A funny retake on Repunzel- Refurzal

A funny movie Rachel, Laura, and I came up with after being sent down to the basement:



-Becca

Sarah's take on the snow

Isn't it fun to be forced to step out of the normal life for a day or two? What with all this snow (14+ inches in a state used to only 3-6" most of the time) the only place I'm willing to drive to is the hospital. So we have to read stories, make snow candy (lollipop stuff that we drizzle over a cookie sheet of snow), watch movies, play out in the snow, and try to keep the kids from driving each other nuts! What a rough life! I am glad we still have power and gas logs for a quick warm up.

Jeffrey didn't take to the snow much--cold, as high as his hips, and when he tips over (with or without Miriam's help) he ends up face first and unable to get up because he's so bundled up.

And we're taking down the Noah's Ark border in Jeffrey's room, to get it ready to paint and then Brian will move in there with him and Laura will move in with Miriam, leaving Becca and Rachel in the other room. Sounds like a fun Christmas break project, right? The kids are excited and ready to help so that I can paint and we can play musical rooms.

More snow pics!

Hope you don't have the same "luck" we did!

-Becca

Snow, SNOW, SNOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yesterday we got out of school early (1 and 1/2 hours) because it was supposed to snow. And snow it did. We have a foot of snow on the ground right now and it's still snowing hard. We had fun earlier, but it got cold. Rachel and Laura are still out there, I think.

More pics later.

-Becca

Laura's baptism day

Well ... we're only running a month late. Oh well. Was a great day.

Halloween pictures

Brian was a ghost whose eyeholes kept drifting as he went trick or treating. By this time, he was tired of them and so he'd ditched the costume.


Miriam was a bunny, with the costume coming from another family in the ward whose kids had outgrown the costume.


Becca decided to be a witch--maybe it was reading all those Harry Potter books. All we had to find was a bigger witch hat. Yeah for the costume box!


Jeffrey is such a cute little elephant. He loved the candy, especially lollipops and it was the first Halloween where he kind of got what was going on. :)


Rachel and Laura wanted to be black cats, as identical as possible. Don't they look great?


Our traditional family snapshot at Grandma and Grandpa Bristow's house when we trick or treat there for one last treat (after we've gone around the neighborhood here).

When will everyone be better?

We have been entertaining for the past 5-6 weeks at least one bug that has I think and I hope finally made the rounds. There was the fever, sore throat, coughing...we figure it was probably the swine flu, but it has taken its own sweet time and Derek is the last one with it. It has been interesting how it has affected everyone differently. Becca and Brian would have missed school except for a four day weekend, Rachel, Laura, and Jeffrey seemed to have just a cough (no fever), and I mostly avoided it (had a couple of days a week apart where I felt icky). It hit Miriam hard--she ended up with pneumonia and my blessing to just lay on the couch watching movies all day until we could get her breathing better and her energy up. But she is back to her spunky self. (Last night Derek told me this about Miriam...he was going to tickle her and she waggled her bottom (sort of sticking it out) left and right saying, "My bum says no." Who knows where that comes from...) Derek's now been down for more than a week, though he still works--he can be uncomfortable in bed, or sitting at the computer, and at least he is distracted a little when he's working. I hope he gets better soon! Hopefully we have had our sicknesses for the winter!!

--Sarah

Miri has (is fighting off) pnumonia!

Miri had a cough/fever bug, got a bit better, then worse. Mom used the Nebulizer (breathing system) with Miri, but finally took her to the doctor. She got a prescription to help her get better, and another calming one, plus some albuterol. She isn't using the Nebulizer anymore, but is still taking one medicine, and still has a bad cough.

You might be wondering why I can be posting at this time of day, school time. No, I'm not sick, and we get today off for Election Day. It's all good.

-Becca

Becca is famous!!

She was on TV!! Well ... you can see her around 45 seconds into the video, she was getting a flu shot, she's got the pony tail, but is facing away from the camera.

Stinking Yellow Jackets

Evidently there is a yellow jacket nest under a bucket helping to support the trampoline by sitting on a leg. So, basically, when we jump, we shake the nest, so when Laura and I are jumping on it in the rain because, well, it's extra bouncy, I get stung twice. Ouch! Daddy is planning to lead an invasion of the nest as soon as he goes to Home Depot to get the stuff to attack them with. Go Daddy!

-Becca

Jeff is starting to WALK!!!

I've seen him walk before, and we've tried to catch it on video many a time, but this was the first time I was successful.



-Becca

For all of you with Wiis...

For all of you with Wiis, there is a game called Wii Play. There is this one game called Find Mii. You find all these kinds of people. Miis are the people you play on, and you get to make them. We beat the game(Find Mii) with 40 seconds to spare... and the last level was level... 99!!!!!!! It took Me, Rachel, Laura and Brian to do it.

I better go back to help Mom get Miri down for her nap...



-Becca

Funny little boy

Jeff was enjoying himself immensely, having just emptied a bunch of dishes from the kids cupboard.

Crazy! Where'd all that time go!?!

Can you believe it!?! Jeff's birthday is in 23 days!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Can anyone tell me where all that time went???

-Becca

Silly Children

Two funny things to share before I forget:

Yesterday Miriam was in a cute skirt and blouse and I said to her, "You're adorable!" Her response? "I'm not a Gerbil, I'm a Miri!"

Today, Sarah comes downstairs, "Miriam says she has a bee in her nose, could you help her?" Miriam, enunciating a bit better this time says she has a bead in her nose. Sometimes you can push on the side of the nose and get the object out, but it was too far in. Uh oh. So I cover the other nostril and say, "Ok Miriam, blow your nose hard!" On the second blow this blue bead comes shooting out her nose, bouncing off the floor and landing in a nearby shoe. So what does Brian do? He picks up a different bead and starts to put it in his nose.

What are they thinking? And what do people without kids do for laughs?

Lots and lots of eggs

We ended up coloring a LOT of eggs today, about 40. That wasn't the original plan, but when we grabbed the wrong container of eggs from the fridge, 18 raw eggs got dyed before we realized our error.

Anyone know how to tell raw eggs from hard boiled, particularly after they've been dyed?

The World through Miriam's eyes

I just wanted to share a funny thing Miriam said yesterday. To preface this, she's been listening to the Book of Mormon stories as she goes down for her nap and for bed. When we were watching conference, I pointed out President Monson to Miriam and said, "That's the prophet." Her response? "But he's not tied up!" I had to laugh at her association of prophet and tied up...but it makes a certain amount of sense when you think of Abinadi, Ammon, Alma and Amulek, Nephi, etc. :) President Monson better watch out... Anyway, I hope you enjoyed conference as much as we did!

love,

Sarah

Ironic is it?

When our computer mouse was slow, we automatically think our computer is slowing down. We reboot is and ironic is it, we find out it was only our dying mouse.

I have to go because dad is at a space conference and mom needs my help.

-Cousin Becca, daughter, niece, whatever


Let me just add that I spent 8 hours trying to rebuild my computer before discovering this. The problem was that the Windows XP install CD was made before SATA hard drives were around, so it could not find the hard drive!!! One of the things I love about Linux is you download a new CD whenever you want and the new CD knows everything up to date. Microsoft is so guarded, you can't say, "Hey, can I download a new XP CD that is up to date?" They'd practically call the police. So after finally getting things reinstalled and discovering the mouse STILL wasn't behaving, I had to realize the problem was the mouse. Oh well, the computer is faster now.

-Derek

Overdue update

We haven't done a blog post in a bit, thought we should put something up. I enlisted Becca and Rachel's help, and Rachel's contribution was:

"Hi. Bye."

She then expounded that this (the blog) wasn't interesting, and that the gerbils WERE interesting. We tried putting the gerbils in the girls' room, but it didn't work out. They may not officially be nocturnal, but evidently the gerbils' bedtime is later than the girls' bedtime. So now their home is here in the office. :-)

As soon as the gerbils moved to the office, Becca complained that this was unfortunate because then they couldn't get to the gerbils unless their homework was done. Poor girls. (Rachel says to add a frowny :-( )

We had a ward party on Friday where the kids cleaned up on the door prizes. Becca put all of our names in the jar for the drawings and she, Rachel, and Laura all got a prize. Becca's scarf is modeled below by Butterscotch (while eating a sunflower seed, which Becca wants me to be sure and mention).

Rachel got a snuggie (a blanket with arms) and both Rachel and Laura got book reading lights, which means bedtime may get even more challenging for mom and dad. Sarah's mom keeps laughing about there being justice in this world.

In any case, we need to wrap this up because it is about time for family dinner so ...

Love to all!
-Derek, Becca, and Rachel

The Jeff Training PowerPoint

The other day the girls played with Jeff on the trampoline and Rachel REALLY wanted to make a PowerPoint with them. I tried to encourage her to do a blog posting, but she was adamant that she wanted a PowerPoint. So anyway, here it is, 5MB of it:

Jeff Training Arena PowerPoint

Love ya!
-Derek

Lazy Sunday

Well, it has been a fun week. We had snow days on Monday and Tuesday and celebrated Miriam's birthday. Miriam is 3 years old. She is happy to be 3. We had crazy weather, from a record low for March 4th (7 degrees) to a record high for March 7th (76 degrees) for a 70 degree swing in like 80 hours. I was just reading comics on the laptop (Becca and Rachel wanted to do a Powerpoint of some pictures of Jeff so they kicked me off of the desktop), when I looked up and I saw that I was surrounded:



And as soon as they found out that the laptop had a camera it was all crazy:



It seems like you show kids a camera and suddenly they are all hams.

Well, time to start thinking about dinner and all that. I'll work on pictures of snow days and such later when I have access to my desktop. Love ya!

-Derek

Photo Update

A cute pic of Jeff I took.

-Becca

First Decent snow!!!!!!

Our first decent snow of the season in March. It started snowing yesterday around noon and this morning it was 4 inches. No school today. Technically we're snowed in. The cars are covered with snow. There was also no paper. I expect no mail either.
I better go so I can go out and play.

-Becca

Rachel's news

I've been crocheting a blanket for my cousin who is due to be born in March. It took a long time but I'm finally finished. Pretty good for my first blanket, right?

And we got another gerbil finally, her name is either Marshmallow or Snow Princess or Snow Queen. At the moment we have to keep the two gerbils apart, we found out that females from different litters will often fight, so we have to keep them from being able to touch each other, but near each other so they can get used to each other. I hope mom and dad survive the process.

Love,

Rachel

Photos of Jeff

Jeff has woken up about 5 minutes ago and is giving the camera this "When's this gonna end" look.
We're trying to get Jeff to sit still, but crawls off the pillows towards me. He's crawling over a white stuffed bunny for those of you who wanted to know what that white thing under Jeff was. I have the camera and he's fascinated with the camera.

-Becca

P.S. Yes I know how to put pictures on the blog now. Dad taught me how this morning.

SAD news!!! :.(

Raisin died two days ago. We found her dead Wednesday morning, she had died during the night. Sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad, sad story. Oh well. We still have Butterscotch, and we will get another gerbil as soon as we can to keep her company. But there aren't any female gerbils for sale in Lynchburg at the moment. Bummer.

-Becca

Pretty stuff but not enough to be useful

Monday, on President's day so the kids had the day off, we had another wimpy snow fall. Kids tried to go sledding, but it didn't work well.



Becca, Rachel, and Laura (pulling Jeff). The snow would essentially disappear after one run. Too wet, made great snowballs, but lousy sledding.



Miriam and Brian thought it was cool though they're fighting off some bug so ran out of steam quickly.



Laura on our trampoline, Miriam and I catching snowflakes on our tongues, Rachel on the Potter's trampoline (near the sledding hill).

-Derek

New evidence of our insanity ...

... we got gerbils.



They're pretty cute. They evidently have no concept of personal space. I enjoyed the "don't mind me, I'm just going to use you as a body pillow." They love the wheel, and if they get going fast enough, when they trip the wheel can carry them for a full revolution. It almost seems to happen too often to be an accident, though I believe it is.



So far the leading names are "Raisin" for the black one Rachel is holding and "Butterscotch" for the brown one Becca is holding. Butterscotch seems to be the more active one, always moving, while Raisin is more content to just be held and cuddled. Interestingly, Raisin is the one who wants out more and is first out the door when it is opened. Also, she chews on the bars of the cage just after she is returned to the cage.

Fun stuff.

-Derek

Miriam's latest escapades

So it's really late, but Derek just got a new laptop for work (needed one to test code on) and I think I will like having a very portable laptop to surf the web, or post a blog. I can sit on the couch and type pretty easily.

But more importantly, things are going pretty well here. The other day Miriam had been running and bonked her lip into the table. Five minutes later as I was snuggling her, I asked her how her lip felt. "Bonked," she replied. "I need to 'er' it." (that's what it sounded like) Then she said, "Er" with a lilt in her voice and gave me an impish grin. I guess it worked for her. And it made me laugh. She is so cute!! And her stripes have almost worn off. On Sunday, Becca and Rachel were drawing posters in their room and then came down and we were playing Sorry and Quiddler with Uncle Reid. All of a sudden I realized that I didn't know where Miriam was. Well, Becca or Rachel or Laura accidently left their door open and Miriam had found a pen. She had blue marker on her belly (emphasis on the belly button), legs, and even the small of her back. And her dress only had a tiny mark on it, remarkably.

Anyway, she keeps us smiling! :)

--Sarah

No school!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today we have no school... probably due to the rain we were getting that was turning into ice on the roads. It started out as an hour delay. Then we got a call and after the call ended Dad said,"I'm so sorry guys. There's no school. " And everyone was "YEAH"in' and "UH-HUH"in' for about 30 seconds and then everyone was back to what they were doing before the interruption.
We got a Wii on Martin Luther King Jr. day. It is very fun. We have the games Wii Sports and Wii play. It is cool. I can't wait to play on it.

I guess we've been bad about keeping this updated...

Anyways, I'll let you get back to your day.

-Becca

Day Off of School!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Today we have a day off of school all due to the cold. Just because they didn't want children out at the bus stop in almost 0°F weather. So we are having a good day at home. We started the day off with blueberry muffins made by ME.
Last night for dinner we some soup which is kind of like Olive Garden's Zuppe Toscana, which mom found the recipe to here. It is really good except that we kids thought it was too spicy, so, if your kids don't like spiciness very much, tone down the crushed red pepper. It is SO good homemade. Print off the recipe and try it if you like the Olive Garden version.

-BECCA

News ...

Boy, I'm not doing well in keeping up to date. Let's see ...

Laura had her first gymnastics lesson this week. She's been desperately asking since the Olympics to do some gymnastics, so that was one of her Christmas presents, 12 lessons or so. I'm afraid we've created a monster.

Jeff has gotten to be pretty mobile. He is doing a full crawl, but seems to think that crawling is so you can get over to something which you can pull yourself up on. Unfortunately, he's not as stable standing as crawling so he's fallen a couple times and has a bruise (or two, or three: added by Becca) on his forehead. Poor kid.

Becca and Rachel have been telling us all the details of various Warrior Cat stories. We know more than we ever planned on. Glad the kids enjoy reading. The kids have been going through a comic book phase, so Santa brought some and we got some more from the Library, so kids are often found sitting somewhere and giggling.

We had Brian's birthday party last night, had a good time. For Christmas he got a Nerf suction cup dart gun, but had lost some of the darts, so we got him a bag of 30 darts. He should be set for a while. We had fun for a while last night with me trying to shoot darts on a moving ceiling fan. Today he shot all his darts at the back door, was laughing the whole while. Cute kid.

Brian and his train cake	Cute kid
The fan with darts	Jeff likes ice cream
Jeff doing his standing	Miriam did the new puzzle

I can't figure out why there's a big gap, but oh well. I hope people are doing well!

-Derek

Catching up ...

Couple of quick thoughts:

Christmas went really well. Kids were really excited to get gifts for each other, tried really hard to find something that their siblings would enjoy. Christmas morning each child was asking their siblings open the gift from them next, they were so eager to see the reaction from their siblings at opening the gift from them. Good kids.

Sarah's brother, Bryce, came home for Christmas from BYU, was fun to see him. Granted his body did the "can't get sick, can't get sick" during finals and promptly was knocked out when he got home. Got better right in time to go back to BYU.

Bryce's "friend" Meg came out, spent a couple days in Virginia. Seems like the two of them are trying to sort out if there will be something more than "friends" later. The kids like Meg, so a point in her favor. We'll have to see what they decide.

New Years was a fairly quiet event, kids got to stay up later than usual, not to midnight, but some treats and games made it a fun evening.

The Smiths, friends who moved from Lynchburg a couple years ago, were back in town for the weekend. We met up with them at the park, played with them and several other families who came to see the Smiths. We ended up inviting them to crash at our place for the night, and the kids had a good time playing together before it was time to head off to Church.

Church is now at 11 AM, and so far I'm not enthusiastic. With 1 PM Church, Sunday mornings Sarah and I take turns getting some much needed sleep. And for the kids, it is right in the middle of lunch time and nap time for Miriam. I'm sure we'll get used to it over time.

Well, life is good!

-Derek

Beds...

Last night Laura and I changed beds. Man... going from top bunk to the bed beside the bunk bed was a BIG change. I stayed up late playing Hot Death Uno (yes I know how... Uncle Bryce taught me how) and then I stayed up late talking with my sisters. I had itchy eyes and had a washcloth over my eyes and finally didn't need it it and by the time I was asleep it was about 10:15ish. I woke up at about 7 with this weird "where am I" feeling looking up at the bunk bed... weird!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So anyways... We went to Grandma and Grandpa's house for waffles... and to say goodbye to Bryce and Meg... a girl he met at Cumorah.
So anyways I have to go... we're meeting a family from out of town at 12:00 and I have more things to do.

-Becca