So long, Mr. Bush

As we prepare to say goodbye to President Bush, I found an article the other day. It's kind of a summation of the man and his presidency as we end our 8 years together.

What I appreciated about the article was it's lack of stridency and cynicism. It seemed to me to present the George W. Bush that I'd always sensed, but rarely saw. And it's by an Associated Press writer (wonder of wonders).

And while I admit I often cringed at his massacre of the English language, and I laughed at Letterman's regular inclusions of him in "Great Moments In Presidential Speeches", I respect him as our President, and have always believed the best of him, that ultimately he made choices by a motivation to do what he thought was right. I can't say I believed that about all those who've served as president in my lifetime.

And incidentally, while I don't agree with most of President-elect Obama's postions, I do respect him and also believe he makes the choices he does for similarly positive reasons.

In any case, click here for a link to the article about President Bush.

Sledding fun

We've had a lot of snow over the past few weeks, and it's been beckoning to our girls.

Armed with new snow-skimming equipment, our fearless trekkers headed out in bitter cold (well, it was below freezing) to trudge wearily to the far away destination (okay, so they ran for about 30 seconds to get to the park a few doors down) before climbing the treacherous mountain (um, alright, it's a ten-foot hill ) to face certain death as they plummeted down the slope at breakneck speeds (hey, they could have broken their necks!).



Made me want to go sledding, too!



After their heart rates returned to normal, Karen snapped a few shots with our wondermutt, Shelby, and Sadie a little dog we're watching over the holidays.Of course, we had to get the mountain in the shot. Have I mentioned lately how breathtakingly gorgeous it is here? Just in case you non-Utahns have forgotten.

The photographer for the day managed to get in one of the pics this time.Looking fabulous, I must say.

Emily is holy...er, hole-y

One of Emily's Christmas gifts, this one from G'pa, was the privilege of getting holes poked into her earlobes. I believe that in biblical times, such an activity denoted enslavement to the one who did the piercing...I'm not sure if Emily realizes what she signed up for with that, but I digress.

Karen, G'pa and lovely Emily headed down to the pain production center, oh, excuse me, the ear piercing counter to pick out her lovely studs and have them forcibly harpooned into her lobes. To be fair, Emily said the actual piercing hurt much less than the pinch to her ear that Mom used to demonstrate about how much pain it would be. I can't imagine that. Seems to me that if someone stuck a sharp needle through the dangly part of my ear, it would smart. A lot. But then, that's why my ears are still unholey.In any case, Emily now has lovely sparkling flowers poking from the bottoms of her ears. They do look great!

But I still say it had to hurt.

Ouch.

Christmas Racing

Probably the favorite of the assorted gifts under the Christmas tree this year was the addition of three new games to our Wii family: Mario Kart, Cooking Mama, and Lego Indiana Jones.As you can see, there was much excitement. I think their favorite was Mario Kart.For you MarioKart virgins, it's a racing a game, with the Wii remote functioning as a steering wheel while you drive your car, cart or bike through various race courses. You can play alone or up to four of you can race at once. Highly entertaining.

And the unique twist that our girls put on is that, unlike boys who simply race and trash talk each other while they attempt to win, they identify the relationships of the twelve different characters who drive the vehicles. You know, who's married, who's dating, whose child is whose, who's the evil brother, who's someone's pet. Because, for a girl, it can't just be about winning; it always comes down to the relationship.But they still manage to get pretty intense during the races, here with G'pa joining in the fun.

By the way, all the games are big hits with the fam. Cooking Mama uses the Wii remote as various utensils and actions as you prepare meals in the kitchen. Doesn't sound like much, but it's strangely fun to chop, grind, stir, dice, crack, sizzle, coat and cook as the lovely french accented voice says "ecc-sell-ent!" or, if you're pitiful "ooo, not mine!"

My favorite and easily the most addictive is Lego Indiana Jones. The characters are Lego versions of the movie icons, and your task is to solve puzzles, defend yourself, and find treasures along the way. We're still working our way through the story (we're only part way through the first movie...we're at the part where Indy and the guy fight by the prop plane). You move on to the next scene whenever you've solved the puzzle in that area that allows you to continue. And you of course, in Indy fashion, get to punch, or use your bullwhip on, the Lego Nazi's and watch them disintegrate into little Lego pieces, as well as swing through the trees on your whip while you rescue Marion from danger. Very satisfying. Way too easy to lose an hour or two of your life as you become Indy, but totally fun while you do.

All in all, a very Wii Christmas.

Parents on the hot seat

Where, oh where, are Rich and Karen with their interviews?

Well, the Smith girls have provided an answer. They sat us down for an informal chat, with questions they came up with. We were not allowed to see the questions beforehand (I guess so they could spring the unexpected on us, 60-minutes style). So what you see is our unprepared responses to the probing questions that had to be asked!

I edited a bit for length...that's the privilege of being the one who knows how to use the video software and who posts the blog.



Sorry...must run. We're fielding calls from the local TV stations calling to offer our girls positions as reporter interns.

Girl Talk: The Year In Review

In honor of the ubiquitous Christmas letters, which are now appearing in our mailbox and I'm sure yours as well, we decided to do a special video blog this time. Instead of bragging annoyingly about our 3 wonderful girls, like I do the rest of the time, I'm going to let them speak for themselves.

So we sat down and I asked each of them a few questions about this past year so you'd be able to hear what they thought of this past year. I apologize in advance for the sound and video quality; none of our children have a lisp, but it sounds like it on here.

We'll start with Anya, in 9th grade this year...


But wait...there's more!


Next up, Miss Emily...


And Emily, part 2...


And now, Jenna...


Jenna, the encore...


The parents may or may not contribute a v-blog in the coming days. Stay tuned.

If you've just come to our blog for the first time, feel free to browse our past posts via the listings at right. Or just bookmark this webpage and revisit us as often as you like.

We'll try not to be boring.

The joy of a pre-lit tree

We tried for a few years to be a real Christmas tree family. You know, the kind with needles that actually fall off the tree and the scent of pine filling the room and sap stuck to your hands once you've finished standing it up.

We tried. We gave up.

I think our foray into real fir lasted for 2 years. Maybe 3.

We finally decided we just liked the convenience of a fake tree. We like not watering it. We like that our room is not littered with pine for the month of December. We, for whatever reason (and I'm sure that many of you will discern some deep emotional scar or inherent weakness in us that manifests itself in our distaste for a recently axed conifer) just like the fake one.

So we'd pull it out of the box every year on the day after thanksgiving, and poke all the color coded wire branches into the appropriate holes, string the lights, hang the ornaments, light a pine scented candle to complete the faux effect and call it Christmas.

Until about 4 years ago when we had the brilliant, revelatory thought, "Wouldn't it be nice to have a tree with the lights already on it?" What a great idea! So that year, we watched the sale flyers and purchased our very own imitation 7 foot 5 inch douglas fir complete with 700 white lights. And it came in three sections! Simply pull the three sections out, stack them on top of each other, watch the branches flop down, plug in those already attached white lights and bask in the glorious glow of an easy Christmas tree!

It was truly a beautiful thing.

Beautiful, that is, until this year.

Because as we plugged in those strands of 700 lights, only about 100 0f them actually lit up. And that's a problem, because it turns out that when this delightfully festive imitation douglas fir is assembled in China, those little Asian hands that put it together do a marvelous job of attaching those lights to the branches of that douglas fir. And, if, by chance they don't work and you have to remove them...well, let's just say that the time you would spend removing those lights is probably greater than the combined amount of time you would have spent hanging and removing strands of lights from an unlit tree for the past 4 Christmas seasons.

No, not probably. It is greater. We know. We've now lived through it.

Evidently, when they put the lights on these trees, they want to make sure they NEVER come off, or that it takes some sort of apocolyptic event for them to be released. I assume the logic is that the buyer will become so frustrated, they will simply give up and go purchase another pre-lit tree to replace it. (I think all of them are secretly made by the same Asian conglomerate, so it doesn't matter which brand we buy, they same people get the money. And no, I don't think I sound like a conspiracy theorist. I'm not paranoid. Everyone's just out to get me.)

So some two and half hours later, all five Smith's gingerly rubbing their fingertips which have by now lost any recognizable fingerprints, the old lights were removed and the new lights, purchased on sale at the Walgreens down the road on Black Friday (2 for the price of one!), had bedecked the now newly revitalized imitation Douglas Fir.

And the evil Asian conglomerate didn't get any of our money.

Well, they only got the few dollars we spent on new lights. All the Christmas paraphenalia is pretty much produced by that same Oriental monopoly.