Am home with the kiddies today. I took them over to the bacon and egg play place for awhile, and we just finished up a yummy Arbys lunch. They both really like the roast beef. John's watching a Thomas video now. Hopefully they'll both nap.

No swimming lessons tomorrow, they start up again next week. This session we got them at the same time again, 11:20. That'll be more convenient.

Much colder here today. Did it really get near 90 yesterday? Wwaaaahhh. It was so nice yesterday, sat outside on the driveway, went to the park. Now, we're burning furniture for heat.

Back to previous comments about how Russian is mostly a phonetic language, i.e, words are pretty much spelled the way they sound and sound the way they are spelled.

English is not like that. Here are a few examples. The first is from George Bernard Shaw.

***
How do we pronounce the word "ghoti"?

His answer was "fish".

How can "ghoti" and "fish" sound the same? GBS explained it like this:

the gh = f as in rouGH
the o = i as in wOmen
the ti = sh as in naTIon
***

The second is from Dr. Seuss, good examples of same letters being pronounced different ways...

***
The Tough Coughed as he Ploughed the Dough
***

here's a similar example...

***
A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."
***

let's pity all those who have to learn English as a second language...

Bless my neighbor. He has a larger yard, and has a riding mower. I just didn't feel like raking this year, so we asked him if he would run his thatcher over our yard when he did his. He has this little thing he pulls behind his mower that rakes up the yard.

He did that last night, had just finished our yard when I got home from work last night, so I went out with the mower and sucked up the grass. The yards looks a lot better now. Still a bit brown, but now we can start getting down some fertilizer and watering, etc... That saved me so much work, it would've killed me to rake up that much grass by hand. Next year I gotta me some kind of riding mower for the raking. I can certainly use the push mower for mowing the grass, but I just hate the raking in the spring and fall.

Temps are supposed to hit the mid-80s today. But then, another cold front comes through and temps will only be mid-50s or 60 for the next several days. Booooooooooooo.

This morning as I was changing Hanna, she said "Hanna feel better." and giggled. ha, maybe she's starting to get over her cold...

We did Easter egg hunt again with them last night, and used the jelly beans Grandpa and Grandma gave them. They enjoyed that, gobbling them down. That's something we could do with them a lot. They don't know it's not Easter, they just like getting the candy!

Hanna was a littly owly last night, not sure what was bothering her. If she felt sick or what. The kids were in the tub for awhile, and at one point she started crying and wouldn't be comforted. Don't know if John pinched her or something, but she has had a cold lately. She went to bed early and fell asleep quickly. When Rhonda was drying her hair, and John was still in the tub, I pretend to be a monkey or a bear or something and came at her and Rhonda chased me away with the hair dryer and I'd scurry back behind the door. They both thought that was great fun and got a smile out of Hanna.

Then, John, that little sweetie, we kinda stumbled into a new game. When he got out of the tub, he started telling the Mouse Soup story. He did so well, he'd say "This is the story of the two large stones" and then he'd say something like "And the big stone said..." and I'd have to supply what the big stone said. I was trying to remember how the story went. Then, when we did the Ten Crickets story, he'd pretend to be the noisy crickets, and I'd pretend to sleep and try to hush the noisy crickets... He just loved that and wanted to keep doing that. This morning he came and crawled into bed with me and started telling the Mouse Soup story, and didn't want me to go to work, he wanted to play Ten Crickets. At one point he grabbed me and said "I'm going to make Daddy Soup!"

Ah, spring up here in the upper Midwest. Temps this morning were around 40, maybe a bit lower at the coldest. Temps were only going to get to low 50s today. But should be in the 80s by the end of the week.

I need to get cracking on the application materials for this masters program. I'll give someone a nice shiny new quarter to do it for me!

There is a new Prime Suspect! This is one is Number 6 in the series. It was on Masterpiece Theater in two parts. I missed the first 20 minutes or so of the first part. Taped part II last night. Haven't watched it yet, but am looking forward to it. The series is so well done, both in writing, acting, etc...

John is watching Veggie Tales Silly Songs. We went over to the park after supper. Saw some of our neighbors, then came back, and the other neighbors were out so we went over there for a bit. About snack time here and then bedtime.

I got to church at 7:30 this morning, and got home about 1. erk. I should be full time staff!

The other day Hanna and I were playing with dolls. She had fun putting a diaper on the doll, then she'd say "poopy diaper?" then check it, and then she'd say "just gas". (we say that to Hanna, as she fools us lots of times) ha

Well, the first post in awhile from my home computer. I revived it with a tape backup. I never get computers without a tape backup system, for just these occasions. I had to reformat the C: drive, then I installed NT to a WINNTZ directory. When that was done, I installed the tape software, restored from tape, to the usual WINNT dir, and since the BOOT.INI and whatnot got overwritten, when I rebooted I was back in business. I just deleted the unneeded WINNTZ directory then. The backup was from last September though, so I lost some emails and things like that, but overall not much. Again for this reason, I don't install much on the C: drive, I install on my other partitions and since they were untouched, that was all still there. So.

Kids enjoyed the last day of their swimming lessons sessions. They got to go down the water slides. That was fun.

Cool and rainy here today. Will it ever warm up? Aaaarrrgghhh.

Will be at church awhile tomorrow. Have to be there at 7:30 for orchestra, will play at both services, and I have to count money. Oh well.

Will probably teach a sunday school class this summer, a seven week session. Will probably do Ecclesiastes.

Haven't been here much lately. My computer at home is really messed up. Not sure if I'm going to be able to get it back. I have a fairly recent backup, so am trying to get that restored. But, tried overwriting the existing OS with what I have backed up, but that doesn't work terribly well while it is running. So, next will have to try installing NT to a different temp directory, like WINNT.1, then do the restore and hope that works.

Had lots of fun in Tennessee. John enjoyed himself. Last night I said something to him about Thomas, and he said "I want to go to train sets", meaning he wanted to go play with that Thomas set we saw at the Customs House museum in Clarksville! He still remembered!

That Sunday we went to a church service where Brian and Nassim were going. They had a guest speaker that week, from Mississippi. The accent and everything. He was fun to listen to. At one point he said, speaking as the Romans to Jesus on the cross, "Hey Saviour boy, let's see ya come down from there and do som savin'" ha, I knew I was in the South

This will be the first weekend I've been home in three weeks! wheee. will take Hanna to her last swimming lesson of the session tomorrow. They'll get to go down the blue slide there, but after the slides in Minot, this one will seem boring.

Haven't been here for awhile. We were up in ND, having a nice Easter visit with Grandpa and Grandma. The kids had a great time. We took them to a water park a couple of times. Hanna knows no fear going down the water slides. John was apprehensive at first, but eventually came to love it once he saw we could keep him above water. Last summer when we were at the lake he went under a time or two and couldn't get back up, and that scared him, and I think he remembers that. (scared me too, though I was just a couple steps away). Then, at the Y, I took him down a slide, my first time, and went under with him, and that scared him too. I eventually figured out how to lean forward at the bottom so I don't go under.

Tomorrow John and I are off to Nashville along with the others, to see Brian before he heads off.

I took the kids to Bumpy Slide Park last night while Rhonda packed. They had lots of fun getting back there for the first time in several months. They remembered all their favorite things to do! They still have their colds, and when I lifted Hanna up onto the slide, I could hear her lungs just rattling as she breathed. She sounds like a heavy smoker when she talks.

It wasn't all that warm there, a coolish breeze, and there were kids there without jackets, etc...

Tomorrow we'll head up to ND. Looking forward to that. They should have the new dvd player to entertain them. Rhonda said they could just have breakfast as we drive, so that'll save some time and let us get going earlier. We'll pick up Grandma Schultz on the way and bring her to Minot with us.

Should be warm again, but later tonight temps are going to get drop back down to the 40s. Boooooooooo.

The Twins have won their first two games, and both went into extra innings. 11 innings the first game and 15 last night. So, after three games the Twins are 2-0!

Temps could reach 65 today. Yee haw!

Watched the Gopher womens bb team get clubbed like helpless baby seals by UConn last night. They gave it a good try, and kept making the game close, but UConn always had an answer, and they clearly have the best player in the country. The game though was a reminder of why I don't like women's basketball. The Gophers have two good players, but after that, their players look awful at times. They throw up shots that don't come near the rim, or bounce off like bricks. At this level, you'd think the players would look better. In the men's game, you don't get players that look like you and me out there, but with the women, I could get out there and keep up. So, the nice story has come to an end.

I'm about 200 pages into War and Peace. Only 1200 to go. Erk.

Thursday we head up to ND for the Easter weekend. For at least a week now, at bedtime John keeps saying "I want my Grandpa and Grandma." We've told him we're going up there, and I think he's looking forward to it.

John woke up in the night twice last night. One time I went in there, and I think he was just cold. He didn't have any covers on him, so I covered him up again, and he went right back to sleep.

Both John and Hanna can say John 3:16! Or most of it. I guess Rhonda has been working on that with them. I didn't know that, and they said it for me last night! Wow. I was just having Hanna say "Praise the Lord". I've been too easy on her.

With the time change, and their kids, the kids stayed home today. Besides, I did communion at both services, and counted money today, so I didn't leave church till 12:30. (And with the time change, didn't exactly bounce out of bed this morning. Grrr...) Then, stopped by the grocery store on the way home and got a yummy chicken dinner from the deli. For only 8 bucks, got 8 pieces, 4 biscuits, coleslaw and potatoes. Goodbye, KFC! Great price for all that food.

Hanna is still napping. I'm not sure if John slept, he laid down for awhile.

The Gopher womens basketball team plays tonight in their Final Four game. Will have to watch that.

Both kids have a bit of a cold. Rattly coughs and sniffles, John might be a bit worse. He came into our room about 2:30, and laid down with us for a bit, and I didn't even know it. I was out cold. I woke up eventually, Rhonda was giving him some medicine. I heard him say "I want to play with toys". Ha. Well, um, you should probably get back to bed, little man.

I think I mentioned this before, but whenever I ask Hanna what she did during the day, she still always answers "Musikgarten."

I got out the violin the other night and was playing some simple songs like Twinkle Twinkle, to see how interested John would be in playing it. He wasn't terribly interested, but Hanna was. She kept wanting me to play so she could sing along.

I finished up Austerlitz. There were some beautiful descriptions of Prague. It described a fortress that was an internment camp of sorts for people outside Prague. Thousands of people were crammed in there. It gives you a sick feeling to read about what the Nazis did, and how methodical they were about it. Taking these people's possessions and carefully sorting and cataloguing them, etc...