Look Mom!!

I was in the kitchen today trying to figure out what to make for dinner. The kids were quietly entertaining themselves. This should have alerted me, but I didn't notice anything until Laurie came up to me with the sleeves of her dress soaked.

On investigation this is what I found. Her new christmas baby dolls were taking a bath in the toilet. Luckily she had flushed it earlier.

Was this supposed to be a joke??

I just have to share what happened to a friend of Emily and Josh. His name is Phillip and he is six.

His First Grade Teacher had all her students write letters to Santa. She then took these letters and had them distributed among some Junior High students who were to write an answer as Santa Claus. When the letters came back she opened them one at a time and read them in front of the class.

The student who had answered Phillip's letter basically said that he was a naughty boy this year and was put on the Naughty List, and that Santa would not come to his house. The teacher realized too late what the letter said and Phillip was crushed. His mom felt so bad for him and has done everything she can think of to fix the problem; telling him that a bad little elf got into Santa's office and wrote that letter and for Phillip to expect something special from Santa to make up for it.

I am just wondering...what kind of person decides to do something like this during a time of giving and good deeds? I hope that we can all strive to keep up the wonderful fantasies of Christmas and keep Christ close to our hearts.

A Busy Day

Emily had a very exciting day loaded with two birthday parties. I dropped her off at the theater at 10:45 am for the first, where she was able to see the movie "The Princess and the Frog." The second Party was at 1:30 pm at Chuck E. Cheese's. The first didn't let out until 1:45 so she was a half hour late for the second. It all ended with a Limo ride home. (One of the girls' father owns a limo service and offered to take them all home.)

While she was gone I took the other two kids to McDonald's. When we got home we got ready to see the lights at Temple Square. It was a great evening of lights, crowds, and only a half hour of whining about the cold.

My Favorite YouTuber....

I'm a YouTube nut. I've always been fascinated with it. However, I do have my favorite video producers. One group in particular called WhatYouOughtToKnow is particularly entertaining while educational at the same time.

They just posted a great new video.

Enjoy.

The New Family Search website...talk about cool!!!

We went in for tithing settlement today & one of the things they mentioned was that they wanted everyone in our ward to check out the new Family Search website from the church.

After we got home I pulled it up & was amazed to see how much information was in there on my family lines.

Here's the link:
http://new.familysearch.org

You'll need your membership number (check your temple recommend or ask your ward clerk) and your confirmation date to create a login, but once you're in, the site is amazing!

It lets you see all the temple work that's been done for your relatives, shows you any that hasn't been done, and shows you any work that's in progress.

It also shows you everyone's contribution to the Church's massive family history file on your family lines.

Here's a few of the cool things I ran across:

1) My great grandma day (Myrl Rowley) was 14 years younger than her husband.
Wow! And I thought my 6 year gap between my wife & I was big.
To give you some perspective, her husband died when he was 76....she was 54.
She then lived clear into her 90's. Yep. That's a mightly long time to live without a spouse! Maybe that's why she was so grumpy sometimes, eh?

2) My Blair line goes clear back to 1135 A.D.
22 people back from me.
His name was William de Blair
Born either in 1135 or 1159 AD
In Blair, Ayrshire, Scotland
Died in 1214
So I got's a wee bit of Scottish in me laddy!

3) Lot's of James Blair & David Blair in the family line.
So my brother David and my cousin James have very "Blair" names.

4) Lot's & lot's of HUGE families on both sides.
Alonzo Brinkerhoff was one of 9 kids.
He himself had 12 kids.
And each of those kids had lots of kids (My great grandpa Brinkerhoff had quite a few himself)
My Great Grandpa Blair (James Blair) was one of 10

5) My Brinkerhoff line went clear back to 1547
(Back then they spelled it Brinckerhoff)
His name was Abraham Brinckerhoff & was born in The Netherlands

6) On the Day line (my mothers father), I don't have to go back very far to hit England.
My Great Great Grandpa Day, Francis Day, was born in Luton, Bedfordshire, England in 1846
Died at 92 in Eager, Arizona. Nice, long life

7) The Newell line has a TON of ancestors in Massachusetts, long before the US was a nation

And on and on and on....

If you have a chance, log in & check your relatives. It's amazing how much history is in there. Kind of makes my PAF file look like a speck of dirt compared to how well maintained the church's online file is.

It's also pretty cool because if the work hasn't been done yet, you can print out a paper & take it with you to the temple & perform the work right off of the form.

The temple updates the master file online and soon the Family Search file will show that the work has been done. All in all, a really, really cool resource!

Check it out!
-Graydon

Finally!!

For Emily's 4th birthday we got her a bike, and for the past two years we have been trying to get her to ride it. We finally hung it up out of the way because it wasn't being used.

On Wednesday she went over to a friend's house and when she came home she said that her friend had taught her to ride a bike with no training wheels. She begged to have her bike pulled down and the training wheels removed. Then she rode away on it. I was amazed! It looked so easy for her. I guess things are just better when they come from a friend instead of parents.

I'm Going to Disneyland!!

We just had a wonderful week in the world of wonder.

Our trip started at 4:30 AM on Monday and ended at 11:00 PM yesterday. The kids were very good travelers and we only had to really stop once en route. That stop was in St. George were we walked around the temple and had a late breakfast.

Tuesday we headed to Disneyland. Upon entering we got to meet Goofy and rode the carousel. We rode several rides and waited in line to meet princesses, until about 2 pm when we went back to the hotel to take naps. That night we went back to ride more rides like the Monorail and Finding Nemo Subs.

Wednesday was Veterans day and California kids were out of school, so we decided to spend the day in San Diego with family visiting the beach.

Thursday started with a Character Breakfast at Minnie's Kitchen. The kids loved seeing all the characters. Then we went on more rides then had another nap.

Friday we went to California Adventure where Emily and I rode on the Tower of Terror, which she had been talking about all week. That night we came back in time for the Christmas Fantasy Parade, Fantazmick, It's a Small World opened, and we saw the fireworks.

Driving home took 14 hours because the kids were not as cooperative and we hit snow. We had a great time, but we are so glad to be back home.

A Lego Dollhouse For Emily

I'm married to one of the most creative people in the world....lucky for my kids!

Emily wanted a doll house the other day for her little "polly pockets". She wanted it built out of blocks or lincoln logs or lego's.

So, Val pulled out her Lego's & went to work.

Check out the new doll house!
Emily loved it!

Daddy's Little Helpers

We've noticed that Josh is quite the camera-holic (get's it from his dad). He absolutely LOVES to take pictures!

So, last Saturday I was shooting product pictures for my website & decided he'd have a lot of fun seeing how it was done.

He was in sheer bliss...and his sister Laurie was too...

Here's some pictures from the fun.





Here's Josh taking the picture....

Here's the result. Not bad!


Laurie helped too!

Grandma Blairs Haunted Halloween Basement

Yesterday we had our annual Blair Halloween Party at my moms place.

The last two years she's done a spook alley down in their basement & this year was amazing! It scared the grand kids pretty good, including Josh. After it was all over he got to see that "the scary monster" was really just a real person, but it had him pretty scared for a while.

Here's a video of the fun....


Here's a link to a photo gallery I made of the spook alley.
http://graydonblair.com/family/halloween2009/

She also goes all out decorating outside and in the house too...

Can't Keep a Good Leaf Down

Last Saturday Graydon decided that it was time to start raking leaves, a task that is never ending in our yard. This time the kids helped.

We Love Grandma Blair!

Today was our primary program and Grandma Blair came.

Laurie jumped right up on her lap & stayed there for most of the program. Both we & Grandma were impressed since she doesn't normally do that.

After church today the kids made her thank you cards for coming.


Emily's Card


Josh's Card


Laurie's Card


They had a lot of fun making them! We took them over & delivered them to her & the kids got a treat too!

Thought we'd share them with you....

Thanks Grandma!

Making REAL popcorn...(not that foofy Microwave stuff)

Today I decided to show my son, Josh, what REAL popcorn tastes like!

Being that he's grown up in the "microwave age", he's never seen how real popcorn was made back when I was a kid.

So, we turned on the grill...


Got out a pan....


Put some oil in it and heated it up on the BBQ....
And then popped some popcorn kernels from an old bag of microwave popcorn in the pan on the BBQ.

He got to listen to it pop the old fashioned way...hitting the top of a pan!

We poured it into a small plastic container complete w/ the left over oil (which promptly melted the bottom of the plastic tub)...

Added some salt & shook it all up....
And then enjoyed popcorn the way it was meant to be enjoyed....


Nice & greasy & covered with salt!


Josh said it tasted just like the way popcorn at a carnival tastes. I agree! It tasted great! Delicious!

...more uses of the grill will be forth-coming...you know, like lighting the left-over oil from "old fashioned popcorn" on fire by pouring it on the hot flame....

Yep! We had fun!

A 7 Mile Spontaneous Hike Up Adams Canyon

Yesterday we woke up & Val leaned over & said, "I want to go on a hike today!".
"OK, where do you want to go?"
"I don't really care, I just want to go on a hike".

I'd remembered a place called Adams Canyon east of Layton that I'd hiked a lot as a kid & thought that'd be a cool place to go.

So, we looked it up on the web and next thing we knew we'd loaded up the kids and headed up toward Adams Canyon. We didn't quite catch the fact that it was a full 7 mile hike though until we were well on our way.

The kids loved it & did really well hiking. We almost made it to the top (where there's a great waterfall), but it got really, really steep, so we stopped at a smaller water fall, ate our treats & headed back.

Here's some pictures of the fun.






This was shot about half-way up the canyon. Laurie was trying to get down to come to Daddy. She didn't want anything to do with mom so Dad got to carry her....all the way up.









This is where we stopped near the top. It was a mini waterfall. Josh LOVED throwing rocks into the river.





The hike in was about 3 1/2 miles in and another 3 1/2 out. So, our kids pulled off a 7 mile hike in under 3 hours. Not bad!

....now if I could do something about my aching hips & legs...

I love Picasa!

I really enjoy making collages with Picasa. I could play with the special affects forever. Once they are made I never really know what I want to do with them, but they are sure fun to look at. These are the ones I have recently completed. I may play around with black and white sometime.

First Day of Preschool

Josh started school last wednesday. He did very well and was very excited. He told me that next time I had to go with him so that I could set up the train tracks. Then he said that he didn't want to take anything for Show and Tell because they already had toys there.

I think that this will be very good for him socially, it may help him to play better with others and share toys. I hope.

Desitin

Laurie has always been a good sleeper. She sleeps throught the night and takes long naps. Her regular nap time is at 1 pm and then she wakes between 3:30 and 4:30. This particular day I thought that she was napping extra long. At 5:30 I finally opened the door to check on her and I found that she was entertaining herself. All this time I thought she had been sleeping, but somehow she had pulled several items into her crib and had been quietly playing.


Desitin all over Laurie


The pillow and other clothes


My first reaction was of shock, but I got control enough to take pictures.


Graydon bathed her with Biodiesel Glycerin Soap and it worked wonders.