all the ideas very seriously. It was hard to keep a straight face.
Also new this year was the extremely cold weather. At least it was new to us and even native North Dakotans say this has been an exceptionally cold winter. Last Sunday, we experienced first hand wind-chills ranging from -50 to -60 degrees. Our boys cried just walking from the church to our car. The most disconcerting thing about temperatures that cold is that there are places on Mars that are warmer. Remember when I said that Earth being better than Mars wasn't hard? Maybe I was wrong. When the boys got in the van and we shut the door they were very concerned that it was so cold that they could still see their "dragon breath".
On Friday, something else new happened. Our street got plowed! That's the first time this has happened! I think we lost a good 6 inches of elevation at least. Black top was never such a beautiful sight.
David John has newly decided that he likes dogs. He was always fearful before, but over the Christmas break he bonded with the Flinders' dog Cai. We found him sitting on the rug one afternoon happily petting Cai. He said, "Mom, Cai is a good dog. He doesn't scratch, he doesn't bite, he doesn't eat........ people." Oh, good. I am so glad that Cai is not a man-eater.
Last, but not least, Marc got a new calling yesterday. Our ward was so big that they had to split it into two and Marc is now the Elder's Quorum President in the Dickinson 1st Ward. Adding these responsibilities to his already busy schedule will be a challenge, but we have faith that the Lord will help our family cope with this big job. Happy New Year to all our dear family and friends.
After we got back to North Dakota from our Utah adventure, we needed some food. I went to the local grocery store only to find that it had taken on a new identity. Our beloved Dan's had turned into something called Econoofoods. I think the store is supposed to be called Econofoods, but there is an orange in the logo that looks like an "o" so we are sticking with the Econoofoods version.
Anyway, the community seems none too pleased with this change and not just because the store has a lame name and logo. Their prices are expensive, their sales not so great and they don't make the same fabulous dressings and chicken that Dan's was famous for. Trading a locally-owned store for a big chain? Boo. The most depressing part is that our only other grocery choice is Super Walmart. *sigh* I am hoping that next year when I report what's new, I'll be telling you about the awesome new Costco they just built! (If there are any Costco execs reading this, I promise if you come to Dickinson we will keep you in business. We will probably be able to singlehandedly fund your store once our boys are teenagers.)
Moving on, of course the New Year brings resolutions and new ideas. The boys and I had a meeting about what kinds of things they want to do and learn this year and how we could make our family even stronger this year. What problems need to be solved?
The boys had a lot of ideas, some of them good and some of them, well, special. All of the boys agreed that there is too much fighting among the boys in our house but no one had any ideas about how to decrease the conflicts. David John, however also presented another serious problem. "It's a problem when people put their hands in the toilet," he said. "Hmm, I replied, what can we do about that problem?" "Umm, probably not put our hands in the toilet?" "Yep, good idea."
Here are some of the other ideas our boys had about what they want to do in 2014:
Eat ice cream
Learn about monstrous animals
Climb the walls and the ceiling like a spider
Color big gigantic pictures
Do handstands and gymnastics tricks
Learn about Jesus and Heavenly Father
Climb a mountain
Learn how to play Lego Lord of the Rings
Drink
Hang upside-down from the ceiling
Roller skate
Learn about skunks, elephants, teddy bears and zombies
"Thief the fruit snacks dead" (this one is Benjamin's goal- he loves to steal and rapidly consume fruit snacks)
Clean up stuff
Build buildings
Learn about pigs
I tried to take all the ideas very seriously. It was hard to keep a straight face.
Also new this year was the extremely cold weather. At least it was new to us and even native North Dakotans say this has been an exceptionally cold winter. Last Sunday, we experienced first hand wind-chills ranging from -50 to -60 degrees. Our boys cried just walking from the church to our car. The most disconcerting thing about temperatures that cold is that there are places on Mars that are warmer. Remember when I said that Earth being better than Mars wasn't hard? Maybe I was wrong. When the boys got in the van and we shut the door they were very concerned that it was so cold that they could still see their "dragon breath".
On Friday, something else new happened. Our street got plowed! That's the first time this has happened! I think we lost a good 6 inches of elevation at least. Black top was never such a beautiful sight.
David John has newly decided that he likes dogs. He was always fearful before, but over the Christmas break he bonded with the Flinders' dog Cai. We found him sitting on the rug one afternoon happily petting Cai. He said, "Mom, Cai is a good dog. He doesn't scratch, he doesn't bite, he doesn't eat........ people." Oh, good. I am so glad that Cai is not a man-eater.
Last, but not least, Marc got a new calling yesterday. Our ward was so big that they had to split it into two and Marc is now the Elder's Quorum President in the Dickinson 1st Ward. Adding these responsibilities to his already busy schedule will be a challenge, but we have faith that the Lord will help our family cope with this big job. Happy New Year to all our dear family and friends.
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