Annie made a scavenger hunt for the girls to find their final Christmas gift. We made it into a great race and included an appearance from own version of the villain Glanni Glæpur. It was filmed by Annie on our new Flip Ultra HD (Merry Christmas).sorry for the poor video quality...still working on formats Read More

Here is the continuation of my memories from the past year of reading: 5. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens - The word I would use to describe this book is "moving". The story is heart-wrenching, tragic, and redemptive. I was sad to leave the characters when I had finished it. It is the best of Dickens that I have read. 6. Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton - For someone who spent an educational degree exploring the subject of Christian Apologetics I thought I had at least sampled all the Read More

Thoughts from my husband: Over the past year you have read a few stories about our chronicles of language acquisition. We have mistaken food for a foot, bought a children´s book that was really about a mole trying to find out who s#!t on his head, and told stories in language class about the abundance of sperm that Johnny Appleseed spread through the countryside of middle-America. It has not been a pretty process, but a rewarding one nonetheless. I have never learned to speak another language Read More

Books are a lot like people to me, only a bit easier to get along with. I can never figure out what exactly I like about them, but each one offers something a bit different from the other and I find it a delight to get to know them. I sat down to write this blog thinking I would decide what were the top ten books that I read this year, but I have never been good at rating things this way. So, instead of trying go through my year in a systematic way I thought I would share the books that have Read More

I'm not going to review the album or anything overly boring like that, but I cannot help but recommend my favorite new (at least to me) Christmas music. Friction Bailey, The Silent Night, is arresting. I discovered it listening to Sufjan Stevens on Pandora. At least five times over the past week I have heard an arrangement of a traditional Christmas song that was so good I stopped what I was doing to go and look at the screen and find out who it was. Five times out of five it was Friction Read More

I just sat down, completely exhausted and totally uninspired to try to write something about our week.  Fortunately, Clint already did it and you can just read what he wrote HERE .  I hope this is sufficient, Mom and Dad! Read More

At the end of October I had a minor emotional breakdown when I began to imagine missing Thanksgiving back home.  I cried for approximately 7 minutes about how I've NEVER missed a Thanksgiving with my family and the injustice of it all....Colby listened patiently and then gently reminded me that in college I didn't go home for two years.  Okay, true.  So, I had a choice...have a pity party all November or make the best of it.  Familyfun.go.com got me brainstorming about Read More

On Wednesday Haley came up to me and said, "We don't have a lot of videos.  Can I make a video?"Me:  "Make a video?  What do you mean?"Haley:  "You know... I'll make my own video then we can watch it on t.v."Me (trying to encourage creativity):  "Okay....I guess you could try.  What would this video be called?"Haley:  "Oh yeah, I already know that.  It's called THE MAN AND THE GREAT COW WAR."Me:  "That sounds interesting....Okay, well first you need Read More