Never too early to practice

 
 

Another satisfied Christmas dollhouse customer

 
 

Orion welcomes his Christmas fish, Bubbles, to the family

 

One satisfied Christmas celebrator

The happiest place on earth

Part two of our awesome adventure with Grandma and Grandpa Baird took place at the happiest place on earth: Disneyland. The nickname led us to wonder if you were not being happy there, would you be asked to leave? I do not think because I saw more than one unhappy child there. For the most part everyone was happy. I was amazed how clean the park was. Normally touching anything at the amusment park is a scary proposition but not at Disney.


Above is a picture of Ethan, Orion, and Meri sitting by Grandpa in the shuttle bus to Disneyland. Can you sense the anticipation?


Above is a photo of various members of the expedition on the Autotopia ride. I am in the car on the left with Ethan. Ylfelynn's brother is in the car on the right with one of his sons. Another nephew is in the car behind him with Grandpa. This ride was fun because the whole party (all 17 people) got to ride at the same time.


Here is some of the group eating both inside and outside the Village Haus restaurant. I know the guide books say that Disney food is overpriced and they are right. But it was a convenient, hot meal when we needed it. I have no regrets.

I think everybody has a great time. The favorite ride was Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters. I managed to achieve a high score of 142,000 and the rank L4 on my second ride. Next time, I am shooting for L5. This was Ylfelynn's first visit to Disneyland and based on her feelings for the place, I expect we will visit again.

A trip back in time to ... medieval times

This weekend we had a fabulous treat. Actually several. One of those was dinner at Medieval Times in Buena Park, CA. Ylfelynn's parents treated us and her two brothers and their families to dinner here. What a great experience! The picture to the left shows our view from our table. It is probably had to tell from the picture, but there are no utensils on the table. We ate with our hands just like in medieval times.

As you can see from this picture, it was quite a production. I was surprised by the number of people involved. I have to wonder if there were ever this many knights, squires, etc. in any one place in medieval times.

This is the dreaded Green Knight in whose section we sat. We, of course, cheered him and booed the other knights. Our guy did not do so well and I think in the end he fell to another knight's axe or polearm or something. The medieval times must have been hard on knights.

This was our kids' reaction to much of the show. They all tend to be really sensitive to loud noises (probably inherited from me). Orion is on the far end and he is wearing ear plugs. Jessica, surprisingly enough, probably enjoyed it the most. Meri actually fell asleep with her hands over her ears. I wonder if little peasant children had to deal with stuff like this in medieval times. I heartily recommend a trip to Medieval Times if you are ever near one.

But as for myself, to me he doth not stink

I have finally found a use for that scripture (Alma 19:5). Ethan's cast was removed (see cast installation) on 9 November. I thought he would be suffering from a raging case of stink arm because I had smell some strong odors emanating from the cast before. Apparently, the scent was all in the cast because I smelled his arm right after it came off (why is it we can never resist smelling a bad smell? "Wow, that really stinks - hey you, smell this! It's really bad, huh?"). I thought of the above scripture when I discovered that there was no stink arm. Ethan is definitely enjoying having his right arm back, though he continues to draw with his left hand (he is right-handed but quickly adapted to the cast). You can see the skin on his arm looks a little funny, but after a couple of days, it looked fine. His arm did not even shrink that much, though he had a funny wrist angle for a little while.

Take me out to the airshow

Here are photos from the Edwards Air Force base 2005 Open House. Brayton, Orion, and I attended. Below is a picture of Brayton and Orion boarding one of NASA's shuttle-carrying 747s (seen on the right).


And here is a picture of the boys in the back of a C-17 Globemaster III.

It was an impressive show. Here is a link to some more pictures from the airshow.

Halloween followup followup

This is what your hair looks like when you put it down after wearing Princess Leia buns for several hours.

Halloween followup

Later that evening ... 

This is Halloween ...

Another Halloween successfully carried out. No one ate too much candy and barfed. Lest you think that is an idle parental threat ("don't eat too much - you don't want to throw up!"), two years ago, Orion actually did. As you can see in the photograph, we have Ethan on the left as an alien (Ylfelynn made the costume from fabric Ethan picked out). Meri is decked out as a cat. Orion is the skeleton. Brayton has donned a Harry Potter costume complete with the requisite scar on his forehead. Jessica is (as evidenced by the hairdo) dressed as Princess Leia (also Ylfelynn-made). It is a pity we could not find a mini blaster for her to hold. Unbeknownst to us, Harry left his wand at school that day so the Halloween evening festivities were slightly marred by some anxious searching. Tuesday morning, the wand was waiting for him at his desk. Halloween night we visited several neighbors and then hit the church for some trunk-or-treating. 

Reading time

The two resident princesses

Lunch with the littles

Never too young to pitch in

Jessica's room was recently painted. White walls are now some shade of pink (how do they come up with names for so many different shades of pink paint?). Jessica herself pitched in. In fact, everyone except Ethan "helped" out (I think Ethan was feeling cast-impaired). Actually, Brayton painted a sizeable portion of the room. Pretty soon we should be able to turn the entire job over to him.

Broken bones part 2

Continuing with the broken arm story: Ethan was supposed to go in to see the ortho doctor a couple of days after urgent care. Our loser HMO provider, High Desert Medical Group, messed up the paperwork. They said they would call in a couple of days to set up the appointment. I thought that was strange that a medical provider would provide that kind of service and I asked again if that was the case. Well, it wasn't. By Monday, we knew he needed to get in soon. Ylfelynn tried calling, got the run-around, and left a message. Same thing on Tuesday. I call on Wednesday and got the run-around. I call back again and finally talked to a competent person. She expressed dismay that something went wrong and scheduled Ethan for that afternoon. I left work to get Ethan out of school and take him to the ortho guy. I thought we would pop in for a quick cast and be done. No. In the 7 days that had elapsed since the initial break, Ethan's radius had healed enough to require surgery to reset it. So about an hour later, we were checking the hospital for outpatient surgery (we did not even have enought time to go home first). Eventually, they knocked Ethan out, reset the bone, and installed a cast. No pins were necessary. I think the worst part for Ethan was when he was waking up and the oxygen he had been breathing made his nose all stuffed up. We did not even get his Tylenol III prescription filled. He has felt great ever since. The doctor said the cast would probably be on for four weeks. A good thing that's not too long - today I was already noticing the stink arm smell emanating from the cast. Stupid medical provider - don't ever leave anything in their hands. By the way his wrist x-ray looked something like this.

The birthday and the bone

Everyone should get to leave work early on their birthday. I did. It was not the graciousness of my boss nor any sneaking out on my part though. Ethan really wanted me to be home early so he took a fall. Just kidding ... I don't think it was on purpose. During an outing to the park on Wednesday (parent-teacher conferences = no school) 28 September (33 years subsequent to my birth) Ethan said goodbye to the monkey bars he was hanging on and gave a high five to the sand. A couple of hours later, I was gone from work and sitting in the urgent care center. You may recall my previous adventures there. Anyway, here he is that evening with temporary cast in place. He never really cried until the doctor said that he would need a cast. You can see that it is his right hand. He loves to draw and write and is right-handed. He knew it would be tough to have a cast on. He is getting fairly good with his left hand now. Stay tuned for the next chapter: the permanent cast.

Ri the guy

For some inexplicable reason, I don't think there is a picture of Orion (Ri for short) on this blog. This post is to remedy that situation. Obviously, he is plenty cute and should have pictures posted all the time. Here he is on the playground being very serious.

And then ... there was two.

I attended an interesting meeting this evening. Three of the local wards of the Lancaster East Stake met together at the stake center. After the meeting, there were only two wards. Our former ward, the Joshua ward, was dissolved and combined with the other two wards. This was due to rapidly declining memberships of the wards mostly from people taking advantage of the high real estate values by selling and moving out of state. We are now part of the El Dorado ward. Next Sunday, we will attend church in a different building (closer to our house than the one we had been attending) with an entirely new ward. The new boundary cuts through all three wards so everybody has an opportunity to meet new friends. The entire Joshua ward was released from their callings this evening so we are calling-less. We shall see if we get a call this week. I am hoping to be the ward bulletin person.

I guess it works

For Fathers Day this year, I received a hammock. The hammock stand was not included. I favored a nice wood stand like this. Reality, however, set in and we ordered this steel stand for a steal. I immediately took the assembled hammock system for a test flight and the photo shows that it works. This is not a staged photo - I am actually sleeping and the photo was shot without my knowledge or consent.