Michael finally finished with his physical therapy on his knee. The physical therapist, in addition to being a family friend, is in our stake presidency. It only takes a couple of visits there to realize he's single-handedly trying to employ everyone in the stake! He hires and trains a lot of youth, so Michael got to associate with a lot of the upper-classmen of our stake youth program. He showed one of them how to set the back-up timer on his therapy station so it would go off at 10:30 the next day. Then he and she went around and set all of the other stations to go off, too! Christine asked Scott (the boss) if they all went off. He said something to the effect of, "Yeah, it happens every couple of weeks -- every time we hire somebody new."
Mark played saxophone in the school band's Christmas concert.
We're not being too proud when we say that he was the best sax player there! The next day they got their music for their next concert, and Mark was already honking away on it. Actually, he is waaay past the honking stage, and can actually play real music, and it's easy to recognize the tunes he's playing.
Jason got to go visit the Pioneer Village, an old west educational center like the one we grew up with in Lubbock. He's the one standing on the right in the picture. Christine got a call to sub for his teacher that day. We assumed she'd be going on the field trip in place of Mrs. Jaramillo. But instead, she was called in to teach the kids that were not able to go on the field trip. Bummer for Christine, but at least Jason didn't have to worry about his mom wiping his face after lunch. Can you just see it? She'd be licking her fingers and wiping the corners of his mouth. You mothers out there, you know what I'm talking about. I know you've done it recently yourselves!
Joanne had her 7th birthday last week. This week we had her party. She got a few princess friends together for a princess party yesterday. Everyone had fun. We even had a magic show, provided by Mark and Jason. (A copy of the video is included at the bottom of this post, if you're interested.)
Both Joanne and Julie were selected as students of the month in their classes. Each month the school has an award assembly for the students. We were assured by both teachers that their being selected at the same time was purely coincidental -- it wasn't just a vote of convenience for her family. Of course we're very proud of our daughters (and sons, too).
On Friday, Christine came down the hallway to find a flood of water coming from the laundry room. To make a long story short, we both learned how washers figure out how much water there is in the tub. It's really ingenious how it works. You should go look it up on howstuffworks.com. We also learned how to fix it (thankfully!). Here's how: Step 1, you pray. Next, you look up the part on the internet, you pray some more, you go buy the part, you pray again, you put the part in, and keep praying. When it doesn't fix the problem, you curse, then you pray for forgiveness, and for a miracle. Then you listen to the prompting that says, go ahead and blow on the little hose to clear it out, then actually hook it to the controller this time! Voila! I'm sure real plumbers and fix-it men don't rely on prayer as much as I do. But this way, I'm sure I can use it as a story in a talk someday. (By the way, Christine did all the work by herself up to the point of buying the part and sticking it back on. I was impressed. She gets all that know-how from the Carr side of the family.)
Well, there you have it. See, you're just as normal (or weird) as we are! Have a great week!
Here's the video we promised. Don't worry, Christine's back-side is only there for a brief moment!