Tonight we told the story about Nephi and Sam getting smitten with rods by Laman and Lemuel, and the fortuitous, salvific intervention of an angel.
Miles asked, “Why were they beating Sam? Nephi started it.”
4 May
Overheard
OMN was in the room with the TV on, though off in his own little world doing something else. But he always listens. A character on the TV was listing geniuses, “Albert Einstein, Mozart, Socrates…”
OMN says, “Cool! I’m on a soccer team too!”
19 Apr
NAGELS BREAK THE LAW!
Our VW Golf clutch gave up the ghost two years after we burned it up in bumper-to-bumper up the hill to Dodgers Stadium. This time we were 30 miles east of Denver and it was snowing. We called a VW repair center in Aurora and they could get to work on it immediately if we could get it in. It was 3pm Friday. We had a wrecker zoom out to get the car. When he arrived it occurred to me that we had no way to tow the family into town. Wade the Wrecker said, “Well just put your seat belts on. I don’t know what else to do.”
So we climbed back in our Golf, put on our seat belts, and then they dragged the car onto the bed of the Wrecker and we drove into town.
So of course this would be better with a photo, but I couldn’t get one for obvious reasons. In any event, imagine riding at bus height, shaking around a bit, and with the added excitement of ducking whenever another car or truck passed by.
With the snow piling onto the windshield and our breath fogging up the insides, I think we went unnoticed.
It was completely unnerving, but as Wade the Wrecker said, “I don’t know what else we can do.” Well, once we were up there, we thought of all kinds of alternatives. As usual, most of my ideas arrive in my head right about the time they are no longer useful.
SJZ suggested another title for this post: SAVED BY THE BELLS. The car needed a new clutch, so it couldn’t be fixed by Friday close of business. My old mission pal, S. Bell of Parker CO, picked us up at the VW joint and took us inn for the night. Very gracious and very fun. His family is practically a mirror image of my family….and they have a Wii.
“Our door is always open to our friends who pass our way…” Thanks Bells.
12 Apr
A rose by any other name…
I remember when my Grandpa Nagel would refer to me as “Matt-er-Jack-er-Matt…” He was 94, so it was understandable.
SJN is not yet 35, but often mixes the boys’ names. Recently, O proposed a solution.
“Mom, why don’t you name me Harper so that you’ll call me Owen.”
[As a grammatical note, I believe the phrase "why don't you" is the meaning equivalent of "you ought to" and therefore does not constitute a question, hence no question mark. Just a little cyga there (cover your grammatical ...)]
11 Apr
Too many questions
We’re road tripping to Texas. O was in the backseat rolling out a question spree that was starting to annoy SJN. Anyone else who has had a four-, five- or six-year-old knows exactly what I’m talking about.
So SJN explains that the muscles in her ears are tired of working so hard and they just need a little break from all his pointless questions. O doesn’t seem to care.
His next question: “How are miles made?” (We’re pretty sure he used a lowercase “m”, which makes a big difference in how we’d have to answer that question.)
Exasperated SJN says, “There just aren’t any answers to questions like that.”
O says, “Why aren’t there any answers to questions like that?”
Please respond with YOUR answers to that question.
(Our answer was just laughing and shaking our heads.)
8 Apr
Oliver vs. Wii
In our continued effort to raise cultured young boys, I forced them into watching the 1968 musical Oliver, which won the Oscar for best picture. They were unimpressed. After Oliver wants more gruel, this old man takes him outside, walks him down the street and sings, “Boy for sale.” So I asked our boys, “What if I walked down the street trying to sell all of you?”
MTN2 says, “I hope I would get chosen by a man who has a Wii.”
9 Mar
Says O
Sunday nights, we watch the Sunday morning political shows recorded earlier. O couldn’t fall asleep tonight after trying to sleep for approximately six minutes, so he came in to watch with us. After the This Week on ABC, we watched the monologue from SNL from last night.
SNL opened with a parody of Tim Geitner offering $420 billion to the first person to call-in with a plan to solve the banking crisis. At one point he says, “I know what you’re thinking, what if two people call in with the same plan, who gets the $420 billion dollars? Well, in such a case, each person would get $210 billion dollars.”
O said incredulously, “That’s not what I was thinking.”
11 Feb
O’s Valentine Cookies
O is my ultimate baking buddy.
We wrapped the little cookies up and gave them out at his Valentine’s Day party at school.
Thanks Grandma Nagel for the great recipe.
They're as good as they look.
2 Dec
How we avoided making appetizers for a large Thanksgiving gathering
10:00 a.m. I put HEN in the shower. He scooted out of the stream of water and instead played with the water going down the drain. I thought that was very cute.
10:02 a.m. HEN is still down by the drain. I say to MTN, “HEN is being so funny. He won’t move away from the drain.”
10:03 a.m. MTN confirms that yes, HEN is funny and no, he won’t move away from the drain.
10:06 a.m. I asked him if he was done with his shower. He looked up at me and said, “I stuck”
10:15 a.m. After oil, shampoo, butter flavored Crisco, ice water (to shrink his swelling fingers) and a screwdriver (the drain was grouting into the tile so removing the screws didn’t do anything) MTN calls 911.
10:18 a.m. (I’m not kidding. They were that fast.) The first two out of seven emergency response workers arrive and pop up the drain with a screw driver. MTN could’ve done this himself but he didn’t want to damage the drain. This is very funny to us now.
10:30-something a.m. The 911 guys have done all they can and we load HEN into our car and drive him to PCMC. At this point, he has most of the drain cut from around his fingers, but all four digits are still stuck in holes. They wrapped bandages around the whole thing to protect all parties from the sharp edges. It was as if he was handcuffed.
11:00 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. Two physicians, three nurses, one IV (to sedate him) and the building maintenance guy (he let us borrow some tin snips) all worked diligently and very carefully to cut the remaining pieces off of poor little HEN’s fingers. One of the nurses was there just to photo document the whole thing for future teaching. I guess this went into the staff’s category of “things we’ve never seen before.”
We had a few hospital staff peek their heads in the door to check out “the kid with his fingers in the drain”. They were all very impressed.
The whole event took less than three hours. We made it to dinner on time and had a lovely afternoon with MTN’s family. The bandages annoyed HEN, so we took them off and the women in the family did their best to gush over him. He would hold up his two hands and in the most sad and pathetic voice he could manage he would simply say, “look”.
And that’s the whole point of this blog entry: look.
8 Nov
A Children’s Book Recommendation
I love children’s books. No wait, I mean, I love good children’s books. Tonight I read one to my 5-year-old OMN that I put on my “must-have” list.
Boxes for Katje by Candance Fleming
It’s been around since 2003 (the same year I was born! says O) but I’ve never heard of it. I’ve noticed it at the library a few times and decided to pick it up during our last visit.
It’s a true story about an American girl named Rosie who sends a small package to a Holland girl named Katje “as part of a goodwill effort to help the people of Europe” after WWII and in doing so sets in motion a major relief effort for the poverty sticken town, Olst, Holland.
I couldn’t get through it without tearing up, partly because of the story itself and partly because it’s nearing the holiday season, winter is upon us (at least here in Oakley) and stories of charity, especially during this time of year, always get me.
It’s a great story to start off the “season of giving”. Hope you enjoy it.
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