Elsa and Chairman Mao

A few years ago, Greg's mom went to China. She brought back some great art, as well as a copy of Chairman Mao's little red book.

As I've posted before, for some reason, Elsa has since claimed this book as her own. Although she hasn't read it, she has made some interesting contributions to it.

Christmas Recap, Part 4: Nana's House

How does someone who has a house like this...

Have a backyard that contains this...

We love Nana and her goats! (Named after her grandmothers Minnie and Myrtie Bell.)

Christmas Recap, Part 3: Snowbasin

If there's one thing Henry loves, it's skiing.

It's really been kind of hard to go from skiing every single week to one or two trips a year. Maybe Greg and Henry will have to take another ski trip in February. I'm fine staying in the lodge drinking hot cocoa.

Christmas Recap, Part 2: Brother Cooper

While we were in Utah, we met up with our old friend from Geneva, Ryan Cooper. At Hire's Big H.

Coop was Henry's Sunday School teacher in Geneva. Just look at these tough guys.

Pinewood Derby

Henry just completed his first Pinewood Derby. He didn't come in 1st or 2nd (or 8th or 10th), but he had fun. And he won "Most Gamey-est" because of his Donkey Kong theme. (I would have thought "Most Gamey-est" would have gone to the car that tasted the most like rabbit.)

Christmas Recap, Part 1

Two things we loved about Christmas break:

Bedtime stories with Nana.

Eating out. (Even after waiting for 45 minutes at the Mandarin.)

Christmas Recap Coming

We had such a great Christmas break - full of family, friends and skiing. I'm going to have to break it up into several posts. Coming soon.

Can you tell which of our kids had never been skiing before?

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.