Aladdin

If any of you have seen Disney's Aladdin, then you'll have a pretty good idea of how Emily looked this morning. She has a vest and a pants that are both red with a cow pattern. Since she always make sure whatever she wears is a set, she put these on. Unfortunately she didn't put on an undershirt and the vest doesn't have buttons. We grabbed her and put a Walk for Life shirt on her underneath the vest. Now she can advertise and wear her matching cow pattern outfit at the same time.

Walk for Life!

Today was the Walk for Life. Woo hoo! And guess what? It wasn't cancelled for rain! In fact, it didn't begin raining until after the Walk for Life ended. It was overcast during the walk, but it only started raining when the last people to leave (us) slammed their car door and began to drive away. Neat, right? This year the McPhersons walked away with four door prizes, because there were a ton. I think most people thought it would be cancelled and didn't show up so the door prize to person ratio was all messed up. Anyway, Grace got two pocketknives, Emily got a watch battery, Connor got bread, and I got a box of make-up. Yes, make-up. I traded the entire box for one of Grace's pocketknives. She's a wheeler-dealer, that one. Now she has a knife AND a box of make-up. She made out like a bandit. Oh yeah, don't ask me what Emily is going to do with a watch battery since she doesn't even have a watch let alone a watch that is low on power.

Ode to Emily

Today is Emily's birthday, so this post is all about her. I saw her for the first time at about noon because I was gone at Angel Food starting at 5:00 in the morning. Heather made a cake of a pink poodle out of a lamb-shaped cake mold. Pretty awesome, right? The reason it is a pink poodle is because Emily's Webkinz, which is a type of stuffed animal, is also a pink poodle and she loves it to death. Of course, that is in part because Webkinz have an online site where you play addictive online games with your digital Webkinz. Emily is always agitating to be allowed on the computer to play Webkinz. Since there are only two computers that are connected to the internet, she is typically ignored. That is, on days that aren't her birthday.

Douglas Has Arrived

Status Report: After four days delay for snow and a missed flight in Texas, Douglas has arrived. Heather is much quieter this morning: She's probably more talkative online than in person when it comes to Douglas. Alexie has not come downstairs yet. Since Douglas was lain over in Texas for a while, he bought Emily a Sheriff's Badge, which is really great since we got Bang for Christmas and Emily and Luke have been really loving it. Dad loves it and plays it whenever we have five players, but the older kids minus myself are uncooperative and unenthusiastic. The problem is that Bang is not a game for kids under the age of five and the subtle intrigue often proves elusive for kids with the mental capacity of Emily, Luke, and Andrew. Maybe Douglas would play...

You know what I'm talking about

This morning I woke up to the dulcet tones of my sister telling me that Emily had dropped what amounted to an entire roll of toilet paper into the girls toilet and tried to flush it. Multiple times. Anyways, being the best plumber guy in the world besides Mario (and he's busy), I'm always the go-to guy in these situations. I got out of bed and promptly stepped on a toy. The toy slipped out from under me and I fell, smacking my head on the table. If it was brighter I would have been able to tell what toy I had tripped over and therefore know who to kill. Unfortunately it was dark so I had to resign myself to swearing to track down whoever left that toy there and then tie them to the pear trees near UTC campus that give off the dead fish smell. Then, I hear a sigh from one of the loft beds. Luke's voice wafts down, clearly disgusted, "That's not very funny, Duncan." Oh. Sorry, your majesty. Guess I'll have to try harder to amuse you the next time I trip. Anyways, grumbling I unstuffed the toilet and then came downstairs for morning devotions. Not a very good start to the day of my first final. (Whatever.)

Human Nature

Yesterday I was sitting on the couch reading my UTC catalog while Emily sat next to me talking. If you don't know already, Emily is the thing that never shuts up. I listen to her jabber for a couple minutes and whenever there is a pause I will nod and say, "uh-huh..." Yesterday I discovered that Emily was actually saying something interesting. She was explaining to me who exactly her favorite baseball team was. Now this surprised me because we McPhersons only talk about baseball to be polite. I know only the smallest handful of baseball teams and they are only the ones that people really love because they win all the time or the ones that people really hate because they lose all the time. Anyway, any bets on who Emily's favorite baseball team was?

No seriously, guess.

Whatever you guessed, you were wrong. Emily's favorite baseball team is "The team that always beats Charlie Brown's team." This strikes me as odd because the only person on that team that actually has a name is Peppermint Patty. When I asked her why this was her favorite team she said, "Because they always win." Ta-da! Now we have some idea why the Yankees are so popular.

Random Cuteness

So I was picking on Emily, poking her in the forehead. She was wearing a Shakespeare shirt that belongs to Grace so it goes to her knees.

"Stop!" She said, covering her forehead.

"Oh ho! Why don't you ask your money to save you!" I said, on David's suggestion. (He was sitting beside Emily doing his math.)

"Money doesn't save you. It only gets you out of jail, dummy."

I think Emily has been playing too much Monopoly or something. I can't think of any other reasonable explanation for her saying something so cute.

What's for dinner?

So I was chilling at my computer and celebrating my new breakthrough, having discovered that I was multiplying my variable by -1 instead of 0, when Luke barged in and yelled "Hey everybody! It's time for dinner!"

"What's for dinner?" Connor asked, peeling himself away from his computer.

"Chips and salsa!" Luke said, his eyes alight.

"And cheese!" yelled Emily as she hopped in.

"With a side of Mexican Casserole, I presume?" I asked, since I am as sarcastic and unrelatable as Artemis Fowl.

"Exactly!" Luke said, bounding out again to go tell someone else the good news.

Life in general

Yawn, it's morning. Life goes on as usual. Mom is teaching, that's what she's always doing. Andrew is being taught, per usual. I can hear him reciting his Shakespeare part. Mom just called Lexie and reminded her to do class with Emily. Any second, she'll walk in and ask me where Luke is and whether he's finished with his math. Heather is still asleep, and she's probably still mad. I told her over and over that I didn't wipe snot on her bag, which is true, but she doesn't listen. (How's that for a weird statement. It's a long story so I won't bother boring you with it. Just be assured, I did not do anything so morbidly disgusting.) I think Luke is now asking Mom a question. That'll speed up the Mom-comes-looking-for-Duncan process. Looks like I've got to go. I can't put off teaching Luke any longer.

Something Odd

Alright so something odd happened this morning. First Emily walked into the room and shouted "Breakfast Time!" This isn't odd because Emily is often sent up to wake everyone up for breakfast. Andrew is sent more often because he's always awake before everyone else and is readily available for parent exploitation, but I digress. She then followed it up by saying "There are doughnuts!" This isn't odd either because you never know when there will be doughnuts because you never know when Dad will buy them because you never know when they will be on sale. So it's like, whatever. Then Grace barged in and shouted "There are no doughnuts nor is it breakfasttime!" This one took me a while to sort out. I finally figured from all the shouting that Grace and Emily were doing that Emily wanted to play Pokemon with the boys and Grace wanted to make sure we could all sleep by yelling at Emily. Yes, the kids have played a weird self-designed board game about Pokemon obsessively for a couple days now. Dad has even outlawed it. Now that's odd.

Anyways, Emily ran off crying to Mom who shouted up the stairs that it WAS breakfasttime and there WERE doughnuts. And it was true. The end.

Disney should adopt my Ranking System

I've been reading a Disney guide book on this trip. In this book they list every ride and assign it a number of stars. Unfortunately, these stars don't really mean anything to me because they aren't qualified so I'm going to make my own ranking system and list it here. Just for fun.

1-star (*): Little kid rides. Think Dumbo and all its unfortunate progeny. When little kids start crying, mothers put their children on these rides to put them to sleep.
Who will enjoy: Meredith, Emily.
2-star (**): Scares Meredith but excites Bryce, and therefore by extension Luke. Think little kid roller coasters and race tracks. When little kids say to their parents: "Put me on something really scary" and the parents don't have enough cruel sense of humor/irresponsibility to put them on something like TOWER OF TERROR!!! then they put their kids on this ride. For uppity young children.
Who will enjoy: Emily, Bryce, Luke, Grace (Connor would probably be bored.)
3-star (***): The rides that no one goes on. When you ask Aunt Jennifer if she went on them, she rolls her eyes.
Who will enjoy: Alexie
4-star (****): Rides that everyone will enjoy. The little squirts may or may not go on these rides, depending on how scary they are. Everything from PhilharMagic (Fun for the whole family) to Thunder Mountain Railroad (Fun for any of the family who don't mind broken ribs) that is fun and good falls into this category.
Who will enjoy: Everyone or most everyone, depending on how scary it is.
5-star (*****): The big attraction. These things attract lightning bolts like nothing else because they are the tallest things in the park and you can see them from anywhere in Florida. They garner the longest lines in the park that are slowed down by little kids crying their eyeballs out at the thought of riding and girlfriends who are only riding it because their boyfriends are. That's how scary and awe-inspiring these rides are.
Who will enjoy: Duncan, Kathryn


Well, that's it. I'm going to go alter all my past blog posts on disneyland to include my ranking system. I'll also put in the label "vacation" just in case any of you want to find these posts quickly. Just click on the label below.

Early Education

Yesterday Heather was cleaning out the refridgerator while Andrew and I, being helpful chivalrous brothers, watched her. Suddenly Emily frisked by and shouted "Obama is stupid!" Andrew looked at me. He figured that whatever was happening was my fault because it had to do with politics. Heather just looked extremely shocked.

"Emily!" She yelped. "What did you say?"

"Obama is stupid," Emily said, "Because he gets rid of babies!" Then she frisked off as if nothing had happened. As you can see, we begin educating our children extremely early. Dad, when the story was later related to him, suggested that since Emily was herself a baby the issue was rather close to her heart. Personally, I think it has something to do with the fact that Emily has participated in the Walk for Life every year for her entire life. It's one thing to sit your kids down and explain justice to them, but it drives the message home much stronger to make your children go out and fight for it.

Plane Crisis

Chinese Fairy Tale:

Once upon a time a father called each of his responsible eldest children and told them to look through the e-mail saying: Whoever finds the e-mail containing your mother's flight information will inherit my fortune.

The eldest son searched but could not find anything.

The second eldest son kind of stared at the computer screen for a while and then left.

The second eldest daughter did some clicking around to no avail.

The eldest son took another shot at it.

The eldest son dragged the second eldest son back so the second eldest son could take a shot at it. The second eldest son failed.

The rest of the children ran around upstairs yelling.

The youngest daughter started crying because she thought that the "Scotland people had killed her mother."

The father found the information himself and told his three children to go jump off a cliff.

The moral of the story is that if you want your wife back in your country, you'll have to do all the work yourself. The end.