A 3 year old dissappointment

Apparently, according to Aliece & Alayna, Jace is disappointed in me as a Dad since I got mad at him tonight when I caught him out of bed way past bed time.

Luckily for me, Alayna tried to cheer the three year old up and Aliece tried to explain to him how why grown ups do the things they do.

Someone needs a psychiatrist in this house!

Newest Computer User

Due to increased computer activity by our youngest boy, Amber was driven to create Jace his first ever computer account on the kids' PC at our house.

Lately Jace has really gotten into the activities on PBS. He can pretty much navigate himself around the computer alone.

Maybe we'll have to buy the kid a laptop for Christmas. :)

A Broken Nose

The other day we had a guy over to our house to do some maintenance work
on our fireplace. I was sitting in the room with the service man to
watch how he was doing everything. While we were there, Jace came up to
me excitedly and said, with a proud look on his face, "Dad, look at this!"

I looked down at him and he was sticking his finger in his nose and
then putting it into his mouth. Then he got a perplexed look on his
face. He then tried it again. The finger went into the nose, but came
out clean and then went into his mouth.

He stuck his finger into his nose one last time, and it came out clean.
He stuck it into his mouth and then said in a frustrated tone, "Dad,
it's broken!"

I guess he'll have to wait until his nostrils fill up with more of those
juicy little snacks.

No Electricity

A month ago, Aliece brought home this essay that she wrote at school. I thought it was really cute, so I thought I would post it to the blog. In case it is hard to read on the scanned image that I am including, I will also type her essay here:

Title: What I would do if there was no electricity
By: Aliece

What I would do if there was no electricity. I would go outside and play. I would even light a lamp with fire and have my family stay behind me. I could even walk and look behind me to see if my whole family was there. I would feel brave and we would even have our emergency backpacks. It would keep us safe and happy.

I would feel like a Hero. I might would be in the newspaper. It would be great. But we love electricity!

The End.

P.S. But we wouldn't marry electricity. And it is fun to have electricity.

By Aliece.

Dave can fix anything!

I went downstairs and hear Jace getting upset in the room with our computer. I asked him why is was mad and it was because he was trying to watch a disney video on the internet but it was choppy due to slow internet speeds.

I worked with it a bit to try to speed things up, but to no avail.

Aliece, who was standing behind me offering encouraging advice, said, "Maybe we should call Dave."

I replied, "Oh, you think Dave can fix this?".

She responded so absolutely, "Oh yes, Dave can fix ANYTHING!"

So, Dave, when you get a minute, can you come over to our house and give us faster internet speeds??

The kind gesture of a simple card

After my business trip from Denver, I came home last night to find a nice little card on my pillow from Alayna. Amber explained to me that Alayna had made these cards for everyone as a special invitation or message. She explained that Alayna had put these on everyone's pillow.

I guess last night when Jace went to bed he found the card from Alayna. Amber said that he was so proud of that card. He kept pretending to read it over and over again, saying Alayna's name randomly in his "reading". He kept the card next to him all night and kept picking it up and setting it down over and over again before sleep overcame him.

This morning I found Jace toting around his little card from Alayna. I grabbed a photo of him eating his breakfast with the card right next to him. (Yeah, he is trying to smile in this picture - don't you love it when little kids realize that their is a smile pose and it takes them a year or so to get it down?)

Thanks for your thoughtful act, Alayna, it really made a huge difference to Jace!

Naughty List

I am working here in my home office and I overheard John Jr sing, to the tune of a Polar Express song, "And Santa falls off his sleigh..."

Then I heard Alayna chastising him, " Johnny, that is not nice. What if you end up on Santa's 'Naughty List!'"

I guess that should straighten him out. :-)

First Play on our Home Theater Stage

As part of our basement remodel, Amber and I decided to make a stage where the TV goes so that our home theater room would be both a movie theater room along with a drama room. The kids love to make movies and plays, so we thought this would go over well.

Yesterday, after church, the kids made up a play about the Biblical story of Esther. They came up with it quickly and did a fun presentation. It was humorous to see Jace in his various costumes getting into the play. Avary even hopped off Amber's lap to make a few appearances in the production.

If you have 10 minutes to kill, you can view it here:

Craft fun for thanksgiving

One of the many activities for our Andersen family Thanksgiving get together included a craft activity for the kids. Janae rounded up the kids for this activity. They had fun painting clear plastic cups brown and then cutting out their hand shapes to make turkey feathers.

The women folk have busy busy on other crafts as well as the guys have gotten their fill of football and James Bond.

Double take

While I was working this morning Amber hung up our Christmas stockings on the mantle. As I walked into the room I did a double take as I saw the number of stockings. I thought Amber had gone crazy hanging a gazillion stockings for fun.

As I counted the hoard of multiple-colored socks I realized that there was just enough for each one of us.

Man, when did my little family get to be so big?

Just so that I wont forget it

The other day, my watch died on me. I thought it would be fun to take it apart, so I did. After I was done, I took a piece of paper and wrote my locker combination on it and stuck it in my watch, so that I could see it. Now I am pretty sure I won't forget it(not that I have yet)!

Love ya!
A's

The Monster

Yesterday I realized that I have procrastinated the day of my repentance. We had nearly a three foot drift in our driveway, and I still didn't have a good snow removal solution for the house. I bundled up at lunch time and headed out to some stores to seek out the perfect, low-cost, snowblower.

As soon as I reached the first store, I found out that finding a snow blower was going to be as easy as grabbing a $100 ipad on a black-friday sale. People were lined up at the snow blower isle, each clamoring for the blower of their choice among a very limited stock. I found one that I liked, but wanted to check out Sam's club first to see if they had a better deal. I ran over to Sams to find a snow blower that was a beast. It was huge and dwarfed any of the others that I had been looking at. The price was good, but it was still 200 dollars more than the unit I liked best at the Home Depot.

I ran back to the Home Depot to grab smaller and cheaper unit, only to find that they were all sold out. There was a much smaller and cheaper one left, and I was just about decided to buy it. The wheels on the thing were pretty small though, and I started to think about the drifts in my yard. I decided to go with the Sam's Club behemoth version instead.

I spent the extra money. It took four guys to get the box into my Suburban. As I drove home, I was sick. I wondered if I really needed a blower that was that big.

However, after I got it assembled and started blowing snow last night, I realized that this thing was probably the smallest I should ever go on a blower for our place. It took me 90 minutes to do our driveway and barn area. When I was hitting the biggest drifts I was grateful for the size of the blower. I realized that if I had let it go one more day, even this snow blower would have had a hard time getting us out of the house.

Oh, Duuuuh

Today was our high council assignment day in which the assigned High Councilor from the stake made a visit to our ward and gave an assigned talk. Somewhere during his talk he was telling a story from the book of mormon of a very wicked man who hated the Nephites and caused a lot of contention between them and the Lamanites. During his talk, he forgot the name of that particular Book of Mormon villan.

In his exasperation, he said, "well, I can't quite remember the name, but it sounds like the city of Zarahemla". At that point, Johnathan, who was sitting next to Amber, exhaled in almost of sound of resigned disgust, wispered, "Zarahemna!"

Amber and I did our best not to start laughing right there in the middle of the talk. Good job on your Book of Mormon reading, Johnny!

Welcome to The Netherlands

This week I am in the Netherlands for work. I flew out on Friday and got Amsterdam on Saturday afternoon. They are 9 hours ahead of us in California so adjusting to the schedule was very difficult the first day. After one day in Amsterdam it was off to Tilburg which is a city of about 250,000 about 1.5 hours from Amsterdam.
We finished things up on Tuesday night and then drove back to Amsterdam last night. This morning I flew to London and am enjoying my first day in London before heading off to Paris tomorrow. Looking forward to seeing Paris before heading back to Amsterdam to fly back to California.

The two that made it all happen!

I just wanted to take a minute and wish Mom and Dad a very Happy Anniversary today! I have always loved this picture from one of our camping trips to Twin Lakes. I carried it with me in my scriptures throughout my mission to Brazil. I would always look at it to feel a touch of home.

Hope you both have a very nice day today. You deserve it. Thanks for being the parents and grand parents you are. We all love you and appreciate all the attention and love you give to us.

Beehive 2nd Counceler

Hey guys! I want to do more blogging, so I figured this is the perfect chance! On Sunday afternoon, One of the bishopbric members interviewed me and asked if I would be the Beehive 2nd counceler! Of course I said Yes.

Pepsi

As most of you know, we have a number of horses staying in our corrals right now. Avary is enthralled my the horses. The other day I took Avary over to the corral to get a hands on experience with the horses. The other kids were with us and the horse closest to us is named "Pepsi". All the kids called for "Pepsi" to come over so that they could pet her. With all of the kids shouting the horse's name, Avary decided that the word for "horse" is "Pepsi". Now, when she sees the horses in the corral, or in a book, she exclaims, "Pepsi!"

Independence

Lately when we get out of the car, the moment someone u buckles Avary and sets her on the ground, she takes off walking as fast as she can on her own. We have to chase her down, or at least keep an eye on her. She loves the outdoors and could spend all day running away from home if we would let her!

In Vitro Update

Hi everyone! Greetings from Utah!

Jake and I want to thank everyone for praying and fasting for us. We feel so loved and supported. We are hopeful everything will work out and trust in our Heavenly Father.

So far things are going good. We had 5 eggs retrieved on Thursday and 4 eggs successfully fertilized. So we are hoping to have 2 eggs to transfer. The longer the embryo's have to grow outside the uterus the more likely they will successfully implant when they are transfered. We have a tentative transfer date for Sunday but are hoping to transfer the embryo's on Tuesday, day 5.

Thank you for all of your support and love.

We love you guys!

Jake & Shantell

2010-2011 LeadingLosers.net Challenge

Hello family and friends!

My gut is getting a little bigger and I need increased motivation to drop some pounds!  In order to do so, I have created a weight loss competition and I would like to invite you to join.

If you have a big desire to shed some pounds between TODAY and February 2011, then join me in the LeadingLosers.net challenge.  Everyone donates $25.00 to the weight loss pot.  Once you reach 10 pounds lost, or 5% weight loss, you start gaining points fast!  EVERYONE has the chance to win some money!

I have created a new website to show you how you are doing versus everyone else.  It also shows you how much money you are currently set to receive.  The website for seeing this status is called:  http://www.LeadingLosers.net.

You will need to join a third-party website to enter your weight (and exercise minutes if you care to).  The website is http://www.workoutzone.net.  As you update your stats each day your status will immediately be reflected on the http://www.LeadingLosers.net website.

Send this to whomever you would like.  The more the merrier ... not to mention, the more people, the bigger the pot!

Here is what you have to do to get involved:

1. If you haven't already, sign up for an account at http://www.workoutzone.net.
2. Become part of the LeadingLosers.net workout group by sending John Andersen your username for workoutzone.net. You can contact John at:  http://www.john-james-andersen.com/contact-john
3. Make a $25.00 contribution to the pot. You should pay at:  https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=JEBRWHP4PFNP8
4. Enter your current weight at Workout Zone AT LEAST ONCE EVERY TWO WEEKS between now and February 1, 2011.
5. Earn Points -- they determine what portion of the pot is yours!
• Once your weight is 10 pounds under your starting weight, you get 1 point for every pound lost.
• Once your weight is 5% under your starting weight, you ALSO get 2 points for every percent of weight loss.

Let's have a lot of fun with this!

John Andersen

http://www.john-james-andersen.com