About English!

Stan and I are heading to China this summer, and our son David just sent us this hilarious poem. It makes me think of how difficult it is to learn our native language--poor Chinese! Here it is:

Hints on pronunciation for foreigners
By T.S.W. *

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, laugh* and through.
Well done! And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps?

Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.
And dead: it's said like bed, not bead -
For goodness' sake don't call it "deed"!
Watch out for meat and great and threat
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt.)

A moth is not a moth in mother
Nor both in bother, broth in brother,
And here is not a match for there
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear,
And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose,
And cork and work and card and ward,
And font and front and word and sword,
And do and go and thwart and cart
Come, come, I've barely made a start!
A dreadful language? Man alive!
I'd mastered it when I was five!

As the Snow Flies...

Oh wow! Remember a couple of days ago? Yeah, I put the pictures up of our back deck and barbecue and my thumb (I always take pictures of my thumb when I take pictures)? Well, that's not even holding a tiny candle up in comparison to what we have now. Oh my goodness. It is Snowville here. The snow is wayyyyyyy up past what it was when I took the pictures before this week. And then it melted, and it snowed again, and it melted, and all last night and today it snowed and snowed and snowed. They canceled church services (we're supposed to have stake conference) for tonight and tomorrow. About 3:00 this afternoon I told Stan I had to get out of the house or I would go stir-crazy, so we ventured out. We crept along the 57, which is normally a 55-speed limit highway, at a snail's pace, because it hadn't been plowed for hours. Every time we got to a stoplight we either breathed a sigh of relief (green--we could go through) or held our breaths (red--we were nervous about being able to move forward once stopped). We made it to Blockbuster, where, thanks to Joel and Heather's urging, we decided to try a diet of Jericho. I mean, you can only read scriptures for so long, you know? So we got the first two discs and got stuck in Blockbuster's parking lot three times. The last one, Stan got us cleared out so we could get out of the parking lot, but we couldn't quite make it up the hill. Two nice guys pushed with Stan while I tried to steer us on the final ascent, but we couldn't quite do it. Just then, like an angel appearing, a man walked past carrying groceries. He didn't even ask if we needed help, just dropped the bags in the middle of the street, said, "This'll be the third time today," and pushed with Stan and the other guy. As I was steering the car (Stan said to go STRAIGHT up into the street), a snowplow was coming along the cross street! I panicked a little bit, but the snowplow moved around us, and we got into the middle of the street. We said a hurried thanks to our helpers, Stan and I switched spots, and he drove s-l-o-w-l-y home. I should have asked if we could have gone out for dinner! I'll try to take some pictures tomorrow.

Our Incredible Nathaniel

How does a mama llama go about describing an incredible son? It hasn't been too hard for me, because we've already raised five awesome older brothers and two incredible sisters. But this Nathaniel is one amazing guy. And since today's his birthday, he's the one in the spotlight.

Nathaniel has an amazing ability to cheer me up. He never lets himself get down much, either. His sense of humor is infectious. One time I came upstairs to find seven phones on the bed, with yellow pieces of paper on top of them that said, "Let's play which cell phone is yours and which one is mine." He had gathered all of our nonworking phones and decided to make a game out of that fact that we had gone through so many phones. That's only one experience; I could name dozens, but let's go on...

He has been blessed with almost countless talents: language, dancing, music (composing and playing and singing), speech, thinking and reasoning, and a sense of adventure. It's so fun to watch him break dance! And I hope someday I can get a recording of the magnificent songs he has written (hint hint).

He has a great love and loyalty to his family, and that goes for everyone from the oldest to the tiny newest. He shares this birthday month with his nephew Christian, and in his Facebook picture he's holding Christian in his lap. He's fiercely protective of his sisters, and makes sure he approves of the guys who are interested in them.

Nathaniel also has a strong sense of integrity. He will stand for principles without shrinking back, and he is articulate and convincing when he makes his points. He is respectful without giving an inch for something that is not right and true. Recently he was featured on KSL, ABC, Fox News, and CNN (as well as probably a bunch of other sites) as a spokesman for Standing for Decency, a group that asked Gold's Gym to show only appropriate movies. He took a lot of flack for that, but he stood his ground.

Nathaniel is powerfully self-motivated. He sold products on eBay and earned his way to China, so he could stay there with his brother Steve and learn the language while seeing the country. He did this at the age of 15, at the same time as he was earning his Eagle rank in Scouts.

In many ways I think Nathaniel is almost as wise as Solomon! Let me give you an example: years ago, he and his sisters were the only ones not invited to a guy's birthday party. Nathaniel and his sisters each put in some money, and Nathaniel walked up to the guy later and said, "Hey, I heard it was your birthday last week. Happy birthday." And he gave him a birthday card with $20 inside. A pretty great way to make his point without becoming a victim!

I could go on for pages and pages, but there's no way I could even begin to express how much I love this boy! He is such a joy to all of us. We are so grateful and blessed to have him in our lives, as a part of our family, and as a dear friend. Happy Birthday, my beloved Nathaniel!

Democrats for a Day

Well, we just did something I never thought we'd do...we changed our party affiliation, just so we could do our tiny little bit NOT to get a certain someone elected! It was really pretty hilarious--we went to the polls early this morning . Right off the bat they asked us what party we were. We thought that was a little nosy. Isn't that supposed to be a private thing? And who said we have to tell at the voting booths? Eh? So we were a little bit annoyed that they asked, but apparently in the primaries you have to vote straight party.

So...let me backtrack a little bit. Our foster son Land is living with us for a while. He's big into politics (Republican politics) and he went down to Columbus to visit with party headquarters about possible job options for him in this swing state. The party head made mention that inasmuch as we have a de facto candidate for the Republican party, he was thinking of switching just to make sure that we had as good a chance as possible in November. Then last weekend we went to Joel and Heather's and heard Joel talking about the perspectives of one of the folks there whose doctorate is in international politics or something like that. This guy feels the best choice is the one who will do the best in international relationships, where we aren't doing too well right now, and he had a strong opinion on who would do the best job.

To make a long story short, this guy's perspective struck home with Stan and me, and we decided to vote for our best, least favorite candidate. When we got to the polls, and learned we couldn't do that unless we changed parties, we had a quick conference outside the doors in the cold, then marched inside and asked, "Where do we sign?" A few moments later, we were handed a Democrat ballot. That's the first one I've ever seen! It didn't take long and we were on our way. I forgot to ask though--how long before we can switch back? Yikes!