Bohrer Family Online

November 12, 2005

Another month, another update. This one again will cover some interesting ground.

The big items of business are Mason’s birthday and my parent’s visit. In chronological order, we’ll tackle my parent’s visit first.

My Dad retired from DOE and they decided to drive out here. It is kind of a long drive, but well worth it. They stopped in the Midwest and got my Aunt Nancy, and the three of them came for some tourism stuff.

So first of all we went to Mt. Vernon, home of George Washington. It was a pretty fun place. Mason and Whitney enjoyed it because for one, it was a nice day, and two, it was very interesting. Plus it has several buildings and mini tours that kept their attention throughout the day. Of couse one of the highlights was the bovine pictured here. As you can see, both Whitney and Mason acted out how it looks to have horns.

We also went on a tour of the Capitol builing. This was during part of the week where sickness was beginning to take a toll on our little band, so we didn’t get to do everything we wanted to do, (like put in a new door in our house).

But one of the things we couldn’t forget to do was celebrate Mason’s birthday. He turned four and needed a big party. We went to Chuck E. Cheese and I’ve never seen Mason so excited. All day long he kept talking about going there and how much fun it was going to be.

All the way down to Fredericksburg he went on and on about seeing Chuck E. Cheese, and how he was going to eat all sorts of pepperoni pizza.

When we got there it was certainly not a letdown, as Mason jumped out of the van before the door was even all the way open. It was a long ways down, actually, and I thought he was going to fall on the ground. But he took off running to the door and couldn’t wait to start playing all those really fun games.

One of his favorites was the basketball game, cause he was able to get probably 80% of his shots in.

So then he got a bunch of birthday stuff; he listens to his birthday book quite a bit and sleeps with his birthday stuffed dog every night. And of course he loves his dinosaurs and everything else he got.

For Halloween, he and Whitney were all psyched up to be Batman and Batgirl. But somewhere along the line that fell apart and they were back to their old standbys: Mason being a lion and Whitney being a Fairy Princess. They had a good time carving their pumpkins this year, too. From left to right they go Mason’s, Heidi’s, Whitney’s Jason’s. Heidi helped Mason and I helpd Whitney. She wanted eyelashes on hers so Mason and Heidi were done with theirs and me and Whitney were still on the right eye.

Whitney had a break for school and so we went to parent teacher conference. Whitney is a very good student and enjoys learning. She took a picture of our pet spider Rainbow to class when they were studying about spiders and told me the difference between a spider and an insect.

Since it was Mason’s birthday, it was also me and Heidi’s anniversary. We went down to Fredericksburg and went out to eat at this nice seafood place. It was pretty good food and we had a good time. Heidi got some clothes and I got some computer geek stuff.

As promised, I also included a picture of the finised kitchen counter tops. Heidi did almost all of this by herself while I was at work or school. It turned out very nicely.

October 7, 2005

Well it has been more than a month since the last update, so I thought i had better write something. We’ve been keeping pretty busy, obviously, but we are all doing well.

Whitney is back in school and loving it. She has another good teacher this year and likes going to class every day. She has done well and is really learning to read quite well. She is also a very good artist. She draws and paints all sorts of nice pictures.

Whitney is also taking piano lessons. She had been taking them in Idaho Falls and did a good job there, so Heidi found a good teacher here and Whitney jumped right in. She learns pretty quickly and can play very nicely. She likes to sing also, and when we have Family Home Evening Whitney likes to play the music and sing along. So does Mason, of course.

Mason also started school. He is going to preschool. Most of the time he likes it. He is learning his numbers and some letters. He also works on drawing projects. In facts, he recently drew a picture of me. As you can see he is a very good artist.

We also been having pretty good luck catching animals. We caught another turtle, although it may have been the same one we caught earlier this year. We didn’t keep it nearly as long though. We just put it in a box for a couple hours and let it eat a carrot and some lettuce. Both the turtles names were Angel.

We also caught a frog named Bluebird. Mason sat in the bath for about an hour playing with that frog. He washed it a few times in the sink and took good care of it. Finally we let it go though. But a few days ago we found a couple more frogs on the front porch. One was bright green so he was named Lime. There was another smaller frog that could jump really far so he was named Jumpy. The both were sticky and could climb the fridge. Whitney got scared and screamed when Lime jumped into her hair.

We also have a huge spider living outside in the bushes. His name is Rainbow. He actually might be dead cause we haven’t seen him for a while. So the kids found another spider to name Rainbow so we just replaced one spider with another.

August 27, 2005

The summer seemed to go by pretty quickly. I had a lonely few weeks when Heidi and the kids were in Idaho. I got some stuff done around the house, but with working all the time I still didn’t get everything done I needed to.

Because of that, we still don’t quite have the kitchen finished up. Heidi has been working pretty hard on it, because I really don’t have time, and she has gotten a lot done. It is starting to look real nice.

One of the bad things that happened was that my new camera broke. I got a Canon and shortly after I got it the infamous E18 error appeared. So it renders the camera useless. It is under warranty, but it is a well known design flaw on most Canon cameras. There is actually a class action lawsuit brewing, but my ideological objections to class action lawsuits will most likely prevent me from getting in on it. So the moral of the story is, don’t buy a Canon. Or an Averatec Tablet PC, but that story will have to wait. You may not want to charge your iPod shuffle using a wall charger, either. Not that I can prove a connection, but someone did that to Heidi’s iPod and it quit working right then. I had to restore the factory settings when she got home, which I’m glad worked cause I wasn’t at all sure it would fix the problem.

So I started law school. The first week wasn’t too bad, but I’m sure it will get worse. There is of course a lot of reading, but I was able to keep up and found the topics pretty interesting.

Whitney is getting ready to start first grade. She is excited about that. She had a lot of fun in Idaho but was ready to come home. I built her an elevated bed when she was in Idaho so if I were her I would think it was cool. It’s just like a bunk bed only without the lower bunk.

Mason on the other hand was having too much fun in Idaho to want to come home. He threatened for the first week to go back whenever he wasn’t getting his way. But he has been settling back in. He and Whitney both had a good time back at church seeing their teachers. Mason came in to our bedroom one night and said, “Mommy, no one has the bestest Daddy as us do, wight?” So at least he was glad to see me. He helped me make a cake. He likes to help out and also, like me, likes Spam.

I also bought a new car. The new car is a Suzuki Esteem, which I didn’t even know existed. In fact, I didn’t know Suzuki even made cars. And both my insurance person and someone down at DMV asked if it was a motorcycle. But it is actually a nice little car. My last tank of gas was 30MPG, which isn’t too bad for a Northern Virginia to D.C. commute. If my camera were working I would take a picture of it. I still have the Festiva, but needed a car with four doors to pick slugs up on the way into work to use the HOV lane. The story that follows is not how I bought the Suzuki.

So me and Dan Whiting from work took a road trip.

I found a reasonable offer for a car. My main concern was a car with low miles. It didn’t matter how it looked or the make/model, or even the price up to the limits of my budget. So I stumbled across a car on Autotrader.com in New Jersey that only had 40,000 miles or something on it but was old enough (2001) to have fallen into my price range. The only quick was he wanted a large chunk of the money, up front, in order to get an included 4 year warranty.

So I quickly got $2,000 and went and picked Dan up. This is after I told the guy I was coming. Now first of all, Mapquest said it was 190 miles, but it was actuall 230. This was a problem because we were cutting it close to closing time. We ended up 30 minutes away 10 minutes before closing time. I figured any self respecting car dealer would stay an extra 20 minutes to make a sale, but not this guy.

I called him on the phone and he made up some excuse about not being able to be there, so I told him we were almost there and would swing by and look at the car anyway.

When we got to the lot, the car was no where to be seen. The point of the story being, I could have left at 8 in the morning and got there at 11 and there still would have been NO CAR to look at. WHY couldn’t he have told me that during any of my three phone conversations that day?

So we decided to drive to Philadelphia and get a cheesesteak. We went to Geno’s, which won my allegiance simply by having a sign up in memory of Danial Faulkner out front of their building (Faulkner was murdered by Mumia Abu-Jamal). Plus they sell Freedom Fries, which clearly we had to buy.

Once we ate the cheesteaks, which were awesome, we started back toward the car. Which was several blocks away. And we decided to take a detour and got lost. We’ve since been told that this really isn’t a bad part of Philly, but lets just say that anytime you are lost at night in a strange big city and one of you is dressed in a Hawaian shirt and shorts and the other one of you has two grand in his pocket you start to get a little nervous. Suffice it to say we have never been so happy to see the Buick and drive home.

Anyway, things are getting back to normal. Heidi will be much happier when the kitchen countertops are done and I’ll put some pictures up when that happens.

June 30, 2005

Once again I slipped in an update to the website in just a couple weeks. I guess it will be to make up for the long interval between updates when school starts.

One of the interesting things that has come out since the cement dried under the tile floor is that we accidently tiled over one of the floor vents that lets the heater/air conditioner air in. So I’ve got to figure out a way to locate the vent (I have a good idea of where it is) and then cut out a hole in it.

I guess another big story is that once again the Hill area got evacuated. It was just another small plane coming in and it was just about time to leave for the day. But this time I knew that the alarm siren meant business so I got out of there a little quicker. Plus there weren’t as many people. But the alert got over a lot quicker this time, and since Senator Craig was standing out there with us he got us right back into the building and the adrenaline levels went back down.

Whitney finally finished school. She liked it alot. She won a couple awards at the assembly during the last week and is learning a lot. The video I posted last time is of her award ceremony, so it isn’t exactly brand new. Her and Mason then opened up a water park in our back yard and pretty much play in the water non stop.

Mason is also doing good. He is a good helper. He has been playing almost everyday with his friend Abigail. They get along well together. At church on Sunday the primary leaders told everyone they needed to be more reverent like Mason and notice how he always was quiet and respectful during the lessons. He was pretty proud of himself for being singled out as a good example.

We went on a couple mini trips too. We have been talking about the “dinosaur bones museum” for a while, which is the Museum of Natural History. We finally got a chance to take the kids there and they really liked it. The funniest thing was that Mason loved the bones, of course. But Whitney kept wanting to go into a gift shop and found this cheesy painting activity where it has paints and some ceramic animals. When I asked her what her favorite part of the trip was she said the paints. And it was her turn to say the family prayer the next day and she said, “Thank you that I could see the paints at the museum.”

Then the next week we decided to take the day off and go do something fun for my birthday, since Heidi and the kids will be gone. So we went to the American History Museum. That is a lot bigger, it seems, and takes a lot more time. Whitney didn’t really feel that good but even so she really enjoyed it. She needed a lot more time to wander from display to display. Mason was kind of bored though, except for a couple exhibits. But all in all it was another good trip.

Then Heidi and I went out for a birthday dinner. We went to Panera Bread. it is a pretty good place. A couple days later Heidi and the kids took off on a trip to Idaho. I was able to find them some really cheap tickets so they went on vacation. The kids were very excited to fly on an airplane. Mason was mostly worried that he wouldn’t forget his stuffed doggies. I guess next update I’ll see how the trip is going.

June 16, 2005

I guess it didn’t take too long to update the web site this time, but I’m sure I’ll let it go again. I got a new computer and managed to make a video of Whitney on it.

Weve been keeping pretty busy the last little while, mainly because we put tile down in the kitchen. We replaced some laminate flooring that had warped before we bought the house and it looks a lot better. We also tore out the wood stove that had been placed in pretty much the middle of the way between the kitchen and the dining room. So now we can actually move around in that area.

One thing I did do was cut out a phone line because the previous owner installed phone jacks like crazy. So when I cut it and pushed it back through the hole in the floor it shorted out and our phone was ringing busy. So I crawled under the house and fixed the short but our phone still wasn’t working. So for two days I just ignored it cause we were too busy. Finally I took another look at it and found that when we were testing it after I had crawled under the house that we had unplugged the phone from the wall. So at least it works, even if for two days it was my fault.

One of the things that happened that I forgot to write about was the evacuation of the Capitol Hill area. I was sitting in my office when our alarms started going off. We have alerts that go off all the time, but this one sounded new to me. So after a minute or two, I got up and looked around the office and no one was there. So I took that as a clue to leave. As I was leaving, I heard the alert system say that there was an incoming aircraft and to basically “run to the hills!”

So I left and tried to get down the stairs. It was kind of eerie because most people didn’t know what was going on because they left before me. Some girl was crying. But I knew there was an airplane coming but had no idea how close it was. Once I got to the ground floor and out the building the fighter jets flew right overhead and people were running. One lady tripped and smacked her head a good one. So all in all that was a pretty exciting day. And now I know that when that certain alarm rings, I know what it means.

One day Dan and Chelsey from work came down and we played the Farming Game. It was a pretty unusual game, to say the least. About halfway through I realized I was going to lose. So for what has to be the first time in years, I didn’t win the Farming Game. In fact, to make matters worse, I came in last. That never happens. I guess it was to make up for all my resounding victories over the last few years.

Whitney is almost finished with school. She did really well. She finished her accelerated reader course and only missed two questions the whole year. She enjoys reading. She also had a class talent show at her school. As a class they sang a version of the Three Little Pigs. It was pretty funny.

Mason has been fine. Before we started putting tile down he was running full speed through the kitchen and out on to the deck through the sliding door. But he didn’t realize the screen door was shut. So he just ran smack into it and it knocked him flat on his back. It was just like a cartoon. It didn’t even phase him. He just bounced right back up, shook his head, opened the door and ran right out kind of glaring at me and Heidi cause we were laughing.

He has also picked up a dislike of having his hair “spiked” in any way. Heidi likes to spike it up a little in the front but as soon as he realizes that he combs it back down. This last week she snuck in a little spiky hair on his sides and when he got to church he saw the reflection in the door and started throwing a fit and wouldn’t go in with spiky hair. So he had to go to the bathroom and put water on it. The other thing he picked up is having his church socks pulled up to his knees, or at least as far as humanly possible.

June 2, 2005

This past month went by pretty quickly. We didn’t go on any big trips or anything but still had a fun time.

One of the fun things we did was go hiking in our backyard. Whitney and Mason have always wanted to go back into the forest behind our house and we never had the chance. So finally one Saturday we decided to go for a hike somewhere else, and when we couldn’t get there we just went back and started walking in the forest.

Before long we got onto some trails and followed them. There were several different trails and I bet we walked for at least five miles on them. We circled around behind and then got back to our house just as the kids were getting worried that we were going to get lost.

Of course they were worried about getting wood ticks, which neither one has ever seen, but they were still worried about them. Mason said he saw one flying toward us.

Speaking of animals, we did have a couple close encounters. As I was getting some wood for the final fire of the season, I caught a skink in the wood pile. I brought it into the kitchen and put it in a plastic tub to run around. We didn’t know what it might eat, so I also caught some roly-polys and worms and a beetle or two. I told Whitney and Mason to be careful not to grab the skink because even though it didn’t have teeth it would still try to bite them and it would kind of pinch.

So as I was going back out for more wood Whitney came out with a strange look on her face. “Dadu”, she said, “One of the creatures managed to escape.” Hmmm. One of the creatures. I asked her which one and she said the skink. Turns out that she had tried to grab it, it bit her, she flinched and shook it off her finger outside its cage.

Meanwhile Mason thought it was a stink, not a skink, so kept saying how stink had ran away. It hid under the dryer, then behind the baseboard. Finally our mission was accomplished and the stink was captured safe and sound and released back to the wild.

So a few weeks later when a turtle turned up on our lawn I felt OK bringing it inside because it wasn’t going anywhere that quickly. The kids loved the turtle and fed it all sorts of things. Mason put Jello on its head. We put it in the plastic cage and let it sleep on their beds one night each before we let it go again. We weren’t sure how long it would survive with such love.

We’ve also been working in the lawn and trying to help it recover from a grub problem. I’ve poisoned them but it hasn’t killed them yet. I probably am doing it at the wrong time of year. I’ll keep trying.

We also got to go visit Whitney’s school. Whitney had a school carnival so we went to it. The kids had a good time playing the games and just running around eating cotton candy. I also got to go to Whitney’s school and do a presentation on agriculture. It was fun and all the kids there got an apple.

One of the funny things that Mason did was getting ready for church he finally decided to wear a tie but he also had a sweater on so he insisted on pulling his tie out and wearing it over the top of his sweater. I also told him that when I was a kid I combed my hair straight forward. So the next day he broke out the bottle of hand lotion and rubbed it in his hair and combed it straight forward. He then would ask Heidi if he looked like Dadu when he was a kid. Then Mason came in and tried to wake me up one morning. He shook me and then said, “I’ll sing you awake,” and started singing Book of Mormon Stories to me. It was funny cause the kids think it ends by saying, “Â…if they lived right asleep” instead of “if they lived righteously.”

So we’ll see what the next month holds. Maybe we’ll catch the possum that comes round our house every night, but I hope not. Mason pretends that it eats his fingers although he has no idea what it looks like.

April 12, 2005

I just put a new video of what we did for Whitney’s birthday. The kids had a lot of fun. Because the full video is so big and would take forever to download over dial-up, I broke it up into smaller files as well. The smaller files are about 5,000kb each and should download quicker, like in 20 minutes or so each.

We’ve had a pretty eventful couple of weeks, and had a lot of fun. Whitney has been keeping track of how many days until her birthday for about a month. She would cross off days on the calendar every night and give us an update…”28 more days until I’m 6…” and so on.

Some days she would even cross off two or three days, you know, so she wouldn’t have to cross them off the next day. And since her birthday was right after Easter she was also excited for Easter this year. Mason was too.

I had to go to Seattle for some meetings with Microsoft, so while I was gone the kids got all their eggs dyed and ready for the Easter Bunny. They had a good time and made some very pretty eggs. I probably should have taken some pictures, but its too late now.

So when Easter came around, we got up but the Easter Bunny hadn’t come to our house yet. So the kids and I got in the car and went looking for him before church. We didn’t see him, although we did have a good time.

I was teaching Mason’s Sunday School class that day, so of course we were talking about Jesus getting resurrected. And since we had talked about it at home, Mason wanted to tell the kids that the first person to see Jesus was Mary. So I told the kids that and asked them if they knew anyone else from the scriptures named Mary.

They didn’t, so I reminded them that Jesus’s mother was also named Mary. And then Mason said, “And George President Washington’s mother was Mary also.” One of his favorite library books right now is about George Washington.

Anyway, the Easter Bunny must have come while we were at church because when we got home there was candy all over the place. The kids were as excited as I have ever seen them. They really loved it. I did put a video up of that.

So after Easter was passed, we had Whitney’s birthday to look forward to. I had joked with Whitney about our “birthday tree” where she could put her presents and stuff that got mailed to her and she thought it was a good idea. So we put all her presents under the “birthday tree” and she was so excited for her birthday she slept by the tree on the floor for about four days prior to her birthday.

By the time her birthday arrived, she was very ready for it. She and Heidi had already made the cake, which was shaped like a cat, and opening presents was very exciting.

So for her birthday we went down to Virginia Beach and hung out there for the day. Whitney really wanted to go swimming, but it was kind of a chilly day. She did end up getting in the water, but not for very long. She waded more than anything.

Mason liked it too. They were both pretty happy to be at the ocean. We made sand castles and then wrecked them. Whitney wanted to get buried in the sand and so while we were doing that, Mason threw a handful of sand right into her face.

We had a pretty uneventful trip home and then it was back to normal for Whitney with nothing big to look forward to on the horizon.

Heidi’s birthday is only a few days after Whitney’s so we went out to eat for her birthday and then had some people over for cake and ice cream. Whitney picked out some chocolate but I kind of think it was based on what kind of chocolate Whitney likes.

I finally decided that I will go to school at George Mason University so we went to an Open House there. The kids were wondering what my teachers name would be and what my classroom looked like.

March 17, 2005

I just put a new video of what we did for Easter. The kids had a lot of fun.

Today was St. Patricks Day, and I managed to cover up for myself at work when I accidently didn’t wear any green.

But instead of admitting that I forgot what day it was, I came up with a suitable nerdy explanation that because I was wearing red, the opposite of green, I was actually absorbing the color green instead of reflecting it.

I wanted to go with Whitney to her school’s science project Expo, but she was sick this morning when she woke up. So she didn’t go to school but I came home early anyway and took Mason to the thing.

Heidi had told him he could go out on a “date” with me and he was very excited about it. He made me tell several of the teachers that the two of us were on a date.

The science fair was pretty interesting. All these kids did science projects and set them up for display. My favorite one, just because I personally have won money off it, was the experiment detailing which freezes faster, hot water or cold.

So a couple kids did the experiment and sure enough, the cold water froze faster. The even documented it with pictures. I’m sure though that there was more than one parent who looked at those displays and said, “That kid got it wrong…hot water freezes faster!”

After that me and Mason went to a St. Patricks Day thing at the library, where Mason learned about leprechauns. I didn’t think he was paying attention but he came back and told Heidi all about what they do.

Speaking of Mason, he calls Mentholatum “uncle-ate-em” and he calls thumbs “flumms”.

We finished up by going to McDonalds and getting him his favorite food, Chicken McNuggets. He dips them in ranch dressing and loves them. He’s been helping me start a fire every night in the wood stove, and he and Whitney fight about who gets to light the match.

Whitney likes to go to bed listening to music. So one night I hooked Heidi’s iPod up to Whitney’s stereo with a cassette tape adapter and just let it play. Now Heidi is not known for her loud music.

But Whitney pretty much likes songs only if they are sung by girls, with Ozzy being the only exception. (She likes Ozzy, and used to like The Cult). So a few songs into the playlist she called me in and I had to change the music.

A song by Bon Jovi was on and Whitney said she couldn’t get to sleep cause “this music is way to rock and rollin’ for me.”

March 14, 2005

We’ve been having a pretty busy time here. Although we didn’t go anywhere real exciting like the last few weeks we’ve been keeping pretty busy.

Whitney is back to going to school consistently. It did manage to snow a couple days last week, getting her hopes up, but there weren’t anymore snow days.

She did wake up one morning and run to the window to see if it had snowed, but there was no snow and she had to go to school.

She has been doing pretty good in school, or so we think. The homework that she has to do is not too hard for here, and she likes working on it so that is good.

She really likes doing math problems, and asks Heidi to help her with her math. So Heidi writes a bunch of math problems down on paper and helps Whitney do them.

Whitney would like me to make up science problems for her to work on, because she says she likes science, but it is hard to come up with science problems to fit on a piece of paper. So I drew the solar system.

I’m also teaching her Spanish again, which is kind of a hit and miss proposition. She likes it, so I’ll keep doing it.

Mason is learning to spell his name, which is fun for him. He really doesn’t know what the letters mean, but he has the letters M-a-s-o-n memorized and can say them in order, so is quite proud of himself.

The funny thing is the other day were were going somewhere and Whitney was talking about what she wants to be when she grows up. She wants to be a Mommy and a nurse, and all sorts of things.

Then Mason had us be quiet for him so he could tell us what he wanted to be. “I want to be a beekeeper,” he said. How does he know what a beekeeper is? Where would he learn that? We don’t know. But that is what he wants to be. He doesn’t really even like honey.

One thing he does like is ranch dressing. He is starting to put it on everything he eats. Peas, beans, chicken, rice…everything needs ranch. At least it has a lot of calories.

The other funny thing he did was when he and Whitney were drawing pictures. Whitney is a really good artist, and is getting even better lately. She had drawn a very good picture of the Cat-in-the-Hat from memory, and Mason was also working on something.

When he finally told us what it was, again we didn’t know what to think. “It’s a chameleon.” For one thing he didn’t know what a chameleon was, and we don’t know how he even learned to pronounce it. But there was no doubt that was the word he was saying.

That was on our way to church, where half-way through he started complaining that Stake Conference was “giving my brain a headache.”

Heidi and I have been doing our normal stuff. Heidi is still working on the kitchen cabinets, which is a big project and I’m just doing normal stuff at work. Today we went over to our neighbor’s house to watch a movie. We watched Ladder 49 which was a decent movie. Our neighbor’s home theater system is pretty cool though.

Both our next door neighbors are named Barbara. Mason calls them both Barber, and says we have two barbers.

March 5, 2005

It hasn’t been too long since the last update, but we did do a couple fun things. The other day was Dan Whiting’s birthday. Dan is one of Jason’s friends and co-workers, and has personalized bowling license plates.

So for this birthday a bowl-a-rama was organized and the office was invited. Seeing how much Whitney and Mason enjoy bowling, I thought it would be fun to go.

Everyone came in to D.C. and we went bowling. Although we all had a good time, watching Whitney and Mason was the highlight. At first they used the ramp, but after one try at that Mason gave up.

So he was on to rolling the ball down by himself. He actually is pretty strong for his size and with an improvement in technique could be good. For a three year old. But he just would walk up there and throw the ball as best he could.

Sometimes the ball would roll so slowly you could actually see Mason getting bored and by the time it was three quarters of the way down he was ready to play dinosaurs. But once the ball hit the pins he was all excited and very proud of himself.

Whitney used the ramp for a little while longer and gave me her fake sad face whenever I suggested she give it up. But it was very wobbly and not accurate at all, and all the other little kids were rolling their own ball. So she eventually gave the ramp up as well.

She was very much more into the results than Mason (Mason didn’t even realize how many pins he knocked down) but did pretty good. She would just walk up there, sit down and push the ball down the lane.

That worked very well, and she even got a strike once. She was so happy, and I was too. After every turn the kids would run give each other a hug. It was pretty cute, and extended our bowling time by quite a bit.

The funny thing is (and I suppose this will change as they get older) is how happy they were for each other. I would never have been happy, say, for Dan or Steve, if they got a strike bowling against me. But they sure enjoyed each other’s success.

So then today we had a church activity at the YMCA. We got to go swimming for a couple hours. It is fun to see how much Mason has progressed from being terrified to go in the pool without someone holding him. He had a life jacket on but floated all over the pool with no problems.

Whitney did fine too and is a pretty good swimmer. They both held their breath and went underwater. Whitney did lose one of her Hawaii earrings so that was the low point of the evening.

During the day we just worked on the house. I tried hooking up an over sink light in the kitchen with limited success. We need to go back to Lowes for a couple other parts.

And last night must have been weird dream night for the kids. Early in the morning Whitney came in because she had a bad dream. She dreamed she was at Grandpa Herb’s jumping on the trampoline and saw a huge green talking snake.

Of course this scared her, and she tried to get Mason into the car and drive off. She was driving, by the way. She tried and tried to pick Mason up and get him in the car but couldn’t.

So she eventually just had to drive off without Mason, I guess leaving him to the snake. But Mason’s dream must have been quite different.

About eight o’clock I could hear him start giggling in his sleep. It just kept getting louder and louder. Pretty soon he was just dying laughing in his sleep.

After he woke up we figured out that he was dreaming about Grandma Nancy falling out of her chair. I guess you had to have seen it. Even tonight as he was getting ready for bed I asked him about it and he started laughing really hard again.

March 3, 2005

Not too much new has been going on but I figured I’d take a minute and update the site while sitting in front of the warm wood stove. It keeps the place pretty warm at night.

There was evidently a snow storm the past week and it actually did snow about six inches one day. But the whole place shut down in a total panic. Whitney didn’t have to go to school for four days in a row.

I guess it is better to be safe than have school and regret it later, but Whitney was getting pretty antsy. She was excited to get back to school. She got a package from her old class in Idaho Falls and it was full of Valentines. Jennie had sent it to her.

One of the funny things that I had forgotten to write happened when we went to the Lincoln Memorial. We walked past several statues of George Washington. Whitney explained to Mason that he was our president. So the next statue we passed, Mason said, “There’s President Hinckley.”

Heidi has been working on refinishing our kitchen cabinets. It is quite a lot of work, because there is a lot of dark stain on them that she is trying to strip off. But it will be nice when she finishes.

I did want to get a picture of Steve and Jennie’s new baby Hannah posted. Whitney and Mason loved to visit her. They think she’s a cute baby.

February 24, 2005

The last two months have gone by pretty quickly. We were able to get moved out to Virginia without too many problems. I was out here for about a month and then Heidi and the kids came out as well.

So now that everyone is together, things are starting to seem like home. Whitney started school right away when she got back here and she really likes her teacher. She goes to all day kindergarten so that is a big change.

Mason is having a good time out here as well. He has become enthralled with his toy swords. He carries one of the with him wherever he goes. He tucks it into his pajama bottoms or the back of his shirt. We went hiking through the woods here and he wanted to kill a bear with his sword.

Since we’ve been here we have devoted most of our spare time to just getting little things done to our house. We put some new lights in the dining room and kitchen and spent a few weekends doing other odd jobs.

So this past Saturday we took our first excursion into Washington DC and went to the Lincoln Memorial. Whitney has been learning about him as school so was kind of excited to see the Memorial. It was a lot of walking though.

After we went to the Memorial we walked down to the Air and Space Museum. Again, a lot of walking but once we got there the kids perked up.

Since it was a Saturday it was pretty crowded but we had a good time anyway. Whitney really liked going inside the Spacelab thing. Mason liked everything there, too.

Other than that, things are pretty normal. I had a cold for a while, and so Whitney decided all on her own to throw me a surprise party so I would feel better.

So while I was at work, she got several games organized (Pin The Tail On The Donkey, Bingo, etc.) and had Mason and Heidi bake cookies. She made a welcome home/surprise banner and threw confetti on me when I walked in the door. She put a lot of thought into it and it was a lot of fun.

Before we left Idaho Falls, Matthew the fish died. So we promised the kids they could get a new fish when we got to Virginia. So the other day Heidi took the kids to Walmart and they bought a new fish. It died three days later. Mason was crushed.

He had named the fish Rainbow and really liked it a lot. He fed it every day and would sit and watch it. So he took the news pretty bad. So Heidi took them back to Walmart and got them more fish, all of which died shortly thereafter. So I’m thinking there must be something in the water.

Work is going good. It is a lot different than being in Idaho Falls but it is fun. I ride into work with Jeff Schrade, who works on the Veterans Committee. It takes about an hour and a half door-to-office.

I got accepted to Georgetown, George Washington and George Mason law schools. Now I just have to figure out which one I want to go to.