Randoms

1.  The other night I was asking/reminding Brett that he needs to translate my talk into German, since I had a talk in church that he’d be translating for me, and he said, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine.”  And I almost fainted for the way I was immediately transported back in time to the many instances my dad said that to me or my siblings.  (And at the beginning of my talk I thanked the people who were watching our kids for us, and Brett translated it, and then I thanked the good-looking guy who was translating for me, and he paused kindof disgruntled, and then translated it without the good-looking part, and everybody laughed really hard.  It was awesome.)

2. Saturday morning we were some of the last people to leave the church building where we’d had an activity, and there were a couple things that people had left, so we took them with us so we could give them back the next day.  Well, one of our friends came back and went inside to get his things, and the lady in the kitchen said, “It’s not here—the American family took it.”  And our friend said, “They’re not American!  They’re Swiss!!”   :)  Love it.

3.  One time when we were kids, my sister Kami got sufficiently fed up with people not flushing the toilet after themselves and she made a poster that had a picture of a samurai warrior brandishing a machete (or a sword? scimeter?  whatever scary-looking weapon samurai warriors use) and it said “Flush or Die!”  It was pretty awesome.

4.  The other day for some reason I asked Brett, “How come you never read my blog?”  and he said, “Because I live your blog!”

5.  Today Brett got a phone call from me.  Except it wasn’t me.  It was Ethne on my cell phone.  He picked up, heard buttons being pushed, so he said, “Hello?!”  then Ethne said, “Daddy?  I didn’t know I could get this to work.”  Then Brett said “Yep, you got it to work.”  and she said, “I just wanted to see if you were all right.”  Then Brett said that he was good, and asked her if Mommy knew she was calling him.  She said, “Umm, I think she’s waking up.  Maybe I should call you another time.”  Ha ha haaa!!  Brett said it was so cute, he wished he could have recorded it.

6.  The other day the girls were playing outside, and before they left they had to fill their basket with bread and put their blankets around them like shawls, because they were orphans.  Except then they weren’t orphans, they were kids who had to leave their homes to go to the country because there was a war.  So they bade me farewell, and went off to the countryside.

7.  Since I no longer get to go to the library and check out books, I just fill up my goodreads ‘to-read’  list with tons and tons of books (and by tons and tons I mean about 4 gazillion).  (Any of you who are on my goodreads list already know this.  Sorry.  :) )  I figure when I do get back to where there are those dazzlingly wonderful places full of books in English, I’ll be good to go for a couple years at least.

8.  I find it highly annoying that my next-door neighbor smokes.  It always ruins the beauty of fresh air when we have our windows open.

9.  We have a map of the world on the wall in Jethro and Talmage’s room, and if you ask Talmage where we live, he’ll point to Switzerland!  It’s awesome.  He’ll point to Utah too, if you ask where Grandma and Grandpa live.  (Okay, I should make it clear that he wouldn’t be able to point to Switzerland on any other map.  Unless perhaps it was purple, like it is on this map we got from the Highlights magazine.)

10.  Today a guy came to paint the ceiling in Hazel and Ethne’s room (because it was super moldy for some strange reason) and he asked how many kids we had and I said 5, and he about died.  It was fun.

11.  Brett is currently working on our taxes.  Our AMERICAN taxes.  Did you realize you still have to file income tax even when you don’t live in America?  Yeah.  Awesome.

12.  But we just got an bigger-than-usual paycheck because they started paying our child-allowance for Orrin, and they back-paid for the months since he’s been born.  Sah-weet. 

13.  Okay, I think that’s all I’ve got.  Over-and-out.