Snow in Austin!

Another video

Last August, I got Rachelle the American Idol Karaoke game for the Wii. Apparently, we have been using it enough that the babies have absorbed some of the songs. A few days ago, I was sitting at dinner when I realized that Kyndall was singing the chorus to Stayin Alive. I went and got the camera and this is the result:

Halloween with the quints - another video

My travels

Hello, it has been a little while since I have written but a few significant things have happened. First, the sad news. My uncle passed away a few weeks ago from cancer. He was my mom's younger brother and had a great sense of humor. I got to go to the funeral which was nice. Unfortunately, when the doctors first discovered the cancer a year ago, it was already at stage 4 so he was fortunate to have the one year he ended up having. We will all miss him.

The funeral was in Utah and while I was there I saw a lot of cousins that I hadn't seen for a really long time. That was a lot of fun to catch up with many of them. I have somewhere around 30 on my mom's side of the family (not counting their spouses). It is a lot but it still is much smaller than the 52 from Rachelle's mom's side of the family. One of the cooler things I learned was that my cousin Andrea's brother-in-law is the founder and CEO of a company called Skull Candy that makes cool headphones. What was funny about this was that Rachelle had just purchased some Skull Candy headphones but complained that when she used them, she couldn't hear anything but what was playing on her iPod. This was bad for her because she wanted to be able to hear our kids while she was listening to her books. I didn't have that problem so we traded headphones and I discovered that those headphones actually did shut out a lot of the surrounding noise. In fact, on the plane flight to Utah, I didn't even have to turn up the volume to hear my book (I was listening to The Hunger Games which is a great book by the way). Well, I was really excited to hear that it was my cousins brother-in-law that made these great headphones.

Something else I got to do while in Utah was climb to the Y on the mountain near BYU. Despite having gone to BYU, I never actually went to the Y. I always seemed to have something more important to do. That was the also the reason I never went skiing or snowboarding while going to school. Now that I look back, I am sure I missed out on a lot of things because I was just too busy with school. I couldn't have been THAT busy. Anyway, I finally got to do it and it was pretty fun. While there, I stayed with my sister Megan and her husband Alex. They were fun to stay with and it was good to catch up with them a little.

One other thing I should mention is that I finally updated the look of our web site. I took out some of the stuff on it (including the link to my blog) but it still retains most of the information with what I hope is a much better look.

Update on the broken stuff

Just in case anyone was wondering, I thought I would let you know the results of the repairs. Well, the freezer with the broken ice dispenser took a really long time but I eventually was able to get some plastic epoxy and epoxy it in place. The problem was that every time I tried to glue it, I had to wait about 24 hours before I could test it.

The iPod was a bit easier. The 12 dollar battery I ordered came on Tuesday and I followed the instructions, put it in and it worked great. That saved me about 50 dollars I think. Just thought I would give an update in case anyone was curious.

As far as the kids go, it is still pretty much the same but there are some definite advantages to having them be a little bit older. Ryder can buckle himself in (but not out) of the high chair. Rustin can actually climb up the changing table by himself when he needs a diaper change. Kassidy can help pick up and put away clothes. Something else Kassidy does is run give me a (very brief) hug when I get home from work. Kaydence and Kyndall seem to be the ones that actually like to sit on my lap even when Mom is in the house and they can both communicate fairly well verbally. Anyway, there are also some drawbacks to the whole two-year-old thing but I won't go in to those because I hope to some day forget them and I might not if I write them down here.

This week

So, I am not sure how many people saw the TLC show. Most of the people at work didn't see it but that is probably mostly my fault for not reminding everybody.

Anyway this seems to be the week of broken things. Last Saturday, I had to open up Rachelle's video ipod and fix it. By opening it, I of course broke it a little bit more but it seems OK now. Then on Monday, I went to listen to my Ipod and it just stopped claiming low battery. I am hoping that it is just a battery problem because that is relatively easy to fix. It turns out that if you fix it through Apple, the battery replacement will cost something in the range of 60 dollars and a repair of anything else will cost somewhere in the range of 200 dollars. This, of course, is completely ridiculous. If you ever have an Ipod break, chances are you can fix it yourself. From Ebay or dealextreme.com, you can get Ipod batteries for something in the range of 5 to 10 dollars (and they even come with tools and instructions on how to replace them). In addition to that, you can get new screens, logic boards, front covers, scroll wheel components, and hard drives. In other words, every part of your Ipod can most likely be replaced by a part from Ebay. My Ipod turns out is a little bit different than most so I had to pay 11 dollars plust 1 dollar shipping for the battery and tools. I'll let you know how it goes when I try to fix it.

Today, Rachelle pointed out that the little flapper door on the ice dispenser from our fridge was having trouble closing. When I went to look at it right before leaving for work, the whole door just fell off. I was in a hurry, so I just stuffed a shirt in the hole and ran off for work. When I got back, I took it apart and found that a little plastic piece that holds the door on had broken off. I am attempting to epoxy it back on (I'll let you know how that goes) but I thought that if it didn't work, I could maybe order another part. I looked on Sears web site and actually found a technical drawing of the assembly but noticed that the part I needed is no longer manufactured by the orignal manufacturer and that there is no replacement part. As far as I can tell, it looks like I will have to figure out a way to fix the plastic piece or somehow secure the pin to the plastic. Bummer.

Still, I have to admit that fixing something is really fulfilling. I was excited when Rachelle's Ipod started working again. I was pretty sure that the act of opening it up and poking a screw driver in there almost garanteed it to destruction but by some miracle, it didn't. The funny thing is that I often can't seem to help but try to fix things when something is broken. Broken things really bug me and I get really figity when I feel like there is a chance that I might be able to fix it. I often (falsely) assume that since it is broken, I probably can't make it any worse. Unfortunately, I have definitely made things worse on multiple occasions. However, in this case it seems to have turned out alright.

I am just hoping that I will be able feel that same excitement for my Ipod and our ice dispenser. Fortunately, none of these things are vital but it sure would be nice if they were not broken.

Quint Olympics from TLC Multitude of Multiples Show