Who do you look like?

I was playing on myheritage.com and found this collage thing they do with their face recognition software where they tell you which celebrities you look like. I've done the one with the celebrities before, but I wanted to see what it said with a more recent picture. So here's what the collage did:

http://www.myheritage.com/collage

And here's another one I did. Mostly different people, but one is the same. I guess I must look like Sara Evans. Huh.



And here's a third. Sela Ward and Kate Bush are repeated in this one.

Another report card

Ben brought home his second quarter report card yesterday, along with his results from the IRI. He's continuing to do well and is improving. Where last time he had a few A's for "almost" and even an N for "not quite," this time the N had turned into an A and the rest of the A's turned into Y's (for "Yes," which is the highest). One went to a Y- (working well with groups...he tends to be a little stand-offish and watch more than get involved sometimes), but he's still doing well. He's been telling us lately that he doesn't need the beans at school anymore, that he's always good even without them. So way to go Ben!

On another subject, Chris is still working on potty training. Some days he seems to really get the concept and other days, not so much. His biggest issue is with pooping in the potty. He will tell me that he needs to poop in the potty either as he's pooping in his underpants or just after he has done it. So I guess on the up side of that, he is starting to show that he's understanding the concept a little bit. It's just taking a little work to get it from recognizing when he has pooped or is pooping to going to the bathroom to do it. This is the stage of potty training I hate the most. Not quite good enough to really be doing it, but too good at it to go back to diapers. So while we're trying to get him to understand and recognize when he needs to go to the bathroom (he's actually pretty good on peeing, we can ask him if he needs to go and if he does, he'll say yes, and sometimes will even tell us he needs to go), I guess I just get to do a lot of laundry.

The frog and the wig

So I was updating my profile a little bit and having it change the random question and the question it came up with was, "The children are waiting! Tell the story about the frog and the wig." So I wrote this whole long story about a frog and a wig, only it said it was too long. I decided that I would copy what I wrote and post it here just because of the principle of the thing. I took the time to write it and don't want to have to just delete it. So here is my story of the frog and the wig:

Once upon a time, there was a frog named Ribit. He was a happy little frog, but there was one thing he didn't like about himself. He was bald. Not a stitch of hair on his head. Aren't all frogs bald, you wonder? Yes, but that didn't matter to Ribit. He wanted hair. And not just any hair. He wanted long, flowing, golden tresses that glittered in the sunlight and glittered and flowed about him as he swam. Ribit was getting rather depressed about his lack of shimmering locks, so one day he decided to do something about it. He swam down the river to the bridge by the market and hopped up the banks and up the busy road until he found the shop he was looking for. There it was in all its grandeur: the wig shop. And there, sitting in the front window, was the hair he had always dreamed about. This was his chance. Watching for traffic, he hopped across the street and into the door and up on the sales counter. The salesperson was understandably astonished when suddenly a frog appeared before her and started talking, but she took it all in stride. "Yes," she said, "that wig is for sale. But how will you pay for it?" The frog thought for a moment and then offered to do what he vowed he would never do. Yes, he would don the hat and cane and at noon everyday for a week, he would get up on the counter and sing and dance. The salesperson thought of the crowds this would bring in and the money it would bring the store, so she readily agreed, on the condition that he not take the wig until the week was over. The frog agreed and everyday at noon, would get up on the counter and do his dance. When the week was over, the frog was relieved to finally have in his possession the wig. And what a beautiful wig it was. He put it on, hopped back to the river, jumped in, and started to swim. It was everything he had ever dreamed about. Some of the other frogs would laugh at him with his wig, but he didn't care. He was happy.

Two teeth!

I've been distracted enough with Ben's snow day and actually having to shovel here, which is almost unheard of, that I just noticed today that Daniel's second tooth has come through. It's low enough that it probably only came through yesterday, but I'm not totally sure. So now he officially has two teeth. We've been lucky and he's a pretty good teether and doesn't seem to get fussy with it. Really, really drooly, yes, but not fussy. He still really likes to chew on fingers and is still working on those top two teeth though. It's kind of funny that at about the same time that these two teeth came through, he's become way more interested in trying the food that we're eating. He gets all excited when I get me food and tries to take it from my hands. So far he really likes pizza, chicken nuggets, and caramel layer brownies. The boys tried giving him some of a chocolate bar with almonds in it the other day, which I quickly took away, but he did seem to like the taste of the chocolate. He's being trained young.

First tooth and some random thoughts

Daniel has been working on it for quite some time, but his first tooth finally started poking through yesterday! Today it's poking through even more, so pretty soon he'll be able to use it to start crunching down on some food (and hopefully not on me). His second tooth looks like it's not far behind, and his top gums are getting a bit swollen too, so I think it won't be long before he has 4 teeth. When it starts coming through well enough to actually see it better, I'll take a picture and post it.

Okay, now for my random thoughts. As you all know, I teach Gospel Doctrine in our ward. I've actually been pretty excited to be able to teach the Book of Mormon this year. I still don't know that I'm a great teacher or anything, but I really like the studying and learning I get to do as I prepare for the lesson each week. I'm sure that every 4 years, these things are discussed, but there's still usually one or two points in the lesson that really stand out to me and keep me pondering through the week. For yesterday's lesson, it was the point about where the Book of Mormon was in the whole scheme of the Restoration. The only thing that preceeded it was the First Vision. President Ezra Taft Benson pointed out that that should make us pause to consider the importance the Lord puts on it. This next week's lesson covers 1 Nephi 1-7. The lesson has you ask the question (again, something that was probably asked 4 years ago, but it stands out to me this time) about how you would feel if you were asked to take the trip back to Jerusalem to get the brass plates like Nephi and his brothers were. Would your response be more like Nephi's or more like Laman's and Lemuel's? That question itself didn't really cause my pondering, but when I turned it into more of a "if my dad, the prophet, had asked me to do that, what would my response have been?" We all know what the response should be to that question, but if we honestly look at ourselves and our attitudes, could we honestly say that we would go willingly without complaining that it's a "hard thing" he asks of us? And are there things the Prophet asks us to do today that we think are too hard to do so we don't do them? And does our response change at all when we realize that it's not the prophet who is asking us, but the Lord? I know that for me, I'm going to be looking at my life and my attitudes to see where my response really is and try to change it when I'm not willingly following.