Now that's an exciting New Year's Eve

Circuslunch is O.K.

More music from the Y

This is the latest song in Bodypump for the tricep set. The song is three minutes long when you just watch the video. It feels like 15 when they make us do the 40,000 dips at the end. It gets ouchy.

Taking suggestions

We have to re-audition for the chorus every two years and because I joined in an off year, auditions are already coming up. I have accepted the fact that I will be nauseous from now until it's over. In the meantime I need your help: I don't want to bore anybody with the same old same old arias and sacred texts and boring old tunes. I'm taking suggestions. Do you have a good song for me to sing? Gary thinks I should go with Peter McCann's Do you wanna make love (or do you just want to fool around). That's a good one, but I think there are better ones out there.

Peggy needs to chill

The six-year-old boy in me couldn't resist the urge to surprise Peggy with the remote-control car. I have created a monster. She's wondering what other new toys in the house might spring to life and try to drive up her legs and into her food bowl while she's eating. For example, she has been pacing incessantly around this piece of a Bionicle for three hours this evening:

Christmas pictures

We all agree that we had a very nice Christmas this year despite the fact that we sat in the chapel with a simulcasted Christmas Eve service that featured a Lutheran minister in character as a stable boy in Bethlehem who was wearing a distracting amount of purple eye shadow. Once I got past the visual, the message was touching and meaningful, but it made us pine for the good old days when a Christmas Eve service at Sharon Center United Methodist Church involved a crowd of no more than 200; a bluegrass band; time for "Joys and Concerns;" a choir with a 2-person, husband/wife tenor section; and a 24/7 unlocked church where I could walk across the yard from our house (which was the parsonage) with an urge to play Christmas carols on the piano or organ any time of day or night. God, we loved that place. But we went to a big city church and enjoyed the music, the people, and the message.

I mentioned in a previous post that Santa came around 4:30 A.M. And thus began the 2006 Christmas of No Sleep. We had a wonderful time with family but, as always is the case, we are glad to be home. We are also thankful that our babysitter does double-duty as a dog/house sitter. Peggy was well-loved while we were away. A highlight of the trip was a visit to Eddyville, the tiny town where Grandpa and Grandma Hanson grew up.

Would you like to see some pictures? They are here. (Click on any individual picture for a brief explanation of what you see.)

Merry Christmas.

Not surprised

If flatulence can spark a family fight on Christmas, I have no doubt about this:

Flatulence sparks jail fight

4:20 A.M.

The kids could not sleep on Christmas Eve and came in our room repeatedly throughout the night, asking if it was time to get up yet. Finally, Gary and I woke up to the sounds of activity in the living room. The clock said 4:20 A.M. The kids were more than awake: They had opened every single present under the tree and were in the middle of having a great time -- just the two of them -- playing with the new stuff. The Kodak moment had come and gone WAY too early this year.

Gary's family used to have Santa come to the house while they were at church on Christmas Eve. I think that's the way things will go in our family for the next few years.

Merry Christmas

Peace on Earth

Goodwill to all

Was it The Terminator?

The name and level of difficulty of the trail the governor was skiing when his accident occurred were not released.

(That quip comes to you this morning courtesy of Mr. Bickerson.)

Fun stuff

Whoo hoo, I got to sleep in! I can hear Gary and the kids tracking Santa on the computer in the basement:

Norad Santa Tracker

And I'm amusing myself with this awesome activity:

Falling Sand Game

Airing of grievances

I hate public restroom towel dispensers affixed too high on the wall such that water runs up the arms when reaching for towels. (I believe I mentioned this one last year.)

What's wrong with good old "small, medium, and large" when it comes to naming sizes of that crack-laden KFC Popcorn Chicken? I'd rather say "large" than "family-size" when I know THEY know that the popcorn chicken I order is not getting anywhere near the rest of my family.

I think Ozzy should have won Survivor. Yul was smart but Ozzy won all the challenges. That ought to count more.

(That is all for now.)

For the person who has almost everything

The Wine Rack

From Defective Yeti

Behold!

A van fits in the garage!

Let's just say that we have a lot of stuff in the garage and we don't know where to put it. It's raining today that kind of cold rain that sticks to the trees so I knew I had to do some rearranging. I am happy that this afternoon I will not be chipping three inches of ice off of the car. But I have a prediction: Power outage. Do you know where we can get some firewood fast?

(The picture is of the cargo rack on top of our van.)

Easy Christmas treat with fancy name

Mendiants with fleur de sel and almond

Must...not...eat them all...

The best present

We had soap class and we put in the water and the color and then there was soap! It's for boys AND for girls!!

Mr. Bickerson needs an intervention

He seems to be challenging himself to fill our harddrive with all of the music available at the library. I plugged in my shuffle to charge it up so I could run Peggy with pleasant music accompaniment this morning and it autofilled with his most recent new additions including Anne Murray's You Needed Me, Chic's Le Freak, and three too many songs by Culture Club.

Gary, please stop. Just because a song's been recorded on a CD you don't have to have it.

Results

Apparently Gary and I were both too foggy-headed from the chlorine fumes to realize that Hank came in first place in the 25 yard breaststroke. And there was more than one swimmer in the event!

Hank, for a kid who couldn't swim the length of the pool this summer, you've come a long way baby. We are proud of you and your hard work.

I was feeling bad...

...about thinking about giving in to my craving for pecan tassies (the craving that I've had for the past three days) and then I saw this:

1017 grams of butter

And I thought to myself, "Thank God I haven't previously known about these!"

I am struggling this year with the Christmas cookies. I want to bake multitudes of them. And then I want to eat them. ALL of them!

That was a loooooong meet

Mr. Bickerson and I would like to go on record: We want the world to know how thankful we are that there are no 10-and-under 500-yard freestyle races. It takes the 16-year-olds long enough to swim that distance. Six hours of total swim meet fun is pretty much enough.

Is it my aging attention span? I can't tolerate an almost all day swim meet. This is why I hated football at Iowa. The football games lasted all day! I need my kids to participate in time-limited sporting events: 5K races, basketball, arm-wrestling, boxing (and only if the kid version involves 3 x 3-minute rounds {or less}).

Taking Friday off...

...from blogging duties.

I direct you instead to the most recent post from Dwight (The Office's Dwight):

How to work well with others

And then there's this:

I do?

Mom, are you gonna sit with us at morning meeting time?

Yes, I guess I am.

MOM. Then tell me WHAT is your FULL NAME?

Uh, Hope, my name is Whitney Kay Hanson.

Later:

...And Hope, what should we call your mom?

Kay. She wants you all to call her "Kay."

I don't knead this

I ran across a recipe for no knead sourdough and I had to make it. I love the smell of bread baking. (Who doesn't?) It looks like it turned out great. It smells great. Hope says it tastes good. But I dare not eat any of it because...well, regular readers know I have issues.

You can find the recipe here.

Everest: Beyond the Limit

Next week is the finale. The website is good in case you don't get Discovery.

Another highlight of those initial weeks was when Mark Inglis gave Tilly, a local Sherpa, the ability to walk. Both of them lost their legs to frostbite around 20 years ago in very similar circumstances. While Mark had gone on to win medals in the Sydney Paralympics, Tilly had spent that entire time walking around on his knees with a pair of car tires for feet.

I don't think there was a dry eye at Base Camp the day that Mark helped Tilly to stand up for the first time on an old pair of prosthetic limbs he had given him. Within minutes Tilly and Mark were taking steps around camp holding on to each other, grinning from ear to ear and not a single leg between them.

Are you short on insane?

Got money to burn?

Please go here.

And do you have a Country French home? Go here.

(I got up way too early this morning so I turned on the local news and there was a reporter interviewing the owner of that store. It might have been my imagination but the reporter looked like she was having a very hard time concealing her "You, owner of this dog boutique I'm standing in, you're crazy, aren't you" look.)

Confession

I like Spongebob Squarepants. I know this might make more normal mothers cringe but our whole family enjoys a good Spongebob episode. This clip of Plankton's Christmas Songs had Gary and me rolling on the floor the first time we saw it:

Can't hurt to ask

Christmas comic

(Click picture to enlarge)

Attention persons in northern latitudes

Keep you eyes peeled for northern lights!

Space weather bulletin

Nightskylive.net

Math problem

What I don't understand is how I got seventh place when there were only six lanes in the pool.

Fun with free Photoshop

My 30-day tryout of Photoshop ends in 21 days! So far I have learned to apply the glowing edges filter to picture files, and spray-paint graffiti on my pictures.

I have a ways to go before my time is up.

Give thanks

When you've had a bad day and you're feeling awful about how your life is bad and you have the worst kids in the world and things never go your way, get down on your knees and thank God that you weren't thrown off an airplane for having really bad smelling farts.

Gas attack

(Okay, I realize that she was kicked off the plane for lighting a match to conceal the smell but it's just way funnier to think that it was because the gas was worse than most.)

Conflict diamonds

I'm anxious to see this movie.

Blood Diamond

My parents went to Africa when I was a wee one and among the many things they returned home with were pictures from a visit to a diamond mine in South Africa. Piles and PILES of diamonds. All sparkly and beautiful.

Cut to many years later when I happened upon some article somewhere about conflict diamonds in Sierra Leone. (Around the same time, I saw a PBS Frontline program about De Beers and how the diamond industry has fooled us into believing that diamonds are so precious that every woman should expect their fiance to spend two month's salary on the diamond. That's the rule of thumb they were selling.) I was already married and already wearing the diamond ring Gary gave me and one that my grandma left me, but it made me feel awful to think my wearing those pretty diamonds was somehow related to the horrible pictures I saw in that article of little kids (and adults) caught up in the insanity. I still wear the diamond rings but when I lost an earring more than a year ago I decided if I replace it, it will be with something fake, or maybe something completely different.

It doesn't feel right to wear them.

Someone has a teeny, tiny tree

It couldn't have been more than 2 1/2 feet long and would have fit in the back seat or the trunk. But it looked extremely cute tied to the top of this car.

The tooth fairy was good to him

It's an EZ Yo-Yo.