Christmas lights and EPIC music

Christmas is almost here! This week we finally took down the last of the Halloween decorations and put up some that were more season-appropriate. We even found some LED lights that are energy efficient and, despite the homophonic nature of the name, contain far less lead than the more traditional incandescent ones. I like how they look better, too. Yesterday evening we went up to Temple Square to see the lights with Tricia, Ryan, Katalina, Mom, and Dad. The lights were beautiful, but the kids seemed more impressed by the cold. The streets downtown were quite slippery--we saw more than one fender bender alongside the road. (Left: some of us recover from the frigid temperatures, during a brief respite inside the Visitor's Center. )

Ryan, Tricia, and Katalina came to our house before Temple Square. You should have seen Katalina's enthusiasm for the fish! She giggled, bounced, and commented on each aquarium for several minutes. She seemed particularly interested in the Kuhli loaches, which are eel-like, whiskered bottom-dwellers.

On Friday, we went to Anya and Darren's ward Christmas Party as part of the program--we provided some Middle Eastern style music. Kelly played the zills, (finger cymbals); Rus, Darren, and Legend provided percussion on doumbeks. We all had a lot of fun doing it. We were even introduced as "E.P.I.C. : Eastern Percussion Instrumental Continuum."

We've had several reports that the music inspired people to dance, including Gwen, who could not be prevented from getting up on stage during the performance and rocking out a bit.

(Left: Kelly helps to brown a mountain of homemade pita for the dinner portion of the party.)
We didn't get any video of the actual perforamance, but after the party, Rus and Darren did a few seconds of impromptu drumming.

Thanksgiving in a pieshell

Thanksgiving

We had a marvelous time with Mom and Dad from visiting from California, Kerry, Mike, and Caeden from Springville, and Mary Megan from Provo. It was great to talk, laugh, cook, eat, and just be together. We were able to witness Caeden waving and giggling up a storm. We even had a little early Christmas. Dad made Rus an awesome Celtic–style belt in handcrafted leather, complete with dragons (in the leather and in silver studs) and intricate knotwork. He is reported to have referred to it as “the coolest belt ever…perfect.”

Kerry and Mike lent us their spare camera, so we’ll be able to take pictures now! Woo Hoo!

Gwen is known for her continuous stream of commentary and questions…on the world, on her thoughts, on her invented games…on just about anything really. Here are a couple of recent examples:

In the car, while returning from a chiropractic appointment, Gwen suddenly commented, “The Earth is Jesus’ TV.”

Upon hearing the doorbell the other day, Gwen exclaimed, “Who’s that ding dong at our door?”

Our Thanksgiving menu inspired this: “How does the turkey get dead? We wouldn’t want to raise things that we would soon kill, that would make us sad.”

She surprised us the other day by declaring, “I’m tired of talking.” We told her that it was fine to stop talking for a while if she wanted to. Not too surprisingly, though, she dutifully continued.

Laurelin has reached the point where her reading abilities are leaping and bounding by the day. It is an exciting stage to witness!

While I was in Italy, a friend of mine gave me a stack of various comics in Italian from the 1970s and 80s, mostly Popeye, Mickey Mouse, and so on. To help increase the kids’ exposure to Italian, we’ve been reading them together. Typically, Kelly will read a sentence in Italian, and then I’ll translate it into English. They kids really like it, so we were very excited when Jon and Chas and kids brought us some new Italian reading material: Spiderman + Ironman, and Biancaneve e i sette nani (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.)

"Hiro is famous!"

"Hiro is famous!" is what the kids said when they heard me talking about him on the podcast. The show has come out for those of you who might want to check it out. It's available at http://www.petliferadio.com/, and then click on the icon for "What Were You Thinking," and then Episode 43--the latest episode.. There's also a little blurb about me and about Hiro. They've got pictures of us up and everything. I know those of you who aren't all that into frogs probably won't be interested, but we thought it was fun.

This weekend we had the first big snowfall of the season. And our furnace decided to be grumpy about it. Friday night we shivered awake thinking that it must be really cold outside if it was this cold inside even with the heater. When we got up Saturday morning and looked at the thermostat we realized that yes, it was really cold outside, but no, our furnace wasn't doing anything to combat it. We called around and got a hold of the rental company, and they sent out one of their maintenance men, Jessie, who has been up to our house before for various issues and has always been very nice. He played around with it and got it to work, but Saturday evening/night it went out again, so we had another shivery night. He came out again early this morning, and for now it is working again, and he left us a supply of space heaters in case it kicks out again before Monday. Hopefully not, 49 degrees in the house is not fun.

Now for something a bit more (heart) warming.

Gwen made an interesting indirect tribute to Rus as a father this week. We were playing Snow White. When we got to the part when the evil queen brings the apple to the cottage, Gwen burst out with "Suddenly the KING comes and says 'I will protect my daughter! You can't have my Snow White!' " She knows her Babbo would never let some nasty person hurt her, so of course, Snow White's Babbo ought to come protect her too.

Rus and I had our Zooiversary date yesterday. It was at Utah's Hogle Zoo 12 years ago that we decided a more permanent situation for us was in order, so we always try to go to the zoo to celebrate that day. It was snowing and very cold, so there were about 2 other groups of people at the zoo, which is awesome, the animals act much more naturally. The tigers were pretty active (the weather being more inline with their habitat of origin), the pallas cats sneered at us, and we spent some time warming up inside the small animal house. Then we went and had some lunch. I'm glad Rus wanted to marry me, and I'm double glad that after nearly a dozen years of putting up with my weirdness he hasn't changed his mind : )

P.S.

Laurelin came home from school a few weeks ago with a song she had made up herself. I hate P.E.

Laurelin’s “I hate kickball” song

“I can weave a bit of grass, I can catch a butterfly,

The one thing I can’t do is play a game of kickball

I can climb a little fence, I can rake up some leaves,

The one thing I can’t do is play a game of kickball

I can paint, I can cook but

The one thing I can’t do is play a game of kickball.”

November Flu, Fish and Fun

Our family has recently been attacked by some sort of flu. The first to show symptoms was Isaac, and the doctor confirmed that it was indeed flu, although the type of flu was not specified. Gwen has had a similar case. Everyone else has had symptoms of some form or another, although none of the rest of us have been hit quite as hard. Hurray for Umcka and Sambucol and those who provide us with them!

Kelly recently received her first invitation to dance at a show that she was not involved in organizing. We thought that was pretty neat. Here is her performance:

Yesterday, Xander suddenly piped up with "I like church...because sacrament meeting is relaxing, Primary is comforting, and class is interesting." I'm not sure why that occurred to him just then, but I'm glad he feels that way.

A week ago I was a guest speaker on an podcast /online radio show about exotic pets called "What Were You Thinking?" I talked about Hiro, our frog. The show should be available within a week or two for those of you who might want to hear it. I should also have some news in February regarding a publication if all goes well.

I put a short montage together for the Aquarimax website on a "betta sorority tank" (a tank inhabited by mutliple female bettas) that turned out kind of fun. I'll put the link here in case you want to see.

Betta sorority clip

Halloween

Here's our Halloween in a video nutshell:

Interview #2

We're finally have the cable necessary to upload video once again, so here's the next in the interview series. This one is a bit longer, about 7 minutes. If that's too long, let us know, and we can try splitting it into two parts.