I need to take a break from blogging for say, a week. I need to wrap up (literally and figuratively) last minute gifts and do some holiday baking. Besides, I want to go do funky dance moves to techno Christmas songs. See ya!

Or rather not. I don't really ever "see" most of my readers. But that's beside the point.

Let It Snow!

So, if you at all read Kei's photography blog (see my sidebar) you know that in Washington, we have lots of snow! For once, that is; normally in western Washington we get merely a couple of inches a couple of times a year. But in this last week, it has snowed 14 inches! We are having a blast. (Yes, all you people out there who get a foot of snow every week may laugh at my enthusiam.)

Anyway, we were supposed to have a blizzard and a giant power outage on Saturday, but it never really happened. Our family knew it wouldn't happen. How did we know? We merely paid attention to one of the primary laws of nature: If you prepare for any kind of extreme weather (blizzards, high temperatures, windstorms) it won't happen. If you don't prepare, it will. This law is referred to as the law of "Contrarius Naturae." [aka Murphy's law to the old fogies] Because we did not desire a power outage, we made the usual preparations for one: purchasing fire logs, candles, pre-cooked food etc. So, we didn't have a power outage. (Just joking-God has his hand in all things)

The fire logs were the processed kind, owing to the fact that all our wood was wet. If you can believe it, written in gigantic letters on the package of logs were the words,

"CAUTION: RISK OF FIRE."

Bracie, Giles, Ava and I have been enjoying the pasttime of sledding. We have been out in the snow sledding almost constantly, except two nights ago we left the sleds out and now we are having difficulty locating them under the snow. We'll have to go hunt around.

Here is a ten second video we made at Church on Sunday.

Featuring Bracie as "The Antagonist"

And introducing Nate as "The Provoked"

Camera crew: Me!

The Importance of Subtle Morals

Morals are only tolerable when the are subtle.
Good Example: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
Bad Example: Any Aesop's fable.
Do people generally like getting hit over the head with a baseball bat? (Rhetorical question: the answer is no) Obvious, glaring morals produce a very similar sensation to that of getting hit over the head.
Anyway, I didn't start this post to teach about morals. What I wanted to do was show you the absolute worst, most glaringly garish moral ever. I found it in a book called, A Hive of Busy Bees.
It would take forever to type it all out, so here is the summary:
"Little Davy" finishes eating a delicious lunch with his friend. They decide to go fishing, but before they can leave, Little Davy's mom asks him to do the dishes.
"Awww, Mom! I don't wanna do the dishes! You do them," says Davy.
"I just don't feel very well." Mrs. LittleDavy'smom says. She "gently rubs her temple."
Davy hollers, "I don't care!" and races out the door with his friend to go fishing.
After several hours of fun fishing, Little Davy comes home. He sees his mother sleeping in a chair.
"Hey mom, what's fer dinner?" he asks, but receives no answer. "What's for dinner?"
Slightly concerned, he walks over and shakes her. "Mom? MOM!!!" Little Davy realizes that his mother is DEAD, killed by the exertion of housekeeping. In horror, Davy looks over at the counter, and there sit the dinner dishes, spotlessly clean.

THE END

Can you possibly get any worse? Anyone who ever reads that story will probably be turned off from morals forever. Did the author actually think that story would "encourage" anyone to obediance? Yeeesh. If I remember right, the book has a Bible verse at the end of each story. What a way to give Christians a bad name.

P.S. Though I may be down on "morals" in an Aesop fable kind of sense, this doesn't mean I am at all for immorality. I'm for everything morals stand for, just not cheesy stories.

Lazy Ophy

I haven't been very consistent with my blogging as of late. I believe that the problem lies in the fact that I have been feeling lazy, and laziness isn't exactly inspiring. Here is a video, which won't require me to put any effort into writing.

Enjoy!

Elsie Marley's grown so fine,

She won't get up to feed the swine,

But lies in bed till eight or nine,

Lazy Elsie Marley.

At the present moment, that fits me to a T.

Home Sweet Home

I'm baaaack! Back after a lovely week, er, beginning with my cousins and Grandma. We went Christmas shopping. It was grand, but it is good to be home.
I am home to my family. Home to our beautiful Christmas tree. Home to our stockings hung on the mantle with care. Home to my cozy bedroom,


and the closet that explodes when you open it. Ahhhh, what would we do without life's little perks?

Fish Oils

Fish-oil soft gels are nasty. If you swallow them, they stick in your throat. If they burst in your mouth... it gives me shudders just to contemplate it; you get a mouthful of vile, slimy, fishy, OILY OIL!
However, its magical fishy properties render it a wonderful stimulant for the cerebrum. Or something like that. So it's supposed to make you smarter. That's enough to make me take it, oh, a several times a week.
But it is a thing of wonder to watch Ava and Milo snarf them. They simply bring a new meaning to the word clamor. They hang around the vitamen cuboard, chanting "fish-oil, fish-oil, fish-oil!" If Milo wakes up on the wrong side of the bed, er, crib, we hand him a fish oil, and BINGO, instant smile. Ditto for Ava. Fish-oils also make wonderful bribes,
"Milo, eat your mashed potatos and I'll give you a fish-oil!"
or threats.
"Ava, finish cleaning up those toys, or NO FISH-OIL!"
I can make them perform tricks for a fish-oil: "Roll over, bark, lie down, sit upand beg and I'll give you two a fish-oil." They actually do it!
So those are two little kids building up their brains who will probably rule the world someday with their superior, fish-oil stimulated brains.

"With every Christmas card I write..."

Today alone, our family received 6 Christmas cards.
This season, for the very first time, people all over the earth need to take a stand; a stand against the destruction of our natural resources and the draining of the poor postal workers' time, a stand against Christmas cards!
Do you know that every Christmas season, fifty-three million trees give their lives to become stationary? Do you realize that postal workers are forced to work countless extra hours to keep up with the grueling work that those Christmas cards make for them? ("Every night I come home at 3:00, exhausted, weary, and unable to interact with my family. I have come to hate the Christmas season." -Louisa Laborawi, Postal Worker)
I know you, gentle readers. I feel your anguish. I see the tears running down your faces. You, upon hearing this shocking news instantly wake up and resolve to put a stop to this. "But how?" you ask yourself. Then, you quickly scroll down to find out.





The answer is relatively simple, and when I say relatively simple, I mean, so-simple-an-amoeba-could-do-it. It is: follow my family's excellent example and don't send a Christmas card at all. Yep, folks, we have been way ahead of everyone else on this issue, and we never send Christmas cards.
Alright, alright, so we're just lazy, we hate addressing envelopes, and I just made up the above information. So for everyone out there who has been mad at us for never sending you a card when you've sent us one for the last umpteenth years, just know that we love you anyway. And for everybody else who doesn't know me, go ahead and send your Christmas cards. And for all you select few who never send anyone a Christmas card, give yourself a pat on the back.

Milo the Menace

The video below was taken while Mom and Dad were gone for the weekend at a retreat. We children stayed at home with our dear Grandma. Her back was turned.

I got myself into some slight trouble by taking this video. Why? Milo used to have a problem with "roaring," as you may have seen in the above video. However, this problem was corrected by sticking him in the crib about every other time he roared. Realizing that he could not "express" himself by roaring, Milo took to "sniffing" and got rather good at it. Milo's sniffing is not appreciated by his parents, so my encouraging sniffing was consquently not, er, appreciated.

Absolutely Salubrious

Last night I sat up in bed, aroused by a deep desire to gain some specific knowledge. But what knowledge, you may ask yourself is important enough to keep Ophelia from her precious and most valuable sleep? The answer is that I was struck with a longing to know what the word, "Salubrious" means.
It is actually quite strange that I have never given a second thought to words like "avuncular" and "lithogenous" and "anthropomorphism" but I in the middle of the night I sat up in bed wishing to know what salubrious means. Salubrious is probably a word I should know, and I most likely sound foolish by writing that I didn't know the definition. However, if I resolved not to say anything that might make me look foolish, I wouldn't ever say anything.
Anyway, last night I sat in my bunk pondering possible meanings for the word, "salubrious" and musing on the fact that salubrious rhymes with lugubrious. As I said before, I had a deep desire to discover the definition of salubrious, but unfortunately it was not quite deep enough! That is, it was not quite a deep enough desire to persuade me to leave the cozy comfort of my bunk in pursuit of knowledge. Likely enough salubrious meant something dull, for example; "pertaining to great Spanish literature written in the pre-Cervantes era"
If I am lazy, I am not forgetful, so today I looked it up. If you are at all interested in knowing like I was last night, the exact definition of "salubrious" is as follows:

Salubrious:

–adj.
"favorable to or promoting health; healthful: salubrious air."
Example: "He made himself a salubrious sandwich composed of germinated wheat bread, peanut butter, whey protein powder and kale."
Now that I know what this important and often used word (riiiiiight...) means I can count myself an intelligent and educated person. Okay, enough learnin' fer one day; I'm gonna go watch uh muvie.

Book Recommendation #1: Leave It to Psmith

I must say I have always had a sort of unhealthy disrespect for bloggers who write book reviews. This is a very negative aspect of my character and in the past, when I have debated with myself whether or not to write a book review, the negative aspect has always conquered.
But after reading Leave It to Psmith, I have overcome my unhealthy disrespect in my eagerness to share my new favorite book.

Leave It to Psmith is written by Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. I can't exactly imagine why any reasonably sane mother would wish to burden her poor child with a name like that, but P.G. Wodehouse has overcome it, I believe. Anyway, listen to this wonderful advertisement that Psmith puts in the paper, and if you aren't enthralled, I shall think less of you than I did before:

LEAVE IT TO PSMITH!

Psmith Will Help You

Psmith Is Ready For Anything

DO YOU WANT

Someone To manage you affairs?

Someone To Handle Your Business?

Someone To Take The Dog For A Run?

Someone To Assassinate Your Aunt?

PSMITH WILL DO IT

CRIME NOT OBJECTED TO

Whatever Job You Have To Offfer

(Provided It Has Nothing To Do With Fish)

LEAVE IT TO PSMITH!

Address Applications To 'R. Psmith, Box 365

LEAVE IT TO PSMITH!

Now doesn't that absolutely capture your intrest? This is the most absolutely hysterical book I have ever read.

P.S. By they way, "The p is silent, as in pthisis psychic, and ptarmigan"

An Introduction to Ava

Ah! Here we see my little sister Ava. She is four. We have more pictures of her than any other member of the family because she is the only one who doesn't scream and hide if Mom whips out the camera.
She is also the only person with blonde hair in our family. I think she is a doll.

The Boring Interview
Me: Ava what do you think of blogs?
Ava: What? I like them maybe.
Me: What about them do you like?
Ava: Can I have a piece of paper?
Me: Do you want a blog?
Ava gravely shakes her head.
Me: Why?
Ava: Because I want to draw on a piece of paper.
Me: Okay, forget the whole blogging thing what are you going to draw?
Ava: Flowers! And a horsey.

Me: So, Ava... Ava? Ava?

Bwahahahah!

In spite of all you people who liked that other layout, I am changing back to my simple old one. I will now watch you other-layout-lovers suffer in intense agony by having to look at the plain template.

No, that isn't really how I feel. I actually changed my profile picture to a normal picture to appease the other-layout-lovers' feelings.

The Country Bumpkins visit the Big City

The other day my parents decided to take us on an educational field trip to the King County Courthouse & sheriff's office, so we drove down to Seattle. I was pleased with the idea until we walked through the front door. Then, my spirits went down,

down,

down,

like a brick in quicksand. Wait a minute, that's a really lame, if accurate simile. Oh well.
Anyway, so what was the reason behind this sudden nose-dive off my spirits? I saw that in just inside the building was a metal detector! My eyes widened in fright, and I assumed the stance of a hunted deer.
Let me stop right here. Some people collect butterflies, some spoons, some post cards, some pretty china, and many stamps. What I collect triggers alarms when I pass through metal detectors, and it isn't spoons. I (along with several good friends who shall remain nameless) collect pocket knives. They are very practical and collectible.
"Mom," I whispered, worried that my precious knife would get confiscated like the last one (at an airport,) "I think I'll go sit in the car."
My mother did not take to the idea.
"Ophelia," she said, "This is Seattle, and I'm not going to leave you in the car. Besides, this is a family outing and we are going to stick together. Why do you want to stay in the car?" she began to ask, but then it was her turn to walk through the condemning metal arch. I watched Giles and Ava go through. No one remained but Bracie and me. I smiled at her weakly and faced the inevitable; it was my turn. First, I carefully placed my bag on the moving counter so that it would feed through the scanner. Then, I removed my pocket knife from, guess where, my pocket, and placed in on the tray. Bravely, I stepped through the metal detector and came out without setting off the alarm.

Just after I came through, my bag was sent into the depths of one of those, uh, bag scanners. I knew that my knife in the tray would set off the alarm, but as I waited, I heard the machine omit not one beep, but four! My spirits sank even lower.

Once again, let me stop. I like to wear dresses on nice occasions, but the problem with a dress is that there isn't a place on them to conceal a knife. So, being the ingenious problem solver that I am, I usually stuff a knife in my bag. This would be fine, except that I am horrible of keeping track of things, so I don't always take the knives out.

Anyway, so I stood there, my confidence sinking to rock bottom, and me wishing that I would melt. I knew what would happen. The scanner operator looked at me like I was a raving tearing lunatic.

"Did you know, young lady, that you have four knives in this bag?"

What was I supposed to say? If I protested and claimed that I didn't, I would have sounded guilty. If I had said yes, I'd probably be written down as some serial killer. So, I responded with a weak, "Sort of. Not really," which probably made me sound like both at the same time.

Luckily, I was allowed to keep my precious knives. You do have to give me credit because one of the "knives" wasn't actually a knife; it was a switch-comb that merely resembled a knife. I did feel better about bringing four actually knives and one switch comb into a court house because Bracie brought one too.

Mom looked on at poor me and laughed, exclaiming enthusiastically that we should take pictures. However, Dad was not pleased, and so unfortunately we have no accompaining photos. Maybe next time.

Results!

So, the poll is up and now my new video camera finally has a name; the name of Audie! Audie, the video camera. Doesn't that have a wonderfully melodious ring to it? My video camera is named after the super-awesome Audie Murphy.

Thank you, everyone for spending some of your precious time voting on a blog poll. May you never regret it. I will now christen the camera by breaking a bottle of champagne over it.

On second thought, liquid has never been good for electronics, and I'm not entirely certain that my video camera could survive the blow.

This, so far, is a really boring post. You see, in celebration of the fact that my camera is named, I was going to post a video. However, my parents are still unsure whether or not I should post it because it might be too weird; not bad in any way, just too weird. Sounds just like me.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

The Annual Detangling of the Christmas Lights

Here we see an excellent example of the famed, "Duck Lips" as demonstrated by my dear Daddy.

Does anything more need to be said?

Typical Bracie

You, gentle readers, probably already know that my sister and I possess the lowly and slightly unfortunate vocation of Alpaca Pasture Maintenance. If you didn't know, now you know. So, since as of now, you all know and now I know that you know, I will proceed to describe an incident that happened a couple of weeks ago. I call it, "Death by Alpaca Poop." Keep in mind that this really happened and I only just barely embellished it.

It happens that my dear sister is a bit of a klutz. Don't look at me like that! She would be the one to tell you. And now, explorers of the world wide web, I will now venture to reveal to you a deep dark secret. You may have suspected this; Bracie is not her real name! Her real name is Grace. (Get it? Gracie, and Bracie? IT RHYMES! Bwahahaha! I think I'll kill myself laughing!) She has always deemed the name "Grace" an unfortunate choice for her on the part of her parents because she thinks it is so unsuited to her nature.

Anyway, it all began one rainy afternoon when Bracie and I were raking away at the seeming mountains of Alpaca poop. Every time we filled the big yellow wheelbarrow we would cart it back to the dump pile, taking turns rolling the unwieldy barrow along. At the particular moment in which this story took place, Bracie grasped the handlebars, and began to push the wheelbarrow up the wet, muddy slope. She shoved, but it was stuck! Then, she gave one great, mighty heave,

and slipped in the mud.

Bracie's feet wildly flailed and thrashed. You those cartoons, where a character runs off a cliff without knowing it, looks at the screen while his feet pound away at thin air, says, "Uh oh," and then falls? This was something like that. Anyway, she knelt in the mud, certain that the giant load of alpaca poop which now loomed over her head would fall and smother her at any second. The wheelbarrow slowly tipped back, creaking, groaning, about to crash 100 pounds of Alpaca poop on top of her! Bracie looked up helplessly at the wheelbarrow, towards her imminent death. I could see her eyes growing rounder, and rounder, wider and wider.

Just milliseconds before the load came tumbling down on her in all it's glory, Bracie displayed a superhuman feat of strength. With all that was within her, she whipped her head and torso up above the dastardly doodoo, narrowly missing being smothered by alpaca poop. If you can believe it, the monstrous load barely brushed her chin, neck and nose. She survived! You should of been there. That amazingly executed escape would have had you gazing in admiration at my dirty sister. She was so close to death. I could just see myself having to explain to friends and family, "Yes, poor Bracie came to a horrible end in the form of drowning... ina pile of poop."

You should have seen Bracie wipe the muck off her face with a soiled glove and exclaim, slightly hysterically, "Haha! Near death by alpaca poop! Typical me!"

Looking back on this incident makes me realize just how important family really is. Seeing Bracie dance with death puts life into perspective, and makes me realize that all the business and commotion that we put value on just doesn't matter. In that terrible moment when I saw Bracie kneeling helplessly under the wheelbarrow, I found out how much I love her.

Yeah right. Actually, I was dying laughing while it happened. I just thought that maybe I could squeeze a nice, cheesy inspirational paragraph in here somewhere to make up for the fact that I actually typed the words, "Alpaca Poop."

Note: About the photo: the wheelbarrow in the picture is only half as big as the one in real life.