We can relate!

If you are enjoying the peace and beauty of a white Christmas....
If you love your animals....
If you have a little boy who knows how to love and live....Please click on his card to read it clearly
If you have a litle girl with an unending imagination, who can play for hours with little toys....
If you have boys who love Lego....
Jon and Greg play for hours happily and quietly building and sharing Lego pieces.
If you are missing a loved one who is away from home....


If you have teens....
(cartoons by Jerry Scott and Jim Vorgman)

If you shed some tears this Christmas.... We lost Kim's puppy, Holly, on Christmas Eve. Parvo, we think, and a weak heart.
Merry Christmas from our house to yours, and thank you for being such good friends in the blogosphere!

A hand print and a poem

This hand print poem was obviously written by Sara's teacher. We have never been concerned about handprints anywhere. Moreover, you can see by the size of this handprint that she is not small. She is at least one full head taller than any other child in her class. The pediatrician informed us that she is in the 97th percentile in both height and weight. She has not an ounce of fat on her. We think Shaquille O'Neil may be her birthfather.

She also can hold her own against her brothers and me in games of Connect Four. Like Shaquille, she knows how to block the other player's moves!

Holly

Kim has purchased a new puppy named Holly. She is a Burnese Mountain Dog. I think they like each other!

Christmas at the O.K. Corral

Tonight was the K-3 Christmas play, so Greg and Sara got to dress as they normally would, in western attire, because the play was entitled Christmas at the O.K. Corral.


After the play I browsed in Greg's classroom and saw this poem he had written (be sure to click on the poem to read it), and this photo of him in a shoe-shaped frame.

Jon's (Fourth Grade) Science Experiment: "Music and Milk"

The Hypothesis
My hypothesis is that we would get the best production of milk with Christmas carols. The three types of music I used were Christmas, country, and rock. I got this hypothesis from research I did, in which I learned that cows hate anger. The author of the research was Temple Grandin of Colorado State University, who wrote a book entitled Animals Make Us Human.

The Experiment
We wanted to find out which type of music inspired the cow to produce the most milk. First, I rounded up our cow. Then I put her in the milking stand. I plugged a radio in next to the milking stand. For each of three milkings , Mom and I fed her one-half pounds of grain. First we listened to rock. The cow gave us ten cups of milk in the first five minutes of milking. Next we listened to country. The cow gave nineteen cups of milk in the first five minutes. Lastly, we played Christmas, and got seven cups of milk in five minutes.

Each time we finished milking we poured the milk from the steel bucket into a filter, which got all non-milk substances out of the milk. We then poured the milk into a half-gallon mason jar, and we measured the milk.

I took notes through the whole experiment. The diet of the cow stayed the same throughout the three milking experiments.

Conclusion
My results were not at all what I had expected. My hypothesis was proven wrong. The cow produced the least amount of milk with Christmas music. I know the results are accurate, because my mom and I measured the milk “letdown” with mason jars. I used two books to do the research. They were Animals Make Us Human by Temple Grandin and Keeping a Family Cow by Joan S. Grohman.

(Now if only the Global Warming "Scientists" jetting to Copenhagen would just emulate Jon's integrity in their research!)

Sunday School Lessons

Jon: "Dad, today in church I learned about the pathways to Heaven and to Hell."
Me: "What are they, son?"
Jon: "The pathway to Hell is wide, like I-25 going into Denver. The pathway to Heaven is narrow, filled with rocks and dirt, just like the county road that leads to our house! Lots of people choose the wide path, but few choose the narrow one."

Greg: "I learned about Hannah having sex! She and some guy had sex, she gave birth to a baby, and they took the baby to church."

Sara: "I was the only one who knew about the purple candle, so I raised my hand, and the teacher called on me. I told the teacher it was about Jesus, who died for us. The teacher said I was right, so I just kept talking on and on and on."

Me: "I believe you, Sara, and I am glad you knew the answer to the teacher's question."

Happy Thanksgiving!

We had a lot to be thankful about this year. The only thing wrong with the meal was that we only bought two bottles of Martinelli Apple Cider! Should have bought a case! The funnest thing we did was play a card game called "Bullshit." The teenagers taught it to the rest of us, and the whole family played. Starting with ace as a one, the first player puts down all her aces. The next player puts down all his twos. If someone thinks that player does not have any twos, they can yell out "Bullshit!" If the person who yelled bullshit was right, then the bluffer had to take all the cards in the pile. If wrong, the caller-outer had to take the whole pile. The kids loved being able to yell out bullshit in front of their pious parents. It was non-stop hilarity. The next player puts down all her threes, and so on through kings and back again to aces. It's a great way to be on your guard against bullshit, something we all need in today's political climate.

Greg keeps a close eye on those free range turkeys, who think they were included in Obama's pardon, but what they don't know is that Christmas is coming!

It was a long 365 day wait since the fifth birthday, but number six finally arrived this month for Sara.
The alpacas could not figure out how this lone turkey remained free on Thanksgiving day!
Sara's mean parents would not let her start decorating the indoor Christmas tree (a potted pine we will plant outside), so she decorated the cottonwood tree down by the barn, as Rosie looked on.

The year in a photo collage

Daughter Kim likes to create photo collages. These are some of the photos she and I took in 2009. Click on the photo to enlarge.