Friend or Foe?

Break a Leg!

Just kidding....

Just some theater talk for all of our friends who are performing or helping in the production of Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat at Covenant Life....

We wish we could be there to cheer you all on, clap until our hands were red, and whoop and holler and beg for an encore--for all 5 of your performances.

Yes.

We would have been at every one of them!

So dear friends,
break a leg, knock 'em dead, good luck, smile, never let 'em see you sweat and have fun!

we are praying for you all!

and can someone please video tape it for us??;)

~the Mom

A Little Photoshoot

Bunny Ears! (We're kids at heart... okay, actually we're kids all the time) It's us girlies. Me and Rach. Notice the hats? Yes, our "matching" buys at Stein Mart. Just so fun! I love having them here! And now a word from RACHEL!!!!!! (drums rolling)

Rachel: Howdy ya'll! AZ's awesome... ummm... there's like NO GRASS anywhere. it's all rocks and cacti (is that right?) and those little yellow flowers that are everywhere. And it's like 85 degrees... i'm actually BURNING HOT. Haha, hope you're enjoying the cloudy yucky weather at home! :o)

Tay's so cute!!! (She doesn't like this pic... :)

Fishy Lips!!!

Our new hats! heehee! :o)

THEY ARE COMING!!!!

Needless to say, it is incredibly hard to do school with the Cz's coming tonight. Yes, they are really coming. We've been counting down the days since February.

We can't wait until a bit of home comes to us!

Mrs. Cz sent the Mom an email this morning made us laugh (see below).

Twinkle

It’s 11:15a and we’re ALL PACKED, bags by the front door, waiting to go!! Really… ALL READY! And we aren’t even leaving for the airport until 230, flight leaves at 5p!! Holy Moly, this will feel like a long day once we actually get there!


We know the feeling! but we will be busy today cleaning a bit, setting up beds, shopping for good snacks...Oh! and doing school:)

Can't wait to see them!

we'll post pics of their visit..maybe the pics will entice more Easterners to visit...!


~Twinkle and The Mom

what I think..

it's good to put in a hard day's work...
it's good to finish the day relaxing with your sons...
it's good to finish the day on a golf course... that's empty... during a typically beautiful phoenix valley sunset...(86 degrees)
it's better trying to beat your sons in a chip & putt contest..
it's best when they beat you straight up...

it's all good..

The Sqashed Heel

This is Twinkle, here, with a story of blood, guts, and gore. If any of you experience upset stomachs at the sight of blood or frog dissections, don't read any further. You know who you are. No need to throw out names.

Anyway, it had been an uneventful day. The usual amount of school, the usual amount of chores, the usual amount of shopping at Costco. Then, the Mom dropped me off at my tennis lesson. Then, the bomb dropped, the balloon popped, and the wheel rolled all at once. Before I go on, please review the following picture.

Kinda blurry, right? Well, the situation was not blurry. It was as clear as something that has nothing in its way. Nothing was in the Mom's car's way, right? Correction. My heel (complete with a tennis shoe and sock) experienced an amazing pressure as the car tire rolled smoothly over it. Please observe the following conversation.

Me: Ouch. OUCH! OWOWOWOWOWOWOWO!!!!!!

The Mom (panic in her voice): What's wrong?

Me: YOU ROLLED OVER MY HEEL!

The Mom: I did? I DID?!?!

Me: YEAH. OW!

The Mom: Let me...what do you want me to do?

Me: Move! NO, NOT FORWARDS...BACKWARDS! (The car rolls hesitantly backward.)

Me (much relieved and eager to go to tennis): Okay, thanks! Bye!

The Mom: Wait! Are you okay? Let me see.

Me: It's okay. See? (The Mom gasps) I'm late! Bye!

The Mom: Er, okay, bye!

Needless to say, I recovered and there isn't even a black mark on my heel. Crisis averted. Danger avoided. And victim recovered. It was a good day.

~Twinkle

P.S. So sorry for the wacked-out letter sizes! Something weird happened.

Laura's Got Nothing On Me....

So I love to bake my own bread.

Not the standard kind of bread making...But the 'Laura Ingalls Wilder, yes I am a homeschooler" type of bread baking.

From scratch.

From real scratch.

Like from wheat kernels/berries.

I got into this last summer. I made some good loaves and a mean cinnamon roll. ( I made more than one cinnamon roll, mind you...that is just an expression)

When we moved out here, I was able to convince the Dad that I needed to bring the mill. Great. But the kitchen aid--the mixer I use to knead the dough-- didn't make the cut. It stayed at home.

OK. Before i continue, just want you to know that I know that Laura Ingalls Wilder had neither an electric mill nor a kitchen aid to help her out. She also didn't have running water or an oven. But I do. Did Laura Ingalls ever have children needing an education, other meals to prepare and a household to run???

OK...maybe she did.

But that is not the point of this post.

The point is...... I like to make bread. And I haven't been able to since we moved out here.

So. I had my mill. Found a place to purchase some wheat berries. No mixer. Decided against making the children knead it by hand and calling it PE.

I decided--hey! If I am going to purchase a mixer why don't a get the one I've had my eye on since I began bread making. In fact, I spent all last summer wishing my kitchen aid into breaking just so I could purchase this machine....





The Electrolux Assistent from Sweden. Poor Laura, she never had the opportunity to dream of such a machine!


This machine is costly. So, I waited. Waited until I couldn't wait any longer... I waited 4 months. And then this past January, I purchased my machine..... ahhhh...

I have made biscotti--lots of it, some cakes...and began my bread-making just recently. For some reason I have been intimidated to make bread again since I got out of the habit. Did Laura ever have to deal with such tendencies? I think not.

Anyway...made a nice batch the other day. The bread was lighter and tastier than I remember it to be when I used my kitchen aid. I couldn't wait to make more.

Purchased more wheat.

Made another batch of bread with a slight modification to the recipe...ever so slight...really. I just didn't stir the liquid as much as i normally do. And I guess that was enough.

I killed the yeast.


I ended up with this:

Concrete Wheat.

So.

I rinsed it out in my sink with running water, turned off the lights in my kitchen, snuggled down with a good book in my comfy bed in my temperature controlled house and decided I'd try again another day.

Laura's got nothing on me.

~The Mom

When Science Doesn't Work....

A few weeks ago we needed to have our hot tub repaired.  We had to empty the tub.  Follow along as we follow the scientific method in figuring out how to empty the hot tub.

This is posted with love to my science class....maybe we should have called in Mr Dunwoody....

EMPTYING THE HOT TUB

Objective: Empty the hot tub so required work can be done to repair it

Hypothesis: Siphoning would be a great science experiment and practice in 'real world ' science...plus it looks magical!


Equipment: hose, hot tub, children willing to suck the air and then the water thru the hose to get it started. It also helps to have a parent who has done this before, but we didn't have one of those and had to go without. Bummer.


Experiment:

• Undo hose from spikot...check
• Undo sprayer from other end of hose.... hmmm...hmmm...can't seem to get the sprayer off.
• Be creative and look around for another type of hose....ah ha! the pool vaccuum hose.
• Undo  2.5" diameter hose
• Put one end of hose in hot tub
• Have parent suck the air out of the other end...breathe in a lung full of chloride air...gag and gasp for fresh air
• Try again
• Suck air thru the large opening of the vacc hose..breathe in through mouth, out thru nose.
• Repeat

• Repeat

• Repeat...forever...
• Well at least until you think the water must, must, must be within inches of the hole, ready to pour out on the ground.
• Quickly look into hole without letting air in 
• Let air in by mistake

• Repeat steps above
• Realize hose is too long.
• Shorten hose by removing a section
• Repeat steps above, assigning one of the children/students to do it
• You, being the ever helpful parent/teacher,  push the hose deep into the water in  the hot tub to make sure it won't pop up...as you do this it pops up and lets in a substabntail amount of air.
• Apologize to son.
• Have son start again...they you take your turn
• Suck out the air until you feel water on your lips...VICTORY  you think

• One more good breath in and...cough...sputter...choke..gag...NOT THAT BIG OF  A BREATH!
• Water pours out...for about 3 seconds.  
• Look at children in dismay.
• Remember the water hasn't been chemically treated lately
• Gag again at the thougth of the taste/feel of the water 
• Realize you almost drowned on dry land.

• Pause.  

• Give children buckets and have them empty the hot tub in 5 minutes flat , splashing water all round and having a generally great time.

Conclusion:

Science is fun...sometimes.  But choking on pool water is not...pool water that hadn't been properly chemically treated recently...especially not.  

Results:  Children have a greattime.  Children are wet by the end.

Mom surrives...barely...praying there were no water parasites/germs/microbes in the water

Repeat:  Uh, no thanks.

• 

~The Mom

PhotoBooth Madness

So, the following are random pictures from a Session of PhotoBooth Madness. We hold these sessions quite often...

(Star Wars music plays in the backround).

Bubblegum and fishy-faces. Those are the most wonderful things in life. Besides peanut M&M's. And Saturdays. "And the color hot-pink." That was Minnie who said that. Not me.

Chip and I agreed that this picture is "so cool" and that it could be the cover of a movie. I love the look on Chip's face. And mine.

Minnie says, "Those are my hands pulling his earwax out of his ear. Brothers are so embarassing."

Minnie and Chip did this SOOO cute picture so Mickey and I had to do one of our own (see below). Minnie says, "Ours is cuter!" Don't listen to her.

I just love this picture. Notice the gap between Mickey's teeth. You be the judge. Whose picture is cuter? We will be holding a Prestigous Poll For The Purpose Of Determining Whose Picture Is Cuter in a few days. Or maybe not. I might not like the results.

And now a word from the Great Tooth-Loser...Minnie!!!!!

"Hey,

Okay, so my tooth is soooo loose. Like so loose that, with my tongue, I can feel the roots. Everyone wants me to pull it, but I want to wait till the Cz's are here. Or on Sunday.

Minnie

P.S. It's really really really loose!"

How much Kimchee can one family eat??

I don't know...but I think our family is on a mission to find out.

When Oma/Halmoni arrived in mid january we went shopping for some Korean groceries. She offered to make some kimchee, so I said sure...that would be great...anything Oma makes is delicious. Thinking how nice it would be to have a couple of jars of kimchee in the outside fridge. (we restorted to fridge number 2 when we realized Oma was coming and we'd want to store the korean food outside), we loaded up the car and headed to the 'nearest' asian market.

anway, near the end of January, we purchased 70pounds of Nappa Cabbage....

Yes.

you read that right.

70 pounds.


Of Cabbage.

Obviously more than a few jars worth.

Oma quickly went to work making kimchee.



She washed and she salted and she rinsed and she chopped and she sliced and she mixed and mixed and mixed....all of it together in what really looks like a baby pool but what every self respecting Korean person would call a kimchee bowl:



We were thrilled to have many many ziploc bags of Oma's kimchee tucked away in our refrigerator. So happy that we ate and ate and ate it. We had cabbage soup, kimchee soup, kimchee rice and plain ol' kimchee. Alot. Yum.


And now.

Today. Just one short month later.....

We bought 50 more pounds of Nappa.

We are down to our last ziploc bag of the greatest side dish ever made. So Oma has begun again. just 4 or 5 short weeks after she began...she is repeating herself. Tomorrow the salting, the rinsing, the chopping, the mixing...all in the baby pool, er I mean the kimchee bowl.

Ahhhh....can life get much sweeter..or should i say spicier???

FIELDTRIP!

Good morning all,
i am def feeling better today....

had two nights of a very deep sleep and a restful day yesterday...coupled with Halmoni's special radish soup, and I think i am cured!

Today we are cramming in school in the AM and then after Twinkle finishes helping another family with some home school stuff we will head downtown...phoenix of course:)

The Sating John's bible is on display. Chuck and I were able to see if a few weeks ago and I have wanted to show it to the kids ever since. It is a handwriten illuminated bible that was commissioned about 7 years ago.

They have selections of it on display in glass cases. Each page is about 30"X36" or so. And the art in the bible is meant to make the bible more accessible and speak the words of the passage in a new/different/ yet traditional way.... We found it to be beautiful and inspiring...check it out www.saintjohnsbible.org/see/illuminations.htm

Also, Twinkle played in her first tennis tourney this past weekend. It was with the kids she is in class with and it was round robin style. Three and a half hours of play later, she earned 3rd place. Not bad for the first time:). She was also promoted to the next level of instruction with some kids who are very good and some who compete regionally and place well! It should be a good challenge for her!

Well, i must go teach some school so we can get to the museum later today.

Enjoy your day!


~The Mom

So the day is sunny here

but i am a bit under the weather--nothing major, just tired and stuff....

....and I am missing home today.

Thanks for being 'missable':)



~The Mom

The Glove Really Does Help

His times on Math Drill are much faster now that he has the Glove of Power on his hand.....


~the Mom