Aliece hits the news....

I was reading the Shelly Pioneer (a weekly newspaper for the Shelley area) and found that Aliece was mentioned in the paper. She recently won a story telling competition for her classroom. She then competed in the school and did very well.

I have scanned in the newspaper article about the occasion.

We were really proud of Aliece for going out of her comfort zone and doing such an amazing performance.

Splits

I don't know where Jace got the idea, but today at lunch he thought it would be fun to do the splits on top of the kitchen table. He did a pretty good job!

Flooring has arrived

We just got our hardwood flooring in yesterday. I had to take the trailer to the lumber store to pick it up. It weighed about 1.5 tons. It really maxed out my trailer's towing capacity. I was kind of worried, but we took it slow and made it home without any incident. When we got home, we had some neighbor kids come over and Haul the wood into the house. It is now sitting in boxes in the kitchen area so that it can adjust to the climate in our house. Within about a week or two the floor will be installed. It will be so nice to have a real floor again! The kids keep tripping into the subfloor and getting close snagged on pieces of wood. Before the floor gets in, we will need to replace our exterior doors. After the floor is complete, we just do some repair work on the cabinets and build an island. It will be nice when this project is done!

A sticky situation

This week we were at the high school switching buses like always when I walked passed John's stop and saw him on a pole. I told him to get away thinking that he would get his tongue stuck, but it was too late. He had already frozen his tongue there. Fortunately, one of his good friends was there and got a guard. While they ran to get water, I kept pushing his head forward so that he wouldn't cause any more damage. Luckily, he only hurt the bottom of his tongue! Well, Alayna is begging me to get off, so see you! Love A's

Remodel Project

Here are some pictures of the remodel of my breezeway. It is still a work in process but I finished putting the primer on the ceiling today. Next week I hope to put the paint on the ceiling.

Before:After:

Mommy Did It

This morning, mom turned the on monitor on the computer for Avary. For the Next while, Avary sat there watching small Sesame Street clips. When I walked in a little later, I noticed she was pressing the monitor button. I told her that wouldn't work, then she said: "Mommy did it." Who knows what she will pick up next!

Love you! A's

My kind of shoes

There was a picture I saw on Google Reader that showed the coolest high heels ever. They were black and totally covered with star wars stuff. Now those are shoes I wouldn't mind wearing!

Love you all!
A's

P.S. To those who didn't know, I am getting braces this month.

Suggested Resolutions

While sitting around the dinner table tonight, our conversation moved toward new year's resolutions. Everyone started suggesting resolutions for each other. Suggestions for Avary and Jace were to be potty trained. Alayna & Aliece, were suggested that they should learn to tie their shoes. John Jr was told that he should work on keeping his room clean. Aylee was challenged to show confidence when she talks to other people.

The kids caught on to this along the way and were firing these suggestions off right and left. Then they directed their attention to their parents. Alayna told Amber that her resolution should be to prepare dinner at the right time (tonight's dinner ended up taking place after 7pm).

Then John looked at me and said, "I know Dad's resolution!" The table went quiet momentarily as I cringed waiting to hear the verdict. Here it came, "Dad, you should just keep up the good work."

I looked at Amber a little haughtily and smiled proud.

John will be getting a $20.00 bill under his pillow tonight. :-)

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.