Kristen's Magic Tricks

I realized after I uploaded this that it's not really a good representation of what she can do. Maybe we need to pin her down for another show, and record that...

Things to do in January

Make silly videoblogs:

Caitlyn's Monologue

Because Grandma asked to see it.

Lead in Your Foot is NO Fun

The long story is this:

Alison and Kristen were playing joust with a remote-controlled car and sharp (Russell likes to keep the pencils REALLY sharp) pencils. Kristen forgot to take off the pencil from the car after and was chasing Alison with the car. Alison jumped up to get out of the way, but landed on the car, and the pencil lead went into her heel. She dropped in serious pain. SERIOUS.

Then comes the stressful part. Alison refuses to let ANYONE touch her when she's in pain. She couldn't get it out before school, so she put a band aid on it and went to school and spent the day in pain. I told her that she NEEDED to get that out; lead in one's body is not a healthy thing. So, she spent after school stressing about getting it out, while picking at it and taking pictures of it and crying.

We offered to help. I got frustrated and left. Russell yelled over her crying. Eventually, she went to bed with it in. Then Saturday morning, we decided enough was enough and Russell, Megan and I pinned her down (literally: Megan was sitting on Alison's legs, and Russell was lying across her body) and I dug the lead out with a needle. It was a good quarter-inch long, so I'm not surprised it hurt (we should have taken a picture of it). But afterward, Alison said, "That was it??" Ah. At least it's out.

More Craziness

Sometimes I wonder about what I find on the camera.

Snow!

It snowed last weekend. And it was really quite lovely coming down. Alison took my phone and snapped an enormous number of pictures. These are the best.

Then it turned bitter cold and the snow was no fun to play with. It did warm up (marginally) later in the week and Kristen and Russell got a little bit of time out in it:

They are crazy, those two. 

Happy New Years!

Everyone kind of went their separate ways for New Years Eve. But we had Alison's friend Sophia over to our house for a sleepover.

Then we had our annual New Years party. It was smaller this year; a lot of people were out of town and/or sick, so it wasn't as well attended. That said, we had fun. (Except for that one shouting match over game rules between a couple of the girls, but we won't mention that.)

We dug out our old game Time Out and played it, which we haven't done since we lived in Virginia. Our suspicions about the game were correct: it's too obscure and too dated to be truly fun. (That said, Caitlyn and I rocked as a team!) Anyway, I was talking to a friend about it, and she said their family play it but without the cards. (This is me writing it down so I don't forget.) They have each player write down on a slip of paper a person (either in the room, or a celebrity/notable figure) or a character in a book. Then they break up into teams of two and play three rounds. First: the reader can say anything but the person's name to guess the card. Passing is not allowed, and all teams need to get through all the cards. Second: You can only use one word. Passing is allowed. Third: You can only mime actions. It should be more fun this way!