Monday, August 25, 2008

Letter of the week

Be advised that our letter this week
Will expose me as an English freak.
I wanted a challenge, so I suppose
I’ll write in poetry instead of prose.

A project this week brought me great joys:
Cleaning our cupboard of childhood toys.
Forty games I deemed unplayed
But after sorting, twenty stayed.

We emptied, organized, and DI-ed,
Which filled my mom with greatest pride:
She was able to be rid of much
Without using nostalgia as her crutch.

A sideshow to our deep-cleaning endeavor,
Lawrence gave us our greatest scare ever
When trying to “breathe” a dried up leaf,
He sputtered and choked, giving us grief.

We chose to call the professional crew
Our neighbors at this point saw the ado:
Lights on an ambulance WILL draw a crowd,
Not to mention a stretcher and sirens so loud.

After moaning and gagging and spitting up blood,
He must have coughed up and then swallowed the crud.
When paramedics finally were checking him out,
He seemed ready to smile and had not a pout.

And now we’re all better, except now at night
His teeth and gums are having a fight.
Two bottom teeth and a top one are fine,
But the fourth surely seems to be taking its time.

Dawna and Mama had lots of good fun
She’s growing more hair, not enough for a bun,
But FINALLY enough for two little tails,
In six rubber bands, they look like two rails…

On Friday we planned a little surprise,
Grant’s 25th year (Oh, how the time flies).
A Mafia game, and ice cream and friends
All met and enjoyed a good week’s end.

The next day we met, but not with such glee
Out canvassing here to protect family.
The results, however, were surprisingly good:
A lot of “Yes” votes in our neighborhood.

With Muslims, Mormons, a couple of Jews,
Our Prop 8 might barely be given just dues.
All we can do is campaign our best
And leave luck and faith to handle the rest.

And finally here are today’s events,
Which left us all busy, and unusually tense.
I sang a solo, while a friend of mine
Displayed each word with its ASL sign.

Jon’s always busy on Sundays these days
With meetings and lessons, his presidential rays
Fill all that he meets with the spirit and light
Though busy and hectic, he’s doing what’s right.

This letter brings all our love to you,
We hope you all enjoyed you weeks too.
And don’t be distraught, for you’re likely to find
That our letter next week won’t have one single rhyme!




Tuesday, August 12, 2008

What a difference a year makes!

Last week during FHE, I had Dawna sing the "Family Tree" song from the Children's song book. It was fun to see her progress in singing since last year about this time. We made a video of Dawna and Adele singing the same song (with Nana helping in the background:

Original Family Tree

And now, a year later, she is a much more independent singer, at least for this one song...



And just to make this a video-rich blog, here's my "little" Lawrence and his progress towards crawling:


Monday, August 11, 2008

What a week!

This week, my dad, four brothers, one sister-in-law, and one Reeves went backpacking in Yosemite. I was kind of jealous that I couldn't go... so Jon and Mom and I had a super-busy, super-fun week...

Monday, we got our new fridge. It's awesome! Already I love having the fridge on top and freezer on bottom. It's so bright white that everything else in the kitchen looks offwhitish dull now:



Tuesday, I babysat during a funeral... I had a great time with the kids. Sarah and Edwin came over and we played baseball and kickball in the backyard. Sarah and I were on a team against all five of the kids... and we won :) unfortunately, I didn't get a picture of all our glory :)

Wednesday, mom and I took the kids out to Merced to visit Becca (Paul was backpacking with the Yosemite group). We swam and laughed and looked at yearbooks and made dinner and had a wonderful relaxing day.



Thursday, Dawna, Lawrence, and I met Ginger and Izzy out at Ardenwood and had en enjoyable day petting horses, sheep, chickens, etc. Then we enjoyed the Dawna and Izzy show on the dance floor, then we rode the horse-drawn train. We finished out the day getting soaked at the water pump. The girls had a blast together (old and young).





Friday, mom's platinum birthday... as in 08/08/08!!! Even she just took it easy and enjoyed the day...she sat and just watched a movie in my room! For those of you that know my mom, you know how amazing that is...

In the afternoon, we went out to Barb's house to enjoy her spa, massage chair, and grilled kabobs. I made a chocolate Zucchini cake and we bought a raspberry ice cream pie. I was proud that the kids liked my cake better than the ice cream cake. Jon joined us for dessert after work and then we watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics!





Jon and I went strait to Antioch, arriving about 10pm, then staying up way too late chatting and enjoying the family up there. on Saturday, Jon went running with Dan, and then I made all the boys come play sports at the church so I wasn't left alone while they all played Warcraft... we played volleyball, basketball knockout, dodge ball, and then ended the day with a rousing game of four square (yeah, we were a little tired by that time). Then we enjoyed home made pizza and carrot cake for Lynn's birthday. Again, we left way too late and arrived home in Fremont way too late. Sunday was sort of difficult with a tired Dawna all through church, but we made it! We even had the Dents over for dinner and made home made pizza again! Mama K's recipe for pizza dough is the best ever!





It was a fun week... although part of me hopes to have a quieter week this week so I can, you know, do laundry or something :)

And, just because my babies are so cute, here's Lawrence:
Don't you think he should be a model for The Children's Place?? What a cutie!

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Monday, August 04, 2008

Blog Memory game

Emily did this on her blog, and it looked like fun... and since she promised to post to it... here's the game...

1. Add a comment to this post on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn’t matter if you knew me a little or a lot…anything you remember!
2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It’s actually pretty cool (and funny) to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I’ll assume you’re playing the game and I’ll come to your blog and leave one about you.

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Friday, August 01, 2008

I love the Bay Area...it's my town.

Last Friday, I picked Jon up at work and we headed strait to Antioch. From Redwood City to Antioch is about 60 miles. I was amused to ponder the plethora of highways and freeways that we went on to get from point A to point B... Get a load of the EIGHT freeways we took to go 60 miles:

From Redwood City, we took:
101 North to
92 East to
880 North to
238 to
580 East to
680 North to
242 to
4 East to
Antioch.

I thought it was AWESOME! The part that was even better was that I didn't look at a single map OR get lost through the maze of freeways that makes up the Bay Area!

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