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Showing posts from March, 2011

Sebi's BYU Party

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For months now, Sebastian has been telling anyone who would listen that he wants "A BYU Party" for his birthday. Secretly I felt it was because we are bad BYU fans and completely indifferent to any and all athletic teams that the place holds so much allure for our kids. We didn't even have any BYU apparel or paraphernalia until this year. Despite this, we tried to pull something together. We had 12 first graders and our whole family up on campus running two teams (Team Blue and Team White) around trying to find a dozen or so clues for our digital camera scavenger hunt. After an hour of running and posing, we taught them all the lyrics to the fight song, showed them highlights of Jimmer Fredette and fed them bagel pizzas and legendary BYU mint brownies. In planning the event, the professor and I had scoured the bookstore and other local venues for BYU stuff. With the stiff prices they charge, we couldn't even afford to get them each a keychain ($7.99 for a keychain. Re

A Spooky March Story

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[click to enlarge] I know I'm a little late for Halloween, but I've wanted to scan this in for nearly five months now and I just got a new printer. And last week I posted on Valentines day . . . I love this story of Sebastian's. I love the picture with it. It shows that he understands the genre, but he's not quite ready to see it through to its grisly conclusion. I love my tender boys. The three of them can be crusty and uncouth and crabby and smelly, but they all have soft and creamy centers.

Because You're Not Going To Hear It Anywhere Else

I hope you'll forgive my post, but instead of rolling my eyes and feeling grumpy about this, I've decided I'd just better say something and get the word out. Last week during Sunday School our instructor read us a letter to the admissions committee at BYU. After the first sentence, which read " . . . and I am an alumni of BYU." I turned to my neighbors and we shook our heads. This is a common error around here, but there is no such thing as an alumni. Of any institution. This is because alumni is a Latin word and the endings change based on the gender and number of people you're talking about. If you are talking about one man, he is an alumnus . If you are talking about a single woman, she is an alumna . If there is a group of women only, they are alumnae and if you are speaking of a group of either all men or men and women, they are alumni . If you don't believe everything you read on the internet, you can check here or here or here . This is why pe

Anda Bardeen

This is one for my family. Joss is singing "Andy Bardeen" here, a ballad about a pirate from Scotland. It's a unique choice for a lullaby not only for lionizing a thief, but also because the hero dies in a watery grave in battle with the King of England. Yeah. Not that that is stopping me from singing it most nights to Joss. This is his deeply abridged, but legitimate version.

From Provo to Prague in an Evening

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On Wednesday Rob held the Pinewood Derby. You can tell what sort of week it's been by the fact that neither father nor son is wearing his uniform. We began late and Will had to leave early, so he only got in a couple of heats before I ran him across town. One of the little brothers got to race his car and was over the moon about it. Unfortunately Sebastian wasn't the little brother -- he was home with strep waiting for his amoxicillin to kick in. Will had to make it back to school to perform in his class play I Never Saw Another Butterfly . It is about children in the Terezin (or Theresienstadt) concentration camp in the Czech republic and uses their actual names, dates and the poems they wrote for their secretly-held school. I cry at everything -- like Rosie O'Donnell and Meg Ryan in Sleepless in Seattle who cry at the commercial where they bring in the new refrigerator with the big bow on it; or at beer commercials, and I don't even drink beer. So I took a box of

Chasing Around Like Lions After Lambs

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Certain parties were concerned that we'd fallen off the face of the earth. We're still here, we're just not doing anything blogworthy. The professor is teaching his five courses, wrote his article, is polishing up a book review today, is still in the middle of creating the online course (he had to ask them for an extension on that, but said they were very "hakuna matata" about it) and is only fraying enough to take some fresh students down a notch or two. In addition we're planning our upcoming study abroad this summer. We've shortened it to just one term and are going to spend July in Berlin and August in Tuebingen (a university town south of Stuttgart). We're being uncharacteristically organized and we've already calendared most of it, with side trips to London, Dresden, Potsdam, Eisenach, Nuremburg and Heidelberg so far [I'm open for suggestions on things to do and see in any of these, hint hint] . I've checked out a dozen or more trave

A Valentine Poem on St. Patrick's Day

Few people know how many and varied are the professor's talents. He can watercolor, throw pots, is the best $#&*@! sandcastle builder anywhere, and he also writes wonderful poetry. So when he asks me what I want for Christmas/my birthday/mother's day/our anniversary I always ask him to write me a poem. This is one he wrote this year for Valentine's Day. It begins with an article called the U-bend of Life for any of you who don't live and die by the Economist (you don't know what you're missing!). Nadir Happiness, the researcher said Was ours when we were young and will, The researcher said, Be ours when we have left the low point: When we finally grow old, turning our attention from our children to ourselves, from others back to us. The researcher said. But what about those looks the white heads turning on wrinkled necks craning to drink in all of this, Our nadir They watch our children like a cat watches a bird fearful that these plovers might start and fl