Barney looking for Miss Beazley

If you haven't seen this cute little video of Barney (the President's dog that is)looking for Miss Beazley you should, well if you have a fast internet connection that is:) It would probably take too long to download if you don't. Check it out here

Update on Harley the Fraidy Cat

Isaac made this cookie house yesterday, pretty cool! We are doing a lot of baking I have made 24 loaves of babka this week. We are working on cookies right now. My father shared with me a great tip for making sugar cookies. Roll out the dough on wax paper and keep layering them. Place the layers of rolled sugar cookie dough on a baking sheet and place back in the fridge until they are cold again and ready to be cut. I can't believe how much time this has saved me this year.

We went to the Nutcracker ballet on Wednesday with some friends from our coop group. I would not have been able to understand most of it if I hadn't seen the Barbie Nutcracker cartoon! hehe So maybe ballets are not my cup of tea. The music was wonderful though:)

Harley seems to be doing a little better. He comes out when we leave the house and eats during the night. The picture of him is from when we first found him, he ran under Ethan's bed and Rexford is the one who captured the picture. He was seen last night, he ran up into the ceiling in the utility room when he was spotted. We are taking the advice from a few people and they suggested to ignore him when we see him.

Aids in Africa

Last week in History class with Ethan and Rexford (we are using Abeka World History and Geography) I discovered something that had me totally flabbergasted. We were going over their homework, I asked the question reading from the teacher book," List some diseases which plague Africa today. Which is probably the most threatening?" I don't recall who answered the question they take turns but the answer to the second question was MALARIA! What! Are you sure?? Serious? I can't believe it, really! I thought Aids was the worst disease affecting the Africa continent. Why aren't rock stars and movie stars raising funds to fight Malaria in Africa? Each year over 1 million children die from malaria, even if the victims survive the disease to adulthood, it debilitates them for life. I looked up aids in Africa on the web, most of the sites state an approx. number of people who might have HIV and the way they get that number is bogus to begin with. They don't give the number of deaths, why not? 250,000 people died in 1999 from aids in Africa. I am not saying that is not terrible and awful but compared to how many children die of malaria each year, aids in Africa is not an epidemic. Why do people seem to be more worried about a sexually transmitted disease in Africa than the little children who die from malaria? Maybe I am out of touch and everyone knows this and there is a bigger movement to help out children in Africa with malaria. Here are a few websites with good information.
here
here
here

Where is Harley???

Well here is a picture of Harley our new cat. I don't really know what he looks like but I have seen him for a few minutes. He has blue gray hair and green eyes. I drew a picture of him from memory. He has been hiding since Wednesday night, we got him Wednesday afternoon. It doesn't even seem like we have a pet because he is not around:) Hopefully I will have a real picture of him up next week. I thought having a pet would be more exciting and trouble. He is a Russian Blue cat, 4 years old.

Here are some pictures of the new carpet.

I love December

Yes, part of the reason I love December is that I celebrate my birthday this month; you would think I should hate it then huh. My brother's birthday is 2 days before mine, so close to Christmas. When we were kids we had our birthdays together a lot of the time and my mom tried to keep our birthdays separate from Christmas. Danielle's is 2 days after Christmas.

Ethan sees the neurologist on Friday, we should find out his blood test results and then we can start a plan to help him with some of the problems he is having right now.

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving vacation. We drove to N.D. last Tuesday night and spent the night and Wednesday there with Rex's parents. The kids tried to play with their cat, who was more willing this time to come out of hiding. Rex and Bob did some experiments on wood to see where the breaking points on boards that have knots and boards without knots where.

We then went to visit Rex's Grandpa Evald Wednesday night. We took him out to eat and spent some time in his new apartment. He showed us around his new apartment building. He hasn't been able to attend church because of his hearing, so this is sad but he is able to watch some preachers on TV. with headphones Jeanne got for him. I know he misses being out on the farm but he seems to be enjoying the volunteer visitors, one from England and another one from Texas.



We spent the rest of our vacation with my mom and Frank. My mom got the Shingles shortly before we got there. She hasn't really rested much. Eddie, Maggie and their kids had Thanksgiving with us also. Alex talks a lot for his age and he is really funny to listen to. Little Eddie spent a lot of his time trying to find things to throw and he watched the Christmas lights on my mom's tree. Geneva has been doing 'her' Tae Kwon Do pattern and she did it a lot at my moms, it was really hysterical to watch. She yells and gets into a fighting stance and then kicks. We went out to eat at a Mongolian barbeque Friday night and it was delicious. Rex and I went to a movie that night also, National Treasure.
It was a really relaxing time away.