We Couldn't Resist (Maybe we should have, but we couldn't)

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El reno más famoso de todo

Jen is a nurse. Alec is a school psychologist. They are well aware of the American Academy of Pediatrics' recommendation regarding television viewing for young children. As such, we are sure that they nourish their children's blossoming neurons with classical literature, stimulating conversation, and creative craft projects--but never with television programs. Right?


Well, perhaps there are exceptional circumstances that may necessitate brief periods of TV viewing (like making dinner, talking on the phone, cleaning the house, taking a nap....), but only the finest educational programs would meet their rigorous standards. A sampling of such standards:

1) Does the program refer to a great mind of the past? (e.g. Einstein, Beethoven, Lavel Edwards, or Walt Disney, for example?)

2) Is it only mildly amusing to children, thereby making PBS the only station that will show it?

3) Does it teach your child a second language? (Bonus points if it is a dead language such as Latin or . . . Pig Latin)

4) Does it provide opportunities for meaningful conversations with your children? Example: Yesterday Jen was hard at work when she heard Eric exclaim from the next room, "Ariba! Ariba!" She asked him what he was talking about and he replied in a full Spanish sentence, which was Greek to Jen. Greek! Isn't that another dead language! Apparently he had discovered the Spanish version of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer during an exploration of the DVD bonus features, and now it is the only version he will watch. Ironically, he also learned who "The Trumpster" (Donald Trump) is from a disturbing clay-mation bonus feature. It did lead to an enriching discussion of personal finance, however.

Yes, the Browns are a paragon of fine parenting.

What a girl

Lily is 100% girl. LuAnne did her hair in this beautiful braid loop. Sadly, Lily has her mother's fine hair, so it only lasted about 15 minutes. In this picture, she found some train stickers and made herself some earrings without my help or prompting. She loves to sing the songs from Cinderella while she jumps off of the couch. We think her ideal job would be as a stunt girl in a musical.

Thanksgiving Festivities

We went to Cedar for Thanksgiving (obviously) and had a great time, as usual. LuAnne made gingerbread houses for the kids to decorate. Eric loved it, but not as much as Spencer. Lily loved playing with her Aunt Jen.

Phoenix Zoo

We went to the Zoo yesterday and the kids had a ball! It is a pretty nice zoo and luckily the baboons weren't getting frisky like the last time Audrey was here.

Happy Halloween!

The kids decided that they wanted to be characters from Peter Pan, although Eric kept getting called Robin Hood (I really thought that the brown hat would be an ok compromise, but I was wrong, wrong, wrong). Eric really went crazy with the theme, he wanted Katie to be the ship, his friend Grant to be the water, etc. etc. Lily was very cute in her Tinkerbell costume and she was quite upset when we tried to take it off.

Annual Leaf Pictures

We went up to Audrey's house in Cottonwood for our annual torture (which Alec somehow got out of this year) because we couldn't find leaves in 90 degree Phoenix.

Locks for Love

Cousin Daven tries on his Aunt Eileen's "Sunday best."

Ahhh, Feeling Fall

I loved this pic of Steve and Katie--although I'm not exactly sure what ritual they are performing here--looks kind of Pagan, though.

More Sun Devil Excitement

My boys at the ASU game. Luckily, they had seats well away from any beer puke (Barrett knows what I am talking about) . This was also a good thing because Eric would most likely have asked for some 'brown pop' and if those guys were good strangers or bad strangers.
Apparently, Eric thinks he needs to help himself smile properly.

Daven's B-day in Cottonwood

I loved this pic of Lily--she absolutely adores little chairs of all kinds. She almost looks like we just got finished visiting Cottonwood's famous Hippie Emporium or something.































This is a classic Daven face. They both thought this was a great idea, at first.....

End of Summer in Cedar

Katie took these for us in lieu of professional pictures this summer. I thought I should post them --better late than never, eh?

Cuddle with Daddy and her 'DiDi'

Cooking Time With Eric

Microwave cakes!?! Who'd have thunk it? We can't take credit for the idea (Aunt Kezia came across the recipe and passed it along to Eric), but we did give it a try this week. If you are looking for a simple home evening treat that the kids can help make, this hits the spot. Don't get us wrong, the result isn't going to earn you a guest appearance on the Rachel Ray show--unless she introduces a segment titled, "Recipes for the Attention Impaired," but Eric had a great time playing chef.

Just like the good ole' times

Steve came to visit on his way home from NC and it was so great! As you can see, nothing much has changed. Eric still runs around pantless most of the time, Lily is a ham, and they both love their uncle Steve. We went to a splash park when Daven was here and the kids loved it!

ASU 45 - San Jose St. 3

In an attempt to treat my Cougar football withdrawals Jen and I attended the ASU football game last night. A few things were immediately apparent to us: 1) College is a desperate race between the quest to embed knowledge in the minds of students and the rush to binge brain cells to death with alcohol (For the record, alcohol scored a resounding victory last night), 2) We probably shouldn't have purchased tickets in the student section, and 3) I have no idea how to properly punctuate this list.



Luckily we were able to find a seat high in the stands, relatively isolated from the throng of students. We had a nice night out, and thoroughly enjoyed the cool 101 degree weather.

Audrey, Barrett, and adorable Daven came down this week to do a temple babysitting swap. We enjoyed an evening in the pool with the kids. That is the one nice thing about weather this hot, swimming is delightful and the water doesn't take any getting used to.

A Few More Singapore Pics

Singapore

In mid-July Jen and I took a trip to Singapore. The flight over bordered on torture--it took about 21 hours of flying time to get there, and as you know the seats in economy class are incredibly cramped. Our flight arrived at 1:00 am local time, so we were able to catch a few winks and then we headed out to explore. We relied exclusively on the bus and light rail systems to get around, and we mainly ate at the hawker stalls and food courts that are frequented by locals. All of the foreign tastes and smells began to get a little bit overwhelming for Jen the first day, but she only needed a little bit of sleep to recuperate.

Well, you know what they say about pictures being worth some ridiculous amount of words, so without further ado here is a day-by-day itinerary with some pictures.

Day 1: Walked down the Singapore river quays and then headed for the National Museum. After visiting the museum, which was housed in a gorgeous colonial building, we headed for the downtown area where we visited the Raffles Hotel (Unfortunately we weren't rich enough to stay a night there). The Raffles Hotel is a historical establishment from early in the British colonial period. It was used as a safe-house for British women and children during World War II just before the Japanese took the Island. After lunch at a local food court, it was off to Chinatown. As I mentioned before, I think that this was the part of the trip that really did Jen in for the day. The tastes and smells of Chinatown can be overwhelming, especially if spent 21 hours flying the day before, and you are running on 5 hours of sleep.


Day 2: We started off with strawberry pancakes at the Singapore Botanic Gardens. With the help of some first-rate strawberry pancakes Jen's stomach recovered from the shock of the previous day, and then we were off. The Botanic Gardens were strikingly lush and beautiful, and our favorite part was probably the Orchid Garden. After the Botanic Gardens we headed to Orchard Road--the high class shopping district. We both thought it would be fun to window shop at some of the designer stores--Dolche & Gabana, Prada, and the likes--but after looking at the first price tag and realizing just how far out of our league we were, it lost all of its fun. After being put in our place we had a great time. We went to lunch at a hawker center near the LDS mission office, and happened to bump into some elders, so we had lunch with them. Then we capped off the day with a trip to the Night Safari.

Day 3: We started off the day at Kampong Glam, which is the Malay shopping district. Silk shops lined the streets, and there was a beautiful mosque standing over it all. Next we were off to Little India, where we had a sumptuous meal of naan and curries. We ate in traditional style off of banana leaves, and used our hands in the place of utensils. This time we capped of the night by taking a boat ride down the Singapore river.


Day 4: We spent the majority of the day on Sentosa Island, which is a small resort island just to the south of Singapore. If beaches are your thing, don't waste your money on a trip to Singapore, because their beaches second rate at best. However, they've put a lot of money into making the most of what they have. In the end we thoroughly enjoyed wading in the warm water of the South China Sea, and feeling a little sand between our toes. We also couldn't help chuckling a bit after visiting the "Underwater World" where we read information on protecting sea creatures like shark--who's fins are used for the delicacy Shark's Fin Soup--because we knew that 500 yards down the beach was a food court where you could buy BBQ sting-ray, chilli frog's legs and yes, even shark's fin soup.

I know my words fail to be very descriptive, so hopefully the pictures do the trip justice. We had a great time, and we are looking forward to taking another big trip in, oh . . . 9 years or so.

Singapore Preview

Jen and I were lucky enough to be able to visit Singapore last week. We were gone for 6 days, but we only spent 4 in Singapore because of the travel time to and from the island. We had a great time. For me it felt a little bit like going home after a long absence, but for Jen there was a little more culture shock. Fortunately she is a trooper, which allowed her to have a good time despite some of the unusual smells, tastes, and sights. I wanted to post pictures tonight, but we borrowed someone's camera for the trip, and we haven't downloaded them onto our computer yet. However, we will definitely get the pictures up ASAP, so stay tuned.

Sun n' Fun

Summer is half gone, and we've been a little busier than we anticipated, but we've also had a lot of time for fun. My brother, Spencer, came home from his mission several weeks ago, we took a trip to Arizona to do some apartment searching, and this past weekend we had a family reunion with the Browns. The summer vacation is definitely one of the greatest perks of working in the school system. It's almost enough to make up for the miserable pay. j/k.

Here are a few pictures of our children enjoying the nice summer weather. Some of the pictures are from a slip and slide party that we had in my parent's back yard. The rest are from the daily routine of bike-riding in the front yard.

New at This

With our big move to Arizona on the horizon we wanted to do something to keep in touch with our family and all of the wonderful friends we left behind in Provo. We are new at the "blog" thing, but we should be able to figure things out relatively quickly. We will try to make regular updates to our blog, and we hope this provides a good way to stay in touch with all of you.