Has anyone seen the ark?

I am thinking that the Ark will float by any minute and I will wave and hopefully it will stop and let us on. Georgia is under water. Well at least my part of Georgia. I have had 13 inches in the last 18 hours at my house. That is from my rain gage. And it has been raining for the past week, so there is really no where for the rain to go. On the news it says we have had 17 inches. My backyard looks like a pond, and I know that I am lucky. A lot of people I know have a backyard that looks like a lake. And the not very exciting thing is that it is not finished raining. We are suppose to have a lot more tonight. They have already canceled school for tomorrow, but I am not telling the kids yet. Hee, hee!!!! I am kinda sly like that. Hopefully they will get to bed early. Here are some pictures of the rain and puddles. This one is Grace wearing a duck costume, thinking that it will help her swim if the water keeps rising.

I got this off of a friends Facebook (Stephanie Kjar). It is a neighborhood that a lot of our friends live in. It was so flooded that a lot of them could not drive in and they had to hike home.

This is a picture me standing of the little deck in the back yard. The french drain cannot keep up with the rain and so the water is running under the house into the crawl space. Notice we have lined part of the house with bags of sand. I am crossing my fingers that it slowed down some of the water that was going under the house.

This is off of another friends Facebook. This is Towne Lake Parkway. Up where I take Hallie to the orthodontist. It is the onramp to get onto I-575.

Little Monkey part 2

Ok I just found a picture of Grace climbing before the age of 1. If you dont understand what I am talking about, see the previous post. Here she is at 9 months on the kitchen table.

Monkey For Sale

None of my kids have every been climbers; until Grace. I dont know why such a sweet little laidback girl would want to climb like she does! This all started the day that she turned 1. After her birthday party she must have decided that she had been such a good baby for 1 year that now she needed to shock her parents. Here she is after her birthday party.
We did not help her get up there at all. I am now getting use to her climbing up on everything and it does not shock my too much anymore. Maybe it should. This morning as I am cleaning the kitchen this is what she is doing. (Notice that she is standing on my laptop! Mark would be thrilled.)You can see in one hand she has a note pad and in the other hand she has just taken a pencil out of the little basket. She knew exactly what she was going up there to get. So, I take the pencil and paper and put her at the table. I even go and get her a coloring book and the crayons and this is what she does.I am sure that some day I will walk in the kitchen and she will be on top of the fridge getting the play dough or something. Oh well, at least she is a good little girl. She has to do something bad or she would be perfect. (I case you were wondering she is not for sale.)

Playing the Wii

We got a new Wii game last week that I think is pretty fun. That is saying a lot coming from me. I dont find the Wii as entertaining as the rest of my family, but this one has some really fun games. It is Sports Resort. It has frisby, archery, wakeboarding, sword fighting (my favorite, because it is like chopping up vegetables with a very sharp knife) and other games. Today Mark was taking a little break from work and we were playing wii. Grace is sitting on the couch thinking that she is playing too. She has a remote that is unplugged. She is pretty funny. Here is a video of her. But you have to watch it with your head turned because I cant figure out how to rotate something on here.

School Days

The kids started school yesterday, so maybe I will have time to blog again. Hallie started 4th grade, Carter 2nd, and Jackson Kindergarten. They were all very excited and got up so easily and got dressed and ready in about 10 minutes. I wish it would be that easy every day. Hallie's teacher is a man named Mr. Bell and she thinks he is the coolest teacher in school. Carter's teacher is Mrs. Baker and Jackson has Mrs. Madrid; who was the teacher that Carter had when he was in Kindergarten.

After getting all the kids off to school; Mark, Grace and I went to breakfast. It was very quiet with just Grace at home. She would wander around the house and every once in a while I would hear her laugh. I think that she was having so much fun having free reign of the whole house and no one to bother her. She may find it boring in a couple of weeks.

Easter

For the past few years on Easter morning before we go to church we take a picture of the kids on the front porch. I take the picture in the same place each year so that I can see how they have grown. This year I probably took 20 pictures and not one of them turned out that great. Somebody was always look away or making a crazy face or something. And it was pretty cool outside at the time I was taking the picture and they were cold. So was I. So her is the best one and the pictures from the 2 years before that so you can see how they have grown.

It's been a while, so long spring is almost here.

Well, it's been quite a while since we've posted anything. Life has been busy, or tiring, but it moves right along. I can't believe we're into March already. I'm another year older and Tara will be on Saturday. And it got so warm today that we actually (well, I did) turned the air conditioner on upstairs. It was 78 degrees inside, even with the fans on, that's just too hot for me after all the cooler weather. It's supposed to cool down a bit this weekend, but only into the 50s, so that's not bad at all.

Things have been going well. Grace is getting so big. She's a great eater and we hope that lasts after having 3 picky eaters. She will eat just about anything and everything, fruit, vegetable, meat, bread and whatever she might find on the floor before we can get to it. Tonight she was eating ravioli that we had for dinner and Tara had given it to her on a little plastic plate and she was picking up the plate and licking it. It was too cute. We took some pictures and will maybe post some soon. She's starting to make more noises than just 'da-da' now, and maybe she'll actually say a real first word soon (Although I think that 'da-da' should count because she will say it when she sees me, but she also says it babbling all the time).

She's crawling everywhere, but mostly away from her siblings that think that she's their toy. Hallie gets a little playful with her and isn't careful sometimes. She loves Carter because he's pretty good with her except that he feels the need to always bring her to us, even if we just put her down to play. Jackson is just too rough with her so she doesn't like him too much right now and he tortures her a little bit. Soon he's going to pay for that.

Jackson will be 5 soon and just has a few months of pre-school left. Hard to believe, he was younger than Grace when we moved down to GA. He's so funny, polite and fun to be around when he's in a good mood, but can be a terror if he's not. When he's in a good mood though, and you have him alone, he will talk your ear off. The other day Tara came up stairs while I was working and Grace was napping, and just crossed her eyes at me and whispered that he'd been talking to her non-stop for an hour straight. Just as she's finishing here he comes mid-sentence and just keeps on going. He's quite the talker.

Carter and Hallie are doing well. Hallie had a little piano performance for another teacher recently and she did really well. I think she's starting to get much better. Soon I think she'll be able to move on to more difficult music if she'll try. I think she'd be surprised what she could play already if she gave it a shot. Carter is doing well in school and is just getting so big. If only we could get him to gain weight. He's growing up, but not gaining any weight, just getting skinnier. :-) He's as cute as ever and is getting more helpful and grown up.

Anyways, just thought I'd post a little something, but I've got to getting going now so that I can play volleyball tonight. I'll try to post a little more often, it's refreshing to just aimlessly write sometimes :-)

December 2008

Well December came and went with not much being posted; but a lot going on. Here are a few of the things that we did. At the beginning of the month (or maybe the end of November) we went to Publix to watch our niece singing Christmas carols with her chorus group. While we were there we saw Santa and ate lots of samples. Jackson was a little afraid of him and Grace wanted to pull his beard off. Carter was a little afraid too, but I think that was because he was not a very real looking Santa and Carter told me that sometimes Santa's helpers that played Santa in the store did not do it very well. Later in the month we went to the Ice Forum and went ice skating with Hallie's primary class. She had gone ice skating for the first time a few weeks before that at a friend's birthday party and loved it so she suggested that they do that for their class activity and everyone agreed. For someone that had only skated once before Hallie did really well. She went off and left Carter, Jackson and Mark to hug the wall for a while. Mark then picked it up pretty quickly and went to skate with her. Carter made it around the rink once and Jackson made it about half way around and then they were done. I then swapped Grace with Mark and went out. I was scarred to death of falling and breaking my tailbone again so I hugged the wall the whole time. It also did not help that a grown man went by me and said "if you are ever going to learn to skate you have to get off the wall!" Yikes, he was friendly. These pictures are not very good because of the glass enclosure that surrounds the rink.We then went to Grandma Connie and Grandaddy Tom's house with all their grandkids and decorated their Christmas tree. A few days later we made Christmas mice cookies. The kids had a lot of fun making these and they were very easy. Hallie and Carter made a lot of mice and Jackson ate a lot of mice.

The kids then opened their Christmas Eve jammies.

Here are the kids on Christmas morning, and each one with one of their favorite presents.

(I started this post on 1/8/09 and finally on 2/8/09 I finished it. Better late than never.)

Settle Family Newscast

I was out of town on business last week, and while Tara was busy elsewhere and it was kind of quiet she went to check on the kids and found that they had my older work laptop down on a table we have in the garage (they are lucky that I wasn't home). Anyways, she reprimanded them and sent them to put it away. Yesterday we discovered what they were doing. On our digital camera, we found this video. It's a little long, but stick it out, there's some parts that had us cracking up all the way through.

25 Random Things about Me

I posted this on Facebook after getting tagged. I hardly ever do these things, but I figured since I took the time to do it and post it on Facebook, I'll go ahead and post it here too, so if you don't know me through Facebook, but read the blog...

1. I was born in Columbia (South Carolina that is)
2. I have the best wife in the world. I know, I know, you probably think you have the best spouse in the world, but that's your opinion. Mine's fact :-)
3. I have 4 children, two daughters and two sons. They keep us busy, make us laugh, and sometimes cry too. I wouldn't have it any different. They teach me as much or more as I teach them.
4. I love my DVR! I hate it when I travel or watch TV somewhere where I have to endure commercials, or can't pause it when I get occupied.
5. Current items on my DVR to do list: The Office, My Name is Earl, 24, The Unit, Dirty Jobs, American Idol, Heroes, Jeopardy, Ace of Cakes.
6. I also enjoy a really good book. I read mostly fiction lately and I've taken to reading a ton in the last few years, probably averaging about a book every week or two. My favorite current authors: Robert Parker, Chris Stewart and James Patterson (but nothing he 'co-writes').
7. We have a TON of trees in our yard, which is beautiful, except for the abundance of leaves to take care of in the fall/winter. I still have a huge pile of leaves in the back year that I blew behind the trampoline one Saturday (there's no grass there) and it's rained pretty much everyday I planned on doing yard work for the last 2 months.
8. I don't know if I'm happy or sad about #7 above, but if we're on water restrictions this summer after the amount of moisture we've had this winter, somebody in the local government is going to hear from me.
9. I drink way too much Dr. Pepper. I need to cut back.
10. I could eat pizza every day of the week. Luckily I don't, or I'd be 200 pounds, which for me would be too much.
11. I love doing puzzles. I don't do them very often, but I love to put them together, especially when I get in a groove on a 1000 piece puzzle and can just look at a piece, pick it up and put it where it goes.
12. Likewise, I like solving puzzles in general. I like that kind of challenge, and maybe that's why I love software engineering. I love solving the challenges that I face in programming, it's very frustrating and satisfying at the same time.
13. When I was a kid, I hated taking showers, and it was all my parents could do to get me to take one once a week. Then at about 13 or so, I'd take one or two a day, or even three depending on what I'd done. That hasn't changed. I don't feel right until I've taken a shower, and if I work up a good sweat, I'll take another one.
14. I love just about all sports. I love playing golf, basketball, volleyball, tennis, racquetball, baseball and soccer. I've player other sports I enjoy as well, but these are the primary ones that I've played most of my life.
15. I'm not particularly great at any sport, although I might achieve the higher end of mediocrity at a few.
16. I'm clumsy. Just in the last four years, I've severely cut my left thumb, jammed countless fingers playing basketball, sprained my wrist very badly, tweaked a knee and recently rolled my ankle and I'm pretty sure I tore some ligaments in that, took me 2 months of no sports and 2 more months before I'm finally starting to feel right on it again. If was I a professional athlete, I'd be Penny Hardaway or Grant Hill (but not Mike Hampton, there's something SERIOUSLY wrong about him).
17. I hate the smell of cigarette smoke. Really, really hate it. Thank goodness for the laws in most or all states now to not have it in public buildings.
18. I served a two-year LDS mission in Guatemala and fluently speak Spanish.
19. I regret not being as patriotic as I could have been in my past, but am trying to be more so now. I'm trying to be more informed on political issues and voicing my opinion, which sometimes is difficult for me.
20. I'm republican and am conservative on moral issues, but actually cross parties on some other issues and quite admire the reserved, educated and well-spoken manner of our new president.
21. I hate the no child left behind law. It is killing the education of our next generation of Americans. It's bad for the advanced students AND the students who are behind, and it makes our schools gear everything they do towards passing standardized tests, rather than actually being able to educate and causing us to loose great teachers.
22. I love to do handy work around the house. I'm not the best, but competent. I've tiled, replaced subfloor in a bathroom, completely gutted and refinished a bathroom, replaced kitchen counters, replaced sinks and faucets, hung fans and even done a little bit of plumbing. Most of these things are not hard if you just do a little reading and take your time.
23. I'm terrible mechanically. I have an uncle that could fix anything mechanical, but not me. I can check the oil and change a tire, but that's about it. I have changed a fuse in a car and a spark plug in small engines, but otherwise I'm pretty intimidated by engines.
24. I play the piano and sing (but not at the same time ;-). I sang bass in the BYU Men's Chorus my freshman year there and got the opportunity to sing in their first recorded CD and sang with the Mormon Tabernacle Choir during their Music and the Spoken Word broadcast. Mack Wilberg was the director of the BYU Men's Chorus then, and is now the director of the MoTab. He's EXTREMELY talented.
25. I almost never respond to these things. Not usually my favorite thing, but have enjoyed trying to think about some of these things about myself. I've probably tagged a few people who have already done this, so sorry!

She's crawling

I think Grace has officially decided to crawl. The real crawl; not the "drag your body" crawling that she has been doing for a few months. And of course Mark is out of town when she does it. So here she is.

Timmmbbbbberrrrrr!!!!

Back in September we had a tree at the side of our house taken down. It was very interesting to watch them because the tree was between our house and our neighbors house and they had to avoid hitting both houses and all the other trees. Here are some pictures of it coming down. Luckily they had pretty good aim and did not squash our house. They told us that the tree was between 80 and 100 feet tall and 4 feet in diameter.

Recipe of the Week #7

Hallie and Carter are at shcool, Jackson is at preschool and I laid Grace down for a nap. I have grand thoughts of all the things that I am going to get done; but what do I do? I bake. That is what you are suppose to do on a cold day. The east coast is under a winter weather advisory. Tonight is is suppose to be -5. That is unheard of in Georgia. So I better take advantage of it while I can. I put some Chicken and Cheese Enchilada Chowder in the crockpot and start thinking about what I can make with some zucchini that needs to be used. It has to be well hidden or the kids wont eat it. So I will make Zucchini-Chocolate Chip Muffins.

3/4 cup whole wheat pasty flour (or all-purpose)

3/4 cup all-purpose flour

3/4 cup brown sugar

1 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp cinnamon

1/4 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp salt

1 egg

1/4 cup oil

1/4 cup milk

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1 tsp vanilla

1 cup shredded zucchini

1 shredded apple

1/3 cup mini chocolate chips

1/4 cup pecans or walnuts

Mix all dry ingredients together. In a bowl whisk egg, oil, milk, lemon juice, and vanilla. Stir into dry ingredients. Fold in the zucchini, apple, chocolate chips, and nuts. Bake at 350 for 20-25 minutes.

Grace woke up while I was making these. So I put her in her high chair and let her have some multi grain Cheerios. They are her new favorite. When I gave them to her so grabbed fistfulls and put them in her mouth as best she could.

Later she started scooting all over and come in the kitchen to wait paitently for the muffins to be done.

After the muffins were done I made Three Great Tastes Blond Brownies and Cornbread. (I am not going to eat all of this stuff. I am taking it to a girl in my ward that just had a baby.)

So I did not great any of the things I needed to do checked off my list, but I did have fun baking. Maybe tomorrow I will get those things done. Or maybe I will find another recipe that is calling my name and begging to be made!

Boys will be boys

Carter and Jackson sometimes amaze me. I think it is because as a girl I would never think to do the things that they do. A few examples of these are the kleenex and oatmeal episodes. I think they must have been missing the snow of Utah when they did these things because they said that they were "jumping" into snow and they were making snow "fall" after they made these messes. They decided to do both of these things within a week of each other.

This past week the boys decided do to get into things and make messes again. It started exactly one week ago tonight. Mark and the kids were upstairs in our room and I was downstairs in the kitchen. I heard Jackson cough and then cry out "I swallowed it". It was a steel ball that goes to Magnetix. The ball is about the size of a marble and there are little magnetic rods that they stick to and you can make cool things with them. We have told him not to put them in his mouth but he does anyway, because what do we know! Well I called the pediatrician and they said to take him down to the ER and have them take an xray to make sure it was not stuck in his throat; because his throat was hurting. Apparantly things like marbles and money can get stuck in your throat and you can still breath and everything. So I get ready to take him to the ER and Mark asks him "how many times have we told you not to put the balls in your mouth?" He replies "about 100". Exactly. About 100.

Here is a picture of his marble.

It finally made its grand re-entrance tonight! Thank goodness because I am sick of checking poop for a marble. I will spare you the details. But one funny thing that he said when we were sitting in the ER until midnight was "I'm glad I swallowed this marble because now I get to stay up and watch cartoons." I am thinking about contacting the ER and telling them to get rid of the tv's because Jackson thinks if he goes to the ER that it is fun because they let him stay up and watch tv and eat popsicles while he is there.

Then next thing the boys did is destroy their room last nightwhile they are suppose to be going to sleep. That is nothing new but this is how Mark found them.

Now would a girl ever say to herself "Oh, I think I want to take all my books off the bookshelf and sleep in it!" No, they would not. At least I wouldnt. But to Carter and Jackson it must have seemed like an interesting thing to do.

Like I said

Boys will be boys!

Happy New Year

Just wanted to wish everyone out there a Happy New Year! I hope you all have a wonderful 2009. We're planning on it. This year we'll have a child that is in double digits this year as Hallie turns 10, Carter 7, Jackson 5 and Grace 1. We'll also have 3 children in school in August. We're looking forward to that!

Also just wanted to post that we're recanting our post saying we're going private. We've decided to not make our blog private as of yet. So keeping following us anonymously or not for now. We just decided that it's kind of a pain to have to log in to view the bloggs of friends of ours who have gone private and we've enjoyed it in the format it is now. If we run into some problems with it being a public blog, then maybe we'll change it, but we're leaving as is for now.