Texas Independence Day

This is most of my Texas History class. A couple of days after the official Independence Day, we had our own little celebration with our homeschool group. My students all did a short presentation on some aspect of Texas History. Lynette dressed up as, and reported on, Susanna Dickenson, one of the survivors of the Alamo. The weather was great, and we had a little potluck lunch to go with it.

James was off of school that day, so he came and fired up our little volcano stove and used that and the dutch oven to cook. I even provided a demonstration of the fire danger to the pioneer women who got too close to the fire! Fortunately, the only thing that caught on my dress was some polyester blend lace, so it didn't flare up.

Signs of Spring

Spring is coming to Madison!  The crocuses are blooming, the daffodils are poking up through the ground, the piles of snow are receding, and the vultures are roosting in the trees.

We have had a "kettle" (I looked it up, that's the proper term) of vultures roosting in some trees in our neighbor's yard for several days.  Apparently they are migrating and have decided this is a nice place to rest for a few days.  They squabble over roosting spaces and you can hear their big wings flapping.

Yesterday was the regional competition for Mariana's Destination Imagination team.  They had to do an improvised skit with no props and 7 minutes to prepare.  Their skit was supposed to highlight some of the issues around something that was endangered or threatened-- in their case the land line telephone.  They had a lot of fun preparing and competing.

Nothing much new

We met Dad and Mom in Brigham City a few days ago to celebrate Dad's birthday. We went to a restaurant called Maddox's. It is quite famous locally. They raise their own beef and bison. It was really nice to see them and it was a nice day so we drove Anette's fancy car. We are down to a few small patches of snow in shaded north sides. But it is supposed to be in the 50s today, so even that should disappear.




News from Creed
I guess ill start by telling you about my comp. Of course there are cultural differences between us. The way he works as far as missionary work is completely different. The old Dominican that I had in my last area in our house had horrible table manners and a giant lack of respect which I hated. But my comp now is a lot better with that stuff.
He is a crazy he is always singing or screaming something in the house I’m not sure what because he is probably the fastest talking Dominican I have meet so far and probably the fastest talking missionary in the east. He has a lot of love though and is always happy. A lot of the time I cannot understand what he says because he just slurs everything into one word but when he slows down and separates what he says I can understand.
As far as working with him goes its a little different because he is apart of the culture here so when we visit people a lot of the time we end up talking about nothing for about 30 minutes and sharing something for about 10 or 15.
It’s interesting to see the contrast between this transfer and last. My old comp was very timely and always kept track of time my comp now doesn’t. Instead of exact times for appointments like I had before with my comp now it’s more like a list of people we have to visit during the day sometime. So we are going to have to work on that.
We definitely aren’t perfect and can be more obedient. Like the other day Thursday there was a mutual activity at the church and the kids were going to watch a movie. We had to set it up for them and get the key to the gate so we did that and instead of leaving the activity and teaching more lessons we stayed and watched a Jet Lee movie. I told my comp that I didn’t want to do that again when it was over and he tried to justify it by saying there was investigators there. Which there was. One teenage boy that sat in the back and my comp barely even recognized he was there. I ended up sitting by him. So we have got some work to do but I am trying.
Thanks for praying for me.
As far as living with my comp it’s actually not too bad. Our house is a nice size and I’ve got a smelly bed and a good closet and we have lots of good running water all the time. There is one little problem with the house though. We haven’t had light for a week. It’s not like we are so far out in the country that there isn’t light. It’s just like someone turned it off or cut the cord and they haven’t come out to fix it which is really making my comp mad.
Speaking of light I did get your package the other day with those two lanterns which are sweet. The yellow one works amazing. It lights up the whole house. The food is much appreciated. I have a bit of bad news about it though. I forgot about how we don’t have electricity for the fridge to run good and I opened up the delicious flat pieces of jerky and ate some and now it is about not edible because of mold.
And as far as food goes we eat lunch at a member’s house everyday and pay him at the end of the month witch has its ups and downs because it is easy and I don’t have to clean up after a Dominican all the time but the house we eat at is a ways away from ours. Oh and were really not supposed to eat at members houses now. So I guess you could say my comp is a rule breaker especially since he is on facebook right now too. Uh dumb. well I’m going to try and answer dad’s questions now. Love you all miss you
Creed

(Answers to Dad's questions)

My area is called Villa Hermosa. My comp is from Santiago. My Spanish slowly but surely is improving. Our church is the stake building so its pretty big and very nice. Yesterday was stake conference and they had a priesthood meeting where the talked a lot about tithing because it is a huge problem here. There are about 22 missionaries in my area. We do not have a maid. We don't use bikes but it looks like they did before because there is a lot in the dl house. Mail comes when the office elders come. They just drive it around from the mission office--usually on Thursdays but this week it came on Friday. There are little internet cafe´s in probably every little town in this country-- at least two in each so its very easy sometimes to find them.

Science Olympiad Regionals

Video of Mousetrap Vehicle

Isaac had his regional Science Olympiad competition yesterday.  He competed in 3 events-- Physics lab, which consisted of a test portion and a portion where they built a wind turbine and tried to get the maximum amount of power out of it.  Mousetrap vehicle, where he had to make a car powered by 1 or 2 mousetraps.  The car had to go out between 7 and 8 meters, then return to its starting position.  And Write it/Do it, which is Isaac's best event.  One person sits in a room and writes a detailed description of an object created with some kind of building toy.  They are not allowed to use any pictures or symbols.  After 25 minutes, they hand their description off and the second person uses it to try and build a duplicate of the object.  Isaac is always the builder. 

Click on the link above to see a video of the mousetrap vehicle in action.

Isaac got a bronze medal in the physics lab, a silver in the mousetrap vehicle, and a gold in Write it\Do it.  His team came in second in the region and will go on to the state competition.

Our snow pictures

This is the remnant snowman made today from the remains of the Alamo, the canon, the dog, and several other little snowmen the kids made Thursday and Friday.
This was probably Friday morning. Or maybe Thursday night since it doesn't quite look deep enough to be Friday.

12 inches in Dallas! Can you believe it?
In Plano, we got 8. The kids played all Thursday afternoon and all day Friday. They even went sledding down a little hill we have by our park.
Yesterday, Rachel played for so long that she was crying from the cold, but when I told her she had to stay in for awhile, she cried even harder! A little later, after she had been back outside, I told her it was time to come in, and she started to cry again. She said, "I don't want the snow to go away!"

Then, Thursday evening, Lynette started with the illness that James and Elaine have, only she went straight to breathing distress. I thought I was going to have to go to the ER Thursday in the snow and ice. Fortunately, we were able to get it under control. She felt fine all day Friday, and actually could breathe easier outside, so I let her play. Then Friday night, same thing repeated, only worse and with fever. We were lucky again, though, and didn't end up at the ER. Craig took her to the doctor this morning, where they did a strep test (negative, of course. My kids have NEVER tested positive for strep!), and ended up giving her prednisone for the cough. Rachel is also starting to cough, (which possibly explains the amount of tears we had yesterday!) though at least she doesn't have the asthma to complicate things.

Today, there is still a bit of snow around, but I am glad it is melting! I felt like we were in Ohio again!

Snow!

We haven't had the kind of snow they got in DC, but we did get about 6 inches.  School has been out for two days and they already cancelled for tomorrow.  The picture is a snow dragon that Isaac and Mariana made.

This picture is a little grainy because I scanned it from a small picture.  Isaac is showing off his flying side kick.

Update

The month of January was been very cold the low temperature recorded at the airport was minus 13 degrees although the lowest temperature we have had at our place was minus 2 degrees. The temple was closed and not much else was happening. We just kind of hibernated for the month.

We have been having problems with our printer so I called HP help line and after spending a couple of hours talking to them they sent us another printer and we were to send our old one back to them.

When I tried to connect the new printer it didn't work either. I spent another couple of hours with HP help after which they said the will send another printer. I asked for our money back but they said they can't do that . When we checked the price of new printers locally we could have bought a new printer for less money locally. So much for a learning experience.

Since our old computer is beginning to sound funny we went ahead and purchased a new Toshiba lap top computer. We are still in the process of learning how to use it. The new computer is working great all we need to do is figure out how to use. We now have Web Cam if we can figure how to use it. After a few more discussions with HP they finally refunded our money and we went down and bought a new Canan Printer to go with our new computer.

Ruth now claims the new wireless set up upstairs and I'm religated to the basement with the old computer. The funny thing is that once we got the New printer working the old Hp printer started working again.

We still have several inches of snow on the ground. It really hasn't snowed much here since the last of December but i has stayed cold enough that the snow we had hasn't melted.

I'm enclosing a couple of pictures. The Frost has really made thing beautiful. Some where I have lost my winter pictures. Iwill send some that we took last summer while Sam was with us.

Pictures are: Sam on "the Rock" at Tony Grove Lake. Meeting of the Rails at Promintory Point, Our balloon ride, The Missile display at Thiokol, and a Fresno Scraper. Grandpa Hyrum Grant Stephens talks about using a Fresno Scraper in his history. Prior to WW II Fresno Scrapers were used to dig basements and on most construction projects. Either one or two horses were used to provide the pulling powers.

Love Dad Stephens