Snow Pics

Here are a few pics from from the snow storm, none really show how much it snowed but they are still good.

Video test!

A couple videos of Miku playing Wii Fit.

New content coming soon!

Went to watch Miku's PE class today and took some video. Will try to get it and some pictures up soon.

How about some of the winter wonderland you are all experiencing these days?

If it was Uncle Bunker, did my dad work at Sister Sunshine?

NYTimes travel piece on the outside interest in the Silver Valley as a getaway destination.

Emma's Rendition of the Bird

This is how Emma expresses her version of the finger. I told her that we were done cleaning and this is what I got in return.

What in the heck????

Can someone please tell me how Miku got a picture doing this???
LOL

Template adjustments

I made a couple changes to the template (the main text area is a little wider now). I think it's okay but let me know if there are any problems with display.

Everyone is encourage to test out other templates (when posting, click the Template tab, then the Pick New Template sub-tab). We can then decide if we want to change it.

Also, we can come up with a new URL if we want. Currently its jjmapj.blogspot.com but we can try to get something easier to remember. I don't know if we really need it though.

Some recent photos

After looking at Emma and Tiggs's pictures, Miku and I took a few of our own.

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tiggs

hello!








this is my first blog under the name 'TIGGS" lol








im excited to get on this almost as much as myspace!!

















a couple of weeks ago i had a wondrfully fun birthday party at beverly in the couer d alene resort!!

these are the best friends a girl could have!!!

Savannah,Kenzie,Laura

o yeah and moms in there too.!.

BUT WAIT THERES MORE!!!!
i also had abirthday on my actual birthday.

(there would be pictures here but our cameras being stupid!!)











(one here too)



















(and probably one here)



But ill try 2 get those pictures upsoon


Increase the peace
Antigone<3

When I grow up I want to be...

Miku and I were practicing letters today and I noticed that Miku's "L" and "R" pronunciation isn't all that great. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being a huge stickler for it, but it's important to pay attention in a bilingual environment. For example, she says "L" without touching her tongue to the roof of her mouth, which reduces the overall strength of the sound.

But the bigger problem was "R". If you say it slow, that letter almost has two syllables "ah-err". Only problem is that Miku doesn't really have the second part and it sounds kind of like "ahh(r)". To encourage her, I really emphasized the two parts and said (now you say it with me): AAHHH-ERRRRR.

She cocks her head and looks and me and responds with "pirate"?

Yuzuru about fell off the couch.

Big League Cheese

I was watching Napolean Dynamite with the Director Commentary last night and the rest of the family settled into the couch with me as well. At the dance, Napolean gets ditched by Trisha and goes to the bathroom where he puts in a big mouthful of Big League Chew (which he later swallows). The director mentioned that when he was a kid, his parents had outlawed chewing gum so he never got have Big League Chew, but he'd wanted it so bad he use to grate cheese and stick it in his lip.

This brought back memories to me and I pointed out to Yuzuru what he was talking about it. She thought the idea of a dip of grated cheese funny enough, but when I told her that I used to do it too, she broke up. I'm sure I remember Josh also sticking a pinch of grated cheddar in his lip too.

1, 2, 3....

Miku has been able to count to ten for a while now and while she's got a sense of the 'teens, she hasn't quite pinned them down yet. "12" is a tricky one, apparently, as she tends to skip it, sometimes going to 13 but occasionally even jumping to 17. We've gone to 20 and through the 20s a couple times, but the other night we went all the way to (insert Mr Evil music) one million!

We counted all the way to 100 to start with. She caught on to the pattern of the 20s-90s (forty-ONE, forty-TWO, etc), then after 1-hundred, we went quickly through the 101s, 110s, etc. She started to grasp the pattern of the 10s and their relation to the basic 1-9 numbers. When we got to 199, I pointed out that the last time we had 99, we went to ONE hundred, so this time.... Her eyes light up and she smiles and says TWO HUNDRED! And so on and so forth up to 1000, then the 10-thousand, 100-thousand, but then 1 million, 10 million, 100 million, etc.

We probably talked about number patterns for at least 15 minutes, I'd say. Quite fun, actually.

As an aside, did you hear about George Bush's response to the Iraq War casualty briefing a couple years ago? It was reported that a suicide bomber had killed 3 Brazilian. The president's faced blanched and he clearly looked to be in shock. His advisors and aides weren't quite sure what to make of that response so they just stood fast for a few moments until he began to compose himself. As he took a deep breath, he looked up at Rumsfeld and asked "How many is a brazillion again?"

Schnauzer memories

Last night when I got home from work Penda was in one of his playful moods. He is usually right there to jump around and get attention from me as I walk through the door. Pretty much like you guys used to do when I came home. I try to play with him a little by stomping my feet and acting like I am going to touch his butt - or get his tail. He then does this spin out on the wood floor which sounds really funny now since there is no carpet on it, actually he does sort of spin out at times. Then he hops from side to side and when I bend to get his tail he runs very quickly under the table - under the chairs where I can't get him. If I take the game to the next level I bend down and try to get him under the table and then he runs around the table and shoots up the stairs or down the stairs and around and around the furniture -usually hoping from side to side and doing his little barking. A lot of noise, spinning and Baba jo stomping her feet - he normally wins the game by running past me as I come down the stairs and he runs upstairs - knowing full well I am not going to reach under the bed to get him. All of this reminds me of a story Grandpa White told me about his dog when he was a kid. His story stemmed from watching Freeway playing outfield at the Cataldo house as we played basefall with those rubber balls... more of that story later. Do you guys remember Freeway playing ball with us in Cataldo?

Followup to the glasses incident

Quick update. I ordered new lenses but they'll take a couple days. I don't mind the public shame of wearing cracked lenses so much but the crack went right across my field of vision. I stopped by this gimmicky "$30 frames!" shop near school that one of my colleagues had used before. He said it's not as good as a "real" vision clinic but it isn't all that bad either. As a backup pair, I think these will do just fine.

And of course, Miku noticed the change in less time than it takes to say "Hi Daddy!". Literally she stopped midway through the word "Daddy" to exclaim "Ah! Your glasses! You changed your glasses! I noticed that the middle part was darker than before!"

Emma Bug

Emma decided that she wanted to be a lady bug for Halloween this past year, actually she didn't get a chance to decide it was her choice between two different costumes that we had. The other was a bumble bee. After halloween the bug costume she wore got tossed into the closet and now when ever she sees it she points and says "Buu Buu". Sometimes we have to get it out so she can hold it up to her chest and say "oohh buuuu ewwww" with a big smile. One time when she was done the costume was left on the bathroom floor which turned out to be a jackpot for Lewis ("Min" and Emma would say). He grabbed the costume and nonchalantly galloped out of the bathroom and straight under the bed. The sloppy chewing sound gave him away instantly and we were able to save the costume for the most part. Now its in a box, not sure why just to take up space a guess. I should have let Lewis munch on it for a few minutes so it wasn't worth keeping and that way I wouldn't have to keep moving for the next 15-20 years.

America's most interesting hidden places

I don't know if the rest of the family would find this as interesting as I did, but check out this short image gallery of hidden places. The photographer spent about 4 years visiting some of the most interesting yet unknown places in the US. She has a book out that is probably pretty cool too.

So that's why they call them glasses

So my glasses fell off the short shelf in the shower yesterday. They landed in a way that made me wince, but they looked fine. I finished my shower, dried off my glasses, got dressed, brushed my teeth, shut down the house, and then crawled into bed to read for a bit. Just as I settled in, I heard the crinkle-crackle of a crack edging across the lens, like a high pitched ice crack out of a movie. Sunuvabich!

Can't touch this

Hina came over to play this morning and a few minutes ago I heard her shout with excitement as the mechanical sounds of a dancing frog wafted down from Miku's bedroom. That frog is still alive and kickin', yo.

We <3 Spiderman

Over the Christmas holiday I downloaded "Spiderman 3", which I'd not yet seen but had long wanted to. I like the series, having collected Spiderman comics in high school. I thought Spiderman 2 was outstanding from both cinematographic as well as story perspectives: the fights with Doc Octopus were very exciting and well done.

So I'm watching Spiderman 3 on my laptop after Christmas and you know who crawls up in my lap to see what I'm doing. Spiderman isn't all that violent and so I let her watch it, explaining what was going on. For those that haven't seen it, it's rather complicated (which I realized as I was getting her up to speed). There are at least 4 plot lines running concurrently, two of which have roots in the earlier movies. I won't cover them here, but suffice to say that in spite of the complications, she got into it and understood. She recognized Peter's struggles with the identity, the lure of the symbiotic alien life form (Venom), the animosity between Harry and Peter (Harry wants to kill Spiderman based on the mistaken belief that Spiderman killed his father, but then he discovers that Spiderman is actually his best friend), and so on.

She ends up watching most of the movie with me and then the next day, she wants to watch it again. Once she understands a movie (be it "Over the Hedge" or "Spiderman"), she'll watch it by herself. Only after this viewing, she astutely observes that since this is Spiderman 3, she needs to watch Spiderman 1 and 2. I then downloaded these for her and we watched them together too. She really got into the whole series and character!

Of course, since they are downloads, they are only viewable on my computer, and I like using my computer for other things. So I had to order the trilogy (props to Amazon.co.jp, which not only had the trilogy for about $30, it delivered it next day for free, and each disk had extra commentaries to boot!). I let Miku click the "Order" button and then of course she was totally stoked when the doorbell rang the next day. (One side story: About an hour after we placed the order, a different Amazon order showed up. Of course Miku thought that the DVDs had arrived.)



So now Miku's favorite movie is Spiderman 2. She loves the first scene where Peter tries to deliver some pizzas but has to drop them on someone balcony for a second while he saves some kids. A resident finds them and takes a single piece out just as Spider takes off with the pies, so he yoinks! the piece out with a web. She laughs and laughs. Someone also witnesses Peter Parker run into an alley with a stack of pizzas followed a few second later by Spiderman swinging out with the same pies. "Whoa, he took that guy's pizza!" also makes her cackle.


The pictures I've included here are pictures she took with her camera of the movie. We've got Peter Parker, Mary Jane, and Doc Octopus.

So that's that.

Saturday night...

And I am playing on Josh's computer cuz he got the wireless internet thing so we can be online wherever, whenever. Whoohoo!
I just have one question to ask all of you...

"How did the pig tracks get on the ceiling?"

That is a new ringtone AND my myspace song...if anyone knows what it is from.

Our old t.v......

Does anyone remember our old tv that didn't have a remote control and we eventually had to start banging on the side of it for the picture to stay on..??

I am visiting my friend Stephanie in Tri-Cities and one of her t.v.'s is exactly like that one.
I had a flashback of little 2 year old fro-head in her footie jammies watching one of her movies with her buddy up her nose, and the screen would go out, she would 'hop' off the couch and go up and starting slapping the hell outta the side of the t.v.

I started cracking up with that image in my head...

Did anyone else see that happen?

Self Portraits

Miku took a picture of herself and then I took one of both of us.

Taking advantage of the snow

After the big storm a couple days ago I took Emma out to pull her around in the sled hoping to get her to go down the pile we made from shoveling the driveway. For some reason she always has to start with a friend on the sled with her, like she's scared to do it by herself. This time it was Tad. After 10 minutes or so Emma realized that she couldn't hold Tad and drag both hands on the ground at the same time. I ended up having to hold Tad (Emma didn't think putting him in the house was a good idea) and pull Emma at the same time. She thought it was cool to gather snow on the way, scoop it up and "nack" on it during the ride.

Once we had gone back and forth in front of the house at least ten times I lost interest and decided it was time to add some excitement. I pulled Emma up the snow bank on the side of the road and into the yard. Immediately I got the squinted eye and shake of the head in disappointment that we had broken off the familiar path that we had already traveled.

I talked her out of the sled when I realized that she wasn't going to be happy with anything but going back and forth. Emma took off down the road in her tractionless snow suit booties. On the way she discovered that she could pick up snowballs much easier without gloves than with them so I end up carrying to mittens and Tad. Two blocks later and near what I thought was going to be hypothermia I had to convince her that the dogs were outside and getting very cold. She had no interest in the fact that she was cold but Cassius and Lewis getting cold had her concerned enough to head back to the house.

I would like to take her to Cherry hill where we both could go down a hill to get some real sledding speed. Unfortunately the next day was rain which turned most of the snow into wet slush that was no good for sledding. Hopefully we have at least one more good storm before the season is over.

There has been a lot of snow here this past week - On Monday Tiggs had a snow day - which is like the second coming of Christ or something - the way the news traveled between Antigone and her friends...via c-phone...at 6:20 a.m. on the snow day - she was on the phone talking to her friends - wide awake talking on the phone - she doesn't even get up at that time....just the same "I remember...." a snow day we had when I was a 1st grader at St. Rita's in Kellogg...we went outside to play DUCK DUCK GOOSE GOOSE in the snow - built these extended paths through the front lawn of the house at the old house and the mission lawn around the little tiny willow tree and played all day out in the snow - what I do remember is having to jump up and look over the top of the snow paths - through the DEEP snow to try to figure out where everyone was - I being a little short was at a distinct advantage except I had this wild ass hair that stuck out and was a dead give-away to everyone.... coupled with a good vertical leap of about 2" I was a serious loser.

Miku's request

Today she says to me (in Japanese) "You know, I want Babba Jo to come to Japan."

'nuff said.

All the way to Kapuskasing

Yesterday Miku and Hina were playing with chalk on the street in front of our house. I had them lay down and hold hands, then traced their profiles. We then drew "300 hundred" balloons and connected them to their hands. It looked pretty good. I was going to get a picture but it started raining and washed all away.

I also drew a Doozer but I'm such a terrible artist that Miku insisted (repeatedly) that it wasn't a Doozer. I was crushed.

Haha

Nevermind...I just invited myself.
Wow...I feel cool.
Lol.

Hmmmm....

P DOG here~

Seems like everyone has my gmail account...or so I thought. I had to sign into this one just to post. Psh. I even have a couple blogs on this site.
I think this is a GREAT idea! I know the brothers have some classic stories from when I was little...
They were 50/50 brothers. 50% great big brothers and 50% meanies. lol

So please ask me to join so I can post normal things.

Shanks.

~pdog

Tiggs signs in....

hello there!!!! this is my first blog..... im glad we all can get on this one. this should be interesting. If y'all were wondering from the weres tim? blog it was 4 years ago he left (still havent found him) SHHHH dont tell mom. lol( not like shes not going to find out)

but i had 4 hamsters. i for each year tim was gone.

Neti Pot

TOday I was teaching a patient how to arrest his sinus infection - which immediately brought to mind when I sent Jerrod one in Japan - his response was "is this a joke?" More on this topic later.....

Teaching mom how to use the blog

"Jesus" Ray...you will never get how to use this computer.....thoughts I had as I tried to teach Grandpa White how to use the computer years ago....I could sense Josh was thinking the same thing tonight as he tried to get me onto this site...this is cool...thank you Rocky for making this happen - I am so happy to see the old blog with Tim revisited....

I found the other blog..

Where is Tim?, named after Tigs's hamster that was missing at the time. It was exactly 4 years ago, actually.

Setting up accounts

I sent invites to Josh, Mom, and Tigs but didn't know what email account to invite Phaedra at. You'll need to register a GoogleAccount if you don't have one, but once you register, you can post under your own name and we can tell who posted what.

Also, I had trouble writing this post in a Safari window under the "Compose" tab but it worked fine under the "Edit HTML" tab, FYI.

I may also set up an account for Miku.

The use of labels is also cool.

Great idea and I hope it takes off. I set up one of these a couple years ago for me and Tigs but having everyone on it is better.

The 5 of us...

This is P-Dog's first post. I think the title sounds good to me. Better than the White/Hansen/Washington/Takigawa/Regis clan.
lol.

First one

Just the start of many, Mom had the idea to get this thing going. We can share memories of Real Baby flying out windows or knee checks downstairs playing hockey, upcoming events like Jerrod coming home or vacations we will plan in the future. I'm sure we all have stories that everyone would love to read. We can change the name of the blog if someone has a better idea. Since this title was my idea I'm sure its the best.