New Christmas Carol

According to Ollie:

Angels we have heard on high

Sweetly singing aeroplanes

And the mountains in reply

Echoing their joyous trains

I think it goes along nicely with the version of "I am a Child of God" that we taught them, which includes the line "with parents kind of weird". And the version of "Book of Mormon Stories", where the fathers of the Lamanites were "given the land if they went right to sleep". (It's a great song for bedtime.)

Primary is going to be awesome.

This Morning

Me: Come here, Ollie. Let's brush your hair.
Ollie: OK. Are we going to church?
Me: No. Church is not the only occasion when I brush your hair, Ollie. You do know that, right?

Beautiful (Out of Stock) Print

I have been in love with this print by Seb Lester ever since it came available about two weeks ago. Sadly, it sold out before I could get it. Or maybe that is a good thing, because we certainly don't have $106.55 to spend on paper, even if it is amazingly gorgeous paper. The print was made in a limited edition of 100, and there is another print in royal blue, that I think is still gorgeous, but less striking than the midnight blue. The royal blue is still available if you happen to fall in love with it, again in a limited edition of 100.

I could go on and on about the art historical implications of the quote, and it's beauty, but I won't bore you. The tiny stars, though, that make it were what won me over. Fabulous.

My heart aches.

Time flies when you're having... fun?

Quick(ish) update:

We are still alive.

I have been back at school since May. Full-time.

I will be mostly done with my degree by the time Evan graduates. I will have completed all my major credits.

I wish I had been as dedicated to my school-work last time around as this time.

Evan is still in school and will graduate in April. Full-time. Plus work.

Did I mention Evan is The Man and taking 22 credits this semester?

And next.

And we are both doing capstone classes next semester, too. Crazy? Why, yes.

We got a dog. Her name is Lulu. She is a 3 year old Greater Swiss Mountain Dog. With a puppy brain.

The kids love the dog.

Oliver turned two.

Evan turned 26.

Alena turned 16.

Oliver joined the circus.

We saw Aunty Hayley in CA in August.

The kids got 'bikes'. And love them.

Potty training is complete. (The grand finale was last night as Oliver wandered into my room and proudly announced, "Mummy, I did poops!" at which point I had visions of poop trails on my carpet. But actually it was in the toilet. Alhamdulillah.)

We went camping. Twice.

We went hiking. A lot.

And saw four moose.

We beached.

And parked.

Yes, that is our dog jumping up onto the slide. And, yes, she loves going down them, too.

And I ran a 5k in this:

Then overnight it went from this:

To this:

Ah, well. C'est la vie.

On with finals!

Metamorphosis

Daddy: What are you learning about?

Lena: Metamorphosis!

Daddy: Metamorphosis? Cool! What's metamorphosis?

Lena: Metamorphosis is when a butterfly turns into a butterfly!

Ah, Lena... So close!

In case you didn't already know it, Comcast officially sucks

I understand that there are, from time to time, network issues that make it hard to deliver high-speed internet that your customers pay for.

However, this: http://www.speedtest.net/result/887660585.png is not acceptable. When we are *paying* to receive a service, it should arrive more or less as we've paid for it.

For those of you too lazy to click through the link, that shows our current internet speeds. We are getting a ping of about 1379 ms. And our "high-speed" is downloading at a whopping 0.24 mbps. (High speed is usually reserved for a 1mbps at least.) Ours is supposed to run at like 6 or 7. This is unacceptable.

Now is the time when I start looking to change service, because this is absolutely ridiculous.

Sweet Dreams

I have finally figured out what babies dream about.

Food.

All the time.

Well, at least my kids do. Today we had a fairly long day of sleeping in, lazing around, watering our garden, and (somehow) making it to IKEA. Poor Oliver had been cranky the entire day, and even lunch of swedish meatballs and mac and cheese wasn't enough to tide our tired boy over. After tantrums and assertions of independence spanning both levels of the store, we decided to get ice cream/frozen yogurt at the end in an effort to plug some happy vibes into our kids. Apart from the moments when Daddy had to sneak giant mouthfuls off of Lena and Ollie's cones so they didn't melt everywhere... and the ensuing tellings off that Daddy received "No Daddy! No! Ice Cream!"... it was a big success.

So much of a success that Oliver, in a sugar coma, fell asleep before we hit the freeway. He then proceeded to dream about his ice cream cone the WHOLE way home. How do we know? Take a look.



And then when we got home, he woke up in a daze and promptly fisted his hand and licked his imaginary cone. And kept licking. And kept licking. I think he was a little very disappointed that there was nothing there. Poor baby boy. Hopefully tomorrow will be better.