Still the New Girl

As the Relief Society secretary in the ward, I'm responsible for a newsletter that gets emailed once a week.

As the new girl in the ward, I guess shouldn't feel so bad when I include a list of birthdays in the newsletter and someone sends me the following email:

Dear Sister Christensen,

Sister [so-and-so] died a month ago.

Our ER Thanksgiving

The day before Thanksgiving, Louisa woke up with a temperature of 103. The doctor told us to monitor her temperature for a day, and to not take her around other people. So that pretty much scuttled our plans to celebrate with our Plano friends. We thought just Greg and the three oldest Banshees could go, but when our hostess said she was feeling a little sickish too, we cut the T-cord and decided to improvise our own dinner. (We were planning to bring one of the turkeys so we weren't completely marooned.)

Thursday morning, Louisa was still 103, so I called the doctor and was told to take her into the ER. Greg gave her a blessing before we left and we spent Thanksgiving day from 10:00 to 1:00 in the ER. Awesome.

A blood test, a urine test and a chest x-ray later (great appetizers for Thanksgiving), Louisa was fine. I came home and spent the next two hours getting ready for dinner, and we were eating by 3:00. I think I could be on Iron Chef America. Especially if the secret ingredient were "Take an infant to the ER!" Mario Batali has nothing on me.

Here's a picture of Greg and the Banshees in the backyard of our neighbor Al, with his son John. Al deep-fried our turkey for us - he and his wife are all-star neighbors.

Here we our at our improvised Thanksgiving dinner. At least I got to use my china and crystal!

Here's a video of Al taking our turkey out of his deep frier. This was probably the best turkey we've ever had. Once you go deep-fried, you don't go back!

How Our Kids Swear

Conversation in the car this morning...

HENRY: Dad, you know what I say if I get disappointed? I say, "Aw, jackrabbits!"

DAD: That's a good thing to say.

ANSEL: Yeah, and you know what I say? I say, "Oh, geez! I'm gonna kick their butts!"

Halloween

A ninja, Hannah Montana, and Super Why.

Representative Henry

Henry was elected to his student council on Wednesday!

Each class elected one boy and one girl. He was the only boy who prepared the mandatory campaign speech, so he won by default. But we’re sure he would have won anyway. We hear he has a strong female base. Here’s a transcript of the speech he wrote (with a little help from Greg and me):

"When I am elected to student council, I will have promises to keep. I can’t promise to change the water fountains into root beer fountains. Or to give us longer recesses. Or to send a note home to your parents saying we have the rest of the month off. But I can promise to be your friend. And as your friend, I can take your ideas to the principal. That’s what a friend would do. And that’s what I will do for you. Vote Henry Christensen!"

More at Four

One of the traditions in our family is our wooden birthday wheel. The numbers in the center change. Ansel got the #4 wizard this year.

Donuts are starting to be a tradition. And a welcome one, at that.

Ansel Turns 4!

Ansel turned 4 last Monday. Check out this sweet present.

The Texas State Fair

Last night we went to the Texas State Fair. It was huge! Of course it is - it's in Texas. Here we are in front of Big Tex, the landmark annual greater.

We go to the fair to ride a ride and get something fried. This is me with a fried s'more. We also tried the fried Frito pie. If we weren't Mormons, I'm sure we would have tried the fried beer and fried margaritas. But I'm sure fried s'mores is a borderline Word of Wisdom violator.

Elsa and Ansel didn't want to ride the ferris wheel, but loved climbing the flag poles. Maybe because the lines are shorter for the flagpoles.

Every year at the fair, there's a butter sculpture. This year, it was of an Oklahoma Sooner about to tackle a Texas Longhorn with the ball. (The Cotton Bowl is on the fairgrounds, and the OU/Texas rivalry makes BYU/Utah look like a tickle fight.) Apparently, Henry's not ready to put that on his pancakes.

School Fair

We went to the school fair yesterday for a few hours of free snow cones and horse shoe tossing.

Elsa stood in line for about a half hour to get her face painted. When she came back, we thought it was with a cute pink balloon on her cheek. But it turned out to be a skull.

Elsa's New Mustache

Dad's Home!

Greg spent the last two weeks in LA shooting the Christmas commercials for The Home Depot. We're really glad he's back. Two weeks is a long time.

We're glad he got to visit with his family, though. His sister Liz lives in Irvine with her husband Mark. And his other sister Amelia surprised him by flying down from Seattle. We're jealous we didn't get to see them, too!

Sisters

These girls really love each other. It's sweet.

Creepy Crows!

We went to Target the other night, and the parking lot was straight out of Hitchcock.

We didn't want to get out of the car! They were on the cars, the carts, the signs! But as soon as we came out of the store, they were all gone. Weird.

I Call Her Gorgeous!

My friend came over to take pictures of Louisa this morning. She did a most fabulous job.

Transition-Texas Style

"Honor the Texas flag; I pledge allegiance to thee, Texas, one state under God, one and indivisible."

We're already three weeks into the school year. Henry and Elsa are doing well. I bet I could even go so far as saying they enjoy it.

I was excited to hear that they still say the pledge of allegiance every morning. And, surprised that after that, they say the pledge of Texas. Then the pledge to Hickey Elementary. Then a moment of silence. I think they need it after all of those commitments!

Hermine makes us green!

Hurricane Hermine was downgraded to a tropical storm. But she is still hitting us hard! Our backyard looks like the Everglades, and our pool is green!

The pool service was scheduled to come out today, but I think they'll just wait until Hermine stops weeping her green tears and moves on.

Greg is a champion!

Greg did his first triathlon on Labor Day. It was fun to watch him. Henry was a fantastic cheerleader, yelling things like, "You're a man! A man, I tell you!" and "Keep swimming! Don't let your fear drag behind you!"

First Day of Preschool!

Today was Ansel's first day of preschool. He was so excited to go, we couldn't get out of the house fast enough. Here he is with his teacher.

A couple days ago, he started to insist that he wasn't going to go and he wasn't going to like it. But when we went to orientation, he started enthusiastically whispering, "Mom, it's great! It's great, Mom!"

We Love Ice Cream

Uninvited guest

Our home teachers gave us a hummingbird feeder last week. The kids love seeing the birds come and go outside our kitchen window. Sunday afternoon, however, we had a different animal at the feeder. I'm still not sure how it got there.

Henry's Sunday morning

Focus!

Ansel knows we need to focus when we visit The Home Depot.

And Elsa needs to focus on not burping so much.

Christmas in August

Dear Mom and Dad,

Thanks so much for buying me this new thing with all the colors. It's got all these other colorful things hanging off it, which are totally cool. Have you tried putting them in your mouth? It's kind of hard, but totally worth the effort. Seriously, this colorful thing rocks. You must have dropped a couple grand on this, right? Thanks for this awesome colorful thing with all the things hanging off it!

Love,

Louisa

We need to get back to REI

We haven't been back to REI for several weeks. I think it's about time we returned.

Ansel quote

Ansel has a pair of fleece-lined boots that he loves to wear, even though they make his feet smellier than most human beings can bear. Here's an exchange from this past weekend when Greg saw him putting on those boots...

GREG: Ansel, you can't wear those boots.

ANSEL: Why?

GREG: Because it's hot outside. And they'll make you stink to high heaven.

(Pause.)

ANSEL: And then I will see Jesus?

First Day of School

Henry and Elsa begin school today. Getting them off this morning went off without a hitch. Probably because they weren't concerned about having to speak French this year.

This will be the first full day of school for both of them. In Switzerland, they would go to class from 8am to 11:30, then home for lunch (and sometime the Wii) for two hours, then back to school from 1:30 to 4:30. Fingers crossed that they don't start jonesing for the Wii in the middle of the afternoon.

The Xeriscaping Chronicles, Part 1

We really love our backyard.

But we learned about a month too late that our sprinkler system (which is set to go on at 4:00 am) doesn't extend to the terraced level. And now all of the grass is dead. Totally, burnt-to-a-Kentucky-Fried-Crisp dead.

Part of the terraced level was already xeriscaped. So last week we thought Why not xeriscape the entire area? We'd save on watering, mowing, and it would look a lot prettier.

We always thought that people who made rock gardens out of their yard were a little extreme - unless you live in the middle of the Mojave and only want gila monsters crawling through the yard. We didn't want to shovel a bunch of porous lava rocks around some cacti.

But we looked at some xeriscaped yards and realized they could be very colorful. So we're starting Project Xeriscape. We're trying to figure out which plants work best in North Central Texas, which drink the least amount of water, and which are the most colorful.

Stay tuned.

Russian Art

Greg's mom Chris came a week ago to visit and to help us hang all the art in our house.

She also sent us two of her Russian paintings by Nikolai Terpsikhorov, which we absolutely love.

They're hard to see, but the one below has two goats in it. (White one to the left. Black one to the right.) Chris has two goats of her own, which she named Minnie and Myrtie Belle, after her grandmothers. I'm not sure how you say either of those names in Russian. Or in goat.

Terpsikhorov lived in Moscow in the early 1900's. He painted a lot of portraits in Russia and Uzbekistan, but we really love his landscapes.

High Antiquing

Yesterday, a family in the neighborhood had a garage sale. I picked up a secretary desk for Henry's room, and this stackable bookshelf with glass doors.

I think the guy who sold it to me was high. Not totally stoned, but he was very mellow, and when strung together, not all the words coming out of his mouth made sense. And after I paid $20 for this bookcase and found similar items on eBay and craigslist going for $500 and $600, I've decided to be more pro-active in seeking out more cannabis-sponsored antique garage sales.

I'm baaaaack!

Flies and Spiders

We have these blue bottle flies that get stuck in our pool fence and die.

I don't know if they don't see the fence and get caught mid-flight, or if they're crawling around and decide to climb through the openings. But every day, we've got to flick four or five of these stupid flies out.

Dear spiders, come to our backyard and eat these flies. This fence is basically a pre-spun web. Then you can quit spinning your dumb invisible webs across my jogging path.

Last Day of Summer Vacation

Henry and Elsa start school on Monday. Henry's making sure he spends his last morning of summer vacation appropriately.

More iElsa

Elsa grabbed Greg's iPhone in the car. We're in talks with Disney Channel and Nick Jr. for her to have her own show.

Elsa and the iPhone

I'm not going to bother documenting these kids' childhoods anymore. I'm just going to make sure they have access to my iPhone and let them do their thing.

Cocorico!

Henry got a new do, and he loves it. This is the shortest he's ever had his hair. He says it's a lot cooler. And he says he's really excited to jump on a trampoline without his hair whipping him in the face.

He also said he wanted us to take this picture of him so someday he could show his own kids that he once had a faux hawk.

Ansel on a Wall

Last weekend we stopped by R.E.I. Turned out the climbing wall was open and Greg and the three oldest Banshees put on harnesses to scale the it. Here's the Booch in his element:

Banshees with iPhones

Ever since we got iPhones, the kids think they have iPhones. And to tell the truth, they're probably more adept at using them. Ansel discovered the YouTube button long before we noticed it, and now he and Elsa can quote the Charlie Bit Me video word for word.

Occasionally we'll see that we have 200 photos on our phones and discover that 190 of them are impressionist blurs of floors and walls taken by the kids. Cleaning our my phone's photo album, I came across this video that Henry made of himself on his way home from his baptism. (His comment about everything turning out great refers to his decision that morning to not be baptized but wait "17 years." We're glad he changed his mind.)

Cliffs Notes on the last few weeks

Hi. This is Greg posting for Suzy, who's taking a nap. She hasn't been blogging as much, but having a baby, moving across the ocean, buying and house and a car while caring for three other kids while your husband just goes to work and watches YouTube and browses the iTunes stores takes a lot our of a girl. So here are some highlights:

Henry got baptized last week.

Louisa was blessed the following Sunday.

Suzy's parents, plus my dad, stepmom and their kids came out to visit us.

Elsa pulled her own loose tooth right out of her head.

Love the pool.

Elsa set these books up in her room.

That's a book of quotations from Chairman Mao on the right.