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!"