The Twelve Days of Christmas (Kate sings!)

This is a card that my parents sent us last year. Kate found it a few months ago (back in October-ish, I think). She thought the pictures were neat, so I sang the song for her. (Not the whole song, just the last verse.) She asked for it again, and again, and again, and after the fifth or sixth time she started singing along with me. We've been singing it a lot this season. (Recently she was singing it rather loudly in the middle of I Love Bento.)

We finally managed to get a recording. Click here to hear Kate! (This isn't her best singing, but it's the best recording we got.)

And if you haven't seen it yet, this performance by the a capella group Straight No Chaser is not to be missed.

Aunt Betsey (the Amazing Cricket-Woman!)

We took Betsey to the airport this morning to go back to Ohio. She was here for just over two weeks. We had a good visit, went to some fun places, and ate. A lot. We pretty much covered all our restaurants--we did I Love Bento (nominally Japanese, though we mostly go there for the Korean side dishes), the Indian lunch buffet, Vietnamese, Mexican, and we went down to Lakewood for Korean food twice. We ate well. Ahhhh. (And Kate had all the rice she wanted, in several different varieties. Good thing she likes rice.)

Betsey's talents are many and varied. Among them is the uncanny ability to whistle like a cricket. I got her to do it for me this morning while we were getting ready to go--click here to listen. Years ago, when the family was congregated at BYU for somebody's graduation, I remember being at Betsey's apartment when a couple of her friends stopped by. I asked them if they had ever heard Betsey's cricket impression. Betsey was willing to demonstrate but had a little trouble because she was feeling self-conscious and she can't do it when she's laughing. So I said, "Okay, nobody look at Betsey!" Everyone averted their eyes, and moments later we heard the chirp chirp... chirp chirp... One of the guys said, "Wow, how'd you do that?" and Betsey grinned and said, "I rubbed my legs together."

I'm not sure if Kate had any idea who Betsey was or why she was in our house, but I think she enjoyed having her around. One day they were looking at Kate's little counting book, which has eight beetles on one page, and Betsey was telling her what kind of beetles they were. Then when Doug came up she said, "Show Daddy what you learned! Where's the scarab? Where's the weevil? Where's the buprestid?" She's full of interesting information about animals, especially insects.

This cute little dress is one that Betsey wore when she was little. It's getting too small for Kate, so I sent it back with her, but I wanted to get some pictures of them together first. (The Newfoundland flag has nothing to do with anything--Kate just wanted to play with it.)



Thanks for coming to stay with us, Betsey! We had a fun time!

"There is no WAY that's a digital product!"

My brother (Peter) made a clip for me, from last week's "Dishin' the Digi" show, of just the part where they're talking about my layout. Click here to listen. (In fact it is a digital product--but made with real paper!)

From "Dishin' the Digi - Coast 2 Coast" on DiSc Talk Radio, with Shanah Gordon and deann McDaniel. Used with permission.

Our little reader

Kate has loved books for a long time. She's always coming up to me with a book and saying "Read this! Read this!" (It was a great day when we got her to stop dropping them on our faces in bed.) She's interested in the words. When we read Hop on Pop she always wants to read the lists of rhyming words on the end papers. Several times, even. A few weeks ago she started pointing to the words herself and saying "fast past last, it bit, upside down." Sometimes she even gets fairly close to the right words that she's "reading." (We've done it so many times she's memorized where they are.)



We've had Mo Willems' stirring The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog out of the library before. It is currently visiting our home again, along with the adorable Knuffle Bunny. Kate loves both of these books. The last time we had the pigeon book, she was intrigued by the page where the pigeon loses it and yells "THAT'S IT!" Perhaps it's the big letters. Or the pigeon's crazed expression. Or the way that Mom yells "That's it!" when she's reading it. Kate would point to the letters when we got to that page. This time she's reading it with us.



We made an audio file yesterday. Kate's squalling a bit at the beginning, because she wanted to play with the microphone, but she still says "That's it!" right on cue.

Click here to hear Kate

And just for fun, we'll throw in some animal sounds too.