A dream is a wish

We have a playlist on our iPod called "Princess." Emma's favorite thing to do is put on a dress (it must be a dress) and then dance while listening to the princess playlist.

She also likes to sing, as previous posts have shown. Her favorite song is "A Dream is a Wish" from Cinderella. Emma's lyrics have evolved over time, but the basic core of the song is still there. The other day we tried to video her singing, but she wasn't very eager to cooperate.

Click here to watch the video.

Opening day

Today was the first day of the baseball season. Apart from the cold and rainy weather, it was fun! Andrew plays for the A's (which stands for Arthropods, dontcha know) and Ethan plays for the Reds.

Click here to watch a video of the action.

Ouch.

My head hurts.

What a fun day we had

I had a teacher at BYU, George Durrant, who wrote a book called "Best Day So Far." If you ran into him on campus and asked him how he was doing, he would always answer, "Best day so far."

I used to wonder: Better than your wedding day? Your children's birthdays? I don't think he was completely serious, but he was making a point, that you should make every day the best it can be.

Today was one of those days, maybe not the best day so far, but up there. The weather was amazing. After church in the morning, we ate lunch outside, went on a long walk, played with clay, lay in the grass and watched clouds, played baseball in the backyard, and ate pancakes for dinner. Here are some photos:

Happiness is...

...playing with bubbles.

Attack of the spiders

Do any of you get spiders this large in your house? Maybe in Texas? We get these all the time. According to our resident bug expert they are wolf spiders. This one seems particularly large. I haven't killed it yet, because I'm not looking forward to feeling its weight or crunch inside the paper towel while I transfer it to its watery grave (the toilet). So for now it's living on the stairs to our basement. I'll give it another hour or two before execution. Enough time for one final meal.

That boy loves to draw

Ethan would draw all day long if he didn't have to occasionally stop to eat or play with friends. If a clean sheet of paper isn't handy, he'll draw on any nearby paper he can find. Here's a little doodle I found today on a sliver of a magazine address label.

Poll on perceptions of religions

CBS news recently conducted a poll asking Americans how they perceive different religions. The results are surprising: only 20% of Americans view "the Mormon religion" positively, compared to 19% who have a favorable view of Islam. Almost 40% of Americans view Mormons unfavorably.

How to stop a baby from crying

Check out this weird Japanese video that shows a way to stop babies from crying. Seems impossible, doesn't it? Ginger and I will have to try it out when the baby comes.

Pushy

I'm working from home today. Emma just came into the office and said (authoritatively):

"Dad! Get out of the chair! I need to send an email!"

Hey Lost fans

Look what they're going to do next. As if it weren't already hard enough to wait for new episodes, now they want us to actually do something to figure things out?

Happy Easter

Cool story

Check out this article about a cab driver who likes to play the harmonica. The other day a rider in his cab heard him play, and invited him to meet him at the back door of a concert venue later that night. Turns out the rider was Ben Folds, and the cab driver ended up playing his harmonica on stage at a sold out concert.

La reine du soleil

This one happened today:

Emma: I'm doing a tinkle in my dress. (Don't worry, she was wearing a diaper.)

Me: You are?

Emma, matter-of-factly: Yeah, it's a pretty one. It's a pink and yellow tinkle.

Would this be an appropriate time for Ginger and I to start pushing back a bit on the whole princess thing?

Nice to meet you

I forgot about another highlight from our trip to Hawaii. When we were passing through airport security (a stressful event with three curious kids--don't touch! stay close! wait your turn!), Andrew decided to strike up a conversation with the TSA agent who was manning the metal detector:

Andrew: You look like Inspector Clouseau.

The mustachioed agent (unsure how to respond): Thanks, I guess.

Magical button

When we were in Hawaii, Emma's magical pink button appeared one day in our condo. We wondered at the time how it had arrived in Hawaii, and if it would make the trip back to Indiana. Sure enough, today I discovered it lying on the carpet in our living room.

We can't find Emma's favorite doggy purse (which is almost as big as she is), yet somehow this tiny button keeps turning up.

Hilarious

This is a collection of postings to a newsgroup for parents in the Park Slope area of New York City. A woman found a blue knit hat on the playground. She posted a message saying she had found a boy's hat and that she wished to return it to the owner. This prompted another mom to post that she was offended by the woman's assumption that a blue knit hat would automatically belong to a boy. The insensitivity of it all! Hilarity ensued.

Way to go Andrew!

We found out a couple of days ago that Andrew was accepted into the Challenge program, our school district's GATE equivalent. He got a perfect score on one of the reading tests, and a nearly perfect score on the math test. What a smart dude!

Welcome David

A belated congratulations to Judy and Loi on the birth of their new baby boy!

More pictures from our slip 'n slide party today

Emma trying to warm up on the slide.

Ethan after a run down the slip n slide.

Emma, finally warm, with her towel.

To watch a video of Andrew slippin' 'n slidin' down the slip 'n slide, click here.

The hangout

For some reason our backyard seems to be the neighborhood hangout lately. We set up the slip 'n slide this afternoon and within 30 minutes the place was crawling with kids in swimsuits. It was a lot of fun.

Spring has sprung

A nice change after a mild but long winter. This is one of the trees in our front yard. (Don't ask me what kind of tree it is...I have no idea!)

Note: Ginger tells me it's called a flowering pear tree.

Preparing for the drought

We told Emma that soon she will be too old for paggies, so in preparation she is trying to get in as much paggy time as she can. They are usually in hard to reach places, but she has a way of rearranging furniture so she can climb and get them. If she doesn't have both in her mouth at the same time, she'll have one in her mouth and one in her hand, just in case.

Which celebrity do you look like?

Have you tried this yet?

The first time I entered a photo it told me I looked like Hilary Clinton. Aghast, I quickly entered another photo, only to discover that the program thinks I also look like Chelsea Clinton. It's a vast left-wing conspiracy.

So my results were not good, but maybe yours will be better. When I was a missionary in France, people would sometimes stop me on the street and tell me I looked like Michael Schumacher, the race car driver:

Ukelele

We saw lots of ukeleles in Hawaii, but none as cool as this.

Aloha

We returned from Maui on Monday night. What a fun trip! We severely underestimated the length of the journey (11 hours of flights, 6 hour time change), but the kids did a great job. Highlights from the trip include:

• Scaring fellow airplane passengers: When our first flight was landing in Salt Lake, Andrew saw the firefighters practicing with a burning airplane shell on the tarmac, and exclaimed (rather loudly), "Hey, the plane's on fire!"
• Seeing lots of geckos and insects.
• Visiting Bama and Pa at their resort.
• Bama and Pa's babysitting the kids and sending Ginger and I to a fancy dinner alone.
• Hanging out at the beach.
• Swimming, swimming and more swimming.
• Eating junk cereal every morning.
• The glass bottom boat ride, where we saw cleaner shrimp and other cool creatures.
• Snorkeling in the ocean at Ka'anapali (Andrew was very brave).
• Visiting the aquarium.
• Macadamia nuts (this was only a highlight for me).
• Emma's independence (she ran into the ocean alone only once, which is a miracle).
• Trying to pronounce Hawaiian words. (Ethan and Emma still claim we went to Hoowaii, not Hawaii)

It was fun, memorable, and very relaxing. We've posted some pictures in the Hawaii 2006 folder at this site.

Paris at 140 mph

The identity of the driver in this video has never been revealed. Until now. We did have fun on our p-days.