Swearing and My Grandparents

Grammy dropped something in the kitchen and said “dang it!” But not dang it. Uncle Scott was there and said his mouth dropped open. "Oh sorry,
" Grammy said.

Uncle Layne remembers Grammy getting really upset about having to clean out the kids’ fish bowl for the umpteenth time. She told the boys it smelled like horse s-. Again mouths dropped open. 

Grammy grew up on a farm and heard her father use all sorts of “barnyard” language. She said that just they way they talked!


Once Grammy was driving Scott and Brent and their friend home from a ski trip and they were listening to a James Taylor cassette tape. Uncle Scott says the next day Grandpa pulled them into his office and said, “do you know what the worst swear word is our language?” Scott and Brent didn’t want to answer any that. Grandpa said, “ its m- f-.” The boys were shocked that he actually said those words. He told them Grammy had heard those words in their music and he had cut the tape and spliced out the offending phrase. “But that’s not our tape! It’s our friend’s!” Grandpa replied,”too bad. It shouldn’t have been in there anyway.”

Vienna's tough Soccer Day

An email from Vienna's coach after a tough soccer game for her.

Vienna played great today. I know she’s used to scoring a lot of goals, but she played against the opponent’s tougher group today and probably prevented them from scoring 5-6 more goals. I don’t think we tie today if not for her defense against those pretty tough/big girls. She played great!

Ben

Vienna in the California Caves

We recently toured the California Caverns with all its beautiful stalactites and stalagmites. The guide told us about one part of the cavern that used to be popular for weddings. Traditionally the bride and groom would smash a bottle of wine or champagne on one of the rock formations. Later in the caves Vienna told me about her ponderings: "I don’t want to get married in this caves for two reasons: 1) I wouldn’t be together forever with my family in heaven 2) it’s dark and scary down here and 3) it’s a waste of wine!"

Vienna's 6th Birthday Slideshow

A little bit of Felicity

 I have taken Felicity twice now to Chick Fil A for their first Thursdays storytime. They have a face painter there and this time she wanted an "Elsa" face from Frozen.

 She found Nora's 18-month Halloween fish costume and it was only a LITTLE small for her. :)

Winter Olympics 2018

 While we are not huge sports fans at our house, we do get excited about the Olympics. This year to celebrate the winter games in PeongChang, South Korea we had an Olympic themed dinner. I made Korean Bulgogi (with help from my friend Michelle who used to live in Korea.)

 We had our fruits and veggies in appropriate Olympic flag colors and placement.

 And an Olympic flag cupcake arrangement for a sweet treat.

The Saturday in the middle of the Olympics we held a family Olympics. We have done this several times with my extended family at reunions but this was our first on just the Branden and Amber Nelson family level. Each family member was responsible for coming up with an event. Nora chose table-top curling. 

 Vienna chose a form of ice-skating where we had to see how many times we could spin around in our socks.

 Branden's event was to challenge us all to build a freestanding tower out of 4 apples within a minute.

 Ike's event was the long jump. Even though my knee hurt for a week after that jump, the whole games were fun and were a welcome break to spending all our Saturdays working on redoing our sideyard.

As part of our Olympics mania, we showed Ike and Nora the movie "Cool Runnings" about the 1988 Jamaican bobsled team. They really enjoyed it but I was very disappointed afterwards to discover the movie is only loosely based on reality, with almost all of the characters and events being pure fiction. 😕 Oh well. It is a funny and inspiring show anyway.

Ike got into the spirit of the games more than anyone in our family. He was always asking if we could put them on. He really loved ski jumping. Since then he has constantly been using his figurines as Olympians, pretending they are competing, even assigning them countries of origin. 😋

Vienna's Kindergarten Days

 Halloween bat hats

 Being fish like the ones in their puzzle

The Thanksgiving Feast

 Celebrating 100 days of school

 I came in as Art Docent and led the kids in drawing portraits of the classmate facing them.

 Here's the annual fun run!

Dressing up as their favorite book characters. Vienna chose Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Her teacher did not even know who that was!

Celebrating literacy during Dr. Seuss' birthday week

This is a picture Vienna's teacher posted on the class website with the caption:"Sharing a jacket with a friend who forgot hers in the classroom 💚💙" That definitely melts a mother's heart!