Spying on Wayne

This happened a couple of weeks ago.  Wayne was working from home, on the computer in his home office.  I heard some really loud singing.  I peeked through the glass doors, and I could see him singing his lungs out, to a song on his ipod.

"Old black water

keep on rolling

Mississippi moon won't you keep on shinin on me.

And of course he had to sing it with a southern drawl, like the guy on the recording.

Gonna make ever- thang, pretty mama,

gonna make ever- thang all right"

He didn't know I was watching him.  I had to laugh it was so cute.

New Christmas Stockings

 Here are the old-style stockings I made around 1982, we have had them for way too long.  I have switched all my Christmas decorations over to fuschia and purple and other bright colors, so I just left those old stockings in the attic this year.

Here are my new creations.  I used lots of fancy fabrics and I really went wild making them, each with a different top cuff.  They are for ME, they are for decorating my house, my kids don't get to take them.  And anyway,  each kid made it clear they didn't want them.  And I don't blame them, I made them for males or females with no regard for color.

I wanted them to look like Dr. Suess, and I wanted to use my huge drawer full of fancy trims, and all my sparkly fabrics.  I can't wait to have so many that I have to hang them all the way up the stairs bannister, like Marta A.

Quelf, the game

I was trying to tell my kids about a fun board game we had played at the Young Adult dance.  I finally remembered the name of it.

http://quelf.com/

It is truly random.  When we played it, one of the girls got a card that said she had to hold a drinking straw in her mouth the rest of the game.

Then Wayne got a card that said he had to wrap his hand in tinfoil.

Stuff like that.

Best Christmas lighting

"The Amazing Grace Christmas House," is designed and programmed by Richard Holdman in Pleasant Grove, Utah. The display includes 50,000 lights and is computer controlled by 180 channels.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnk0KjWxgMA

Surprise! Two babies!

On Christmas Day, Janette and Seth surprised us with the news that they are expecting a baby in July.  Then Rachel and Isaac surprised everyone by saying they are ALSO having a baby in July.

Woo  Hooooooo!

And these are Janette's ultrasounds.

Gingerbread houses #2

 Isaac's Native American village with fondant campfires.

 Seth's old country store and Janette's Federal style building.

 Zac's missile firing into space, and the accompanying entrance to the underground bunker.

Bryce's Dr. Suess style house.

Gingerbread houses #1

We all got together and made "gingerbread houses" on Dec. 23. Several members of the family enjoyed doing all the construction work of building houses out of graham crackers. Adam made this one to look like an abandoned military school he had seen once.



I saw clearance sale "Haunted House Gingerbread Houses" on sale at Sam's for $2.99 each, so I bought two (we just decorated them Christmasy instead of Halloweeny).  I loved it because it was easy to help Elizabeth and Thomas decorate their houses, instead of making the houses out of gingerbread or graham crackers.

This is Elizabeth's. She chose to decorate the snowman this way, he looks like he has just run face first into a fence post.

When I told Thomas to put buttons on his snowman, I didn't picture him putting them in those particular locations.

Confessions of breaking a ski lift

Several injured as chairs drop from Maine ski lift

• 79 votes
• • Email
  • Print

AP – This photo provided by Al Noyes shows skiers and lift chairs on the slope, lower right, after a lift …

By GLENN ADAMS, Associated Press – 1 min ago

CARRABASSETT VALLEY, Maine – A chair lift derailed in high winds at Maine's tallest ski mountain Tuesday, sending screaming skiers plummeting as far as 30 feet to the slope below and injuring several of them.

The Sugarloaf resort in Carrabassett Valley, about 120 miles north of Portland, said about six people were injured when five chairs fell an estimated 25 to 30 feet. The resort's ski patrol evacuated the lift, which had passed an inspection.

None of the injuries appeared to be life-threatening, the resort said. The injured were treated and taken to hospitals. About 220 people were on the lift at the time, and inspectors were headed to the scene.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101228/ap_on_re_us/us_ski_lift_accident


I saw this headline today, and it reminded me of something I did back in 1977 or 1978.  My sister Cindy and I were on a ski lift at Sundance.  There were no restraining bars across the front, or anything holding us in, and nothing to rest our feet on.  We were just sitting on a bench, which had bars going up at the sides, (you could hold onto them like holding onto the chains of a swing.)

We were about 20-40 feet up in the air, and my legs with their heavy boots and skis were hanging down.  I started swinging my legs and skis sideways to make the chair go back and forth.   Cindy was probably telling me to stop it.  Suddenly, swinging the chair caused it to derail off the cable, and our chair fell about 5 feet, maybe more.  I can remember almost being thrown off, the drop was so violent.  Thankfully the chair was  being held up by the backup cable.

She and I were lucky we had been holding on because our rear ends slipped off the chair and we had to scramble back on.  We looked around and the whole ski lift was stopped.  Luckily no one had fallen off, but we were all stranded up there for I think a half an hour, in the freezing cold wind, waiting to get rescued.

I can remember Cindy threatening me the whole time "I'm going to tell them that you broke it!"  but she didn't.

I think this is one of the worst things I ever did.

The First Christmas alien

I discovered someone in my family had added a new element to this nativity scene.

Homemade gifts

Notice what time we got up on Christmas morning to open our presents.  Its really sad.




I tried to make a bunch of home-sewn gifts this year. "June Cleaver" kitchen aprons, crayon aprons, and a tablerunner.

Snow, and I got a treadle sewing machine

We got 6 inches of snow on Christmas night, so church was cancelled today.  We had our own little church this afternoon, it was nice to share our thoughts with one another.

Adam and Tiffany found this sewing machine in a second-hand store, and then asked Seth and Janette to help them dismantle it and oil it. It seems to work great, although I haven't had time to play with it yet.

I am very excited to have this as an emergency preparedness item, for when there is no electricity.

Merry Christmas

I love parodies of "Twas the Night Before Christmas".  I got this one off a preparedness site,  TotallyReady.com


‘Twas the night before Christmas & out on the ranch
The pond was froze over & so was the branch.
The snow was piled up belly-deep to a mule.
The kids were all home on vacation from school,
And happier young folks you never did see-
Just all sprawled around a-watchin’ TV.
Then suddenly, some time around 8 o’clock,
There came a surprise that gave them a shock!
The power went off, the TV went dead!
When Grandpa came in from out in the shed
With an armload of wood, the house was all dark.
“Just what I expected,” they heard him remark.
“Them power line wires must be down from the snow.
Seems sorter like times on the ranch long ago.”
“I’ll hunt up some candles,” said Mom. “With their light,
And the fireplace, I reckon we’ll make out all right.”
The teen-agers all seemed enveloped in gloom.
Then Grandpa came back from a trip to his room,
Uncased his old fiddle & started to play
That old Christmas song about bells on a sleigh.
Mom started to sing, & 1st thing they knew
Both Pop & the kids were all singing it, too.
They sang Christmas carols, they sang “Holy Night,”
Their eyes all a-shine in the ruddy firelight.
They played some charades Mom recalled from her youth,
And Pop read a passage from God’s Book of Truth.
They stayed up till midnight-and, would you believe,
The youngsters agreed ’twas a fine Christmas Eve.
Grandpa rose early, some time before dawn;
And when the kids wakened, the power was on..
“The power company sure got the line repaired quick,”
Said Grandpa – & no one suspected his trick.
Last night, for the sake of some old-fashioned fun,
He had pulled the main switch – the old Son-of-a-Gun!
-anonymous

Happy Birthday Wayne!

Wayne is my hero.  He replaced the kitchen faucet a few days ago, and he hated every minute of it, but he got it done. 

Here is his home office.  He is the 2nd counselor in the Young Adult ward, so he is in charge of the dances.  There is no where else to store the huge speakers for the church dances, so he has had them in his office for a year.

Just last week he had the brilliant idea of plugging his ipod shuffle into the speakers.  AND HE BLASTED THE MUSIC.  He said, "Why didn't I think of this before?"

Visited Barbara

I visited Barbara for the first time in years, and took photos of some photos she had of her kids.  Jennifer's son looks a lot like Jonathan!

 Here is Jonathan and his wife, they live in Hawaii.

 Barbara and Don's house is just beautiful.

And here is my friend Barbara, I wish I hadn't lost touch with her for all those years.

Zac on Cumorah Work Crew!

Zac was notified yesterday that he will be in the Hill Cumorah work crew for July 2011!  He has wanted to be on the work crew so badly, ever since Mark P. was on it.

He will be one of about 25 young men, 17-18 year olds, who will arrive at the Hill Cumorah a week early, and set up all the stages, light towers, electricity, etc. all over the hill.  Then he will be one of the people who run the lighting or manage the props or blow up the water cannons or run the pyrotechnics or shine the super powerful xenon light up into the sky.  I am so curious as to which crew he will be assigned, I hope he has a wonderful experience.  And after the pageant, they stay another week and take everything down.

The work crew are like the rock stars of the pageant, all the girls in the cast flirt with them but they are like missionaries, they have to be apart and aloof.  But they can still appreciate the attention.

Conference Call, also Nature gone wild

Last night my siblings, parents and I had a one hour conference call, talking about emergency preparedness and food storage, and giving each other advice.  We are all very convinced of the urgency of this.

My sister set up the conference call on http://www.freeconferencecall.com/.  She gave us the phone number, and the access code, and we just had to call at the specified time and start talking.  It was fun to have everyone on the line at once.

If there was something noisy going on at our house, we could press #6 and we would be muted, but could still hear.

It was free if you had free long distance.  Or it just cost whatever your long distance charge was.  The conference call set up was free.


Here is an interesting article that was on the Drudge Report this morning:

"2010's World Gone Wild: Quakes, Floods, Blizzards".  This article listed all the natural disasters of 2010. And of course, if you replace every time they wrote "caused by global warming" with "foretold by prophecy, happening as a precursor to the second coming"  then the article would be quite true.

http://apnews.myway.com/article/20101219/D9K734E81.html

Bryce and Tara home!

Bryce and Tara got home last night.  We are happy to have them here for two weeks before they go back to BYU.

The Real Meaning of Christmas

 One of my favorite YouTube videos for this season.

 

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PURToRRq7gM

 

Lunar Eclipse on Dec. 21

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/video/index.cfm?id=950

Here is a YouTube from NASA explaining the lunar eclipse which can be seen Dec. 21.  I think Wayne will be outside with his telescope!

Jack Black's confession

Wayne and I were watching the DVR of last night's Tonight Show.  Jay Leno was interviewing Jack Black, and asked him what was the secret of his happy marriage.

Jack Black said that the key to a happy marriage is finding a TV show that you both love and could watch together.

Jay asked him what show Jack and his wife watched together...............

and Jack answered .............................................................................................................................PROJECT RUNWAY!!

Wayne and I both started laughing hysterically, because we love that show!  We thought we were the only couple in the world that watched it together.

Christmas, Food Storage, and Corndogs

I finally got the tree decorated last night, after Zac put it up a few days ago.  Now there are a million boxes to put back up into the attic.

I went to the Greensboro cannery with Seth and Janette yesterday and brought home a bunch of food storage.  I felt proud of myself until I talked to my mom and found out she had been to Welfare Square a couple of days before that, and had canned and brought home FOUR TIMES as much.  We all seem to  be feeling the urgency.

Tara sent a text to Seth (she knows I haven't figured out texting yet) and told him to tell me to be sure and have corndogs in our freezer when she gets home.  That shows you what type of good home cooking she has been missing at college.

She and Bryce are flying home on Saturday evening.





And here is another article showing evidence that our financial system is going down:

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-treasury-confidence-is-dying-2010-12#moodys-just-threatened-a-us-downgrade-1 

Investors all over the globe are starting to wake up and realize that America's debt problem is unsolvable. David Bloom, the currency chief at HSBC, raised eyebrows when he recently stated that "if yields are rising because people think America's fiscal situation is unsustainable, then its Armageddon." (page 8)

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/us-treasury-confidence-is-dying-2010-12#if-yields-are-rising-because-people-think-americas-fiscal-situation-is-unsustainable-then-its-armageddon-8#ixzz18CPzWH6Y

Its spooky when the world is saying it

Here's the statistician John Williams on Dec. 8, 2010 saying to get food storage.  I hope he isn't correct, but if he IS correct we better all have our food storage sooner rather than later.

Notice the disbelief of all the other people on the video as they interview him.

http://watch.bnn.ca/squeezeplay/december-2010/squeezeplay-december-8-2010/#clip386602

On another blog I saw the YouTube video of the collapse of the snow-covered sports stadium that happened on Sunday.  The blogger was saying, think of the snow as the weight of debt upon this country.  He said the sports stadium collapse was a great metaphor for the dollar.