Kuh, Duh, Eh, Fuh and Guh

Hi everybody!
I have had a hard time keeping up with what Max has been learning at school because we've been traveling so much. Starting in mid-September either Kris or I have been out of town at any given time. This week is one of the first where we'll all be at home at the same time.
So we're behind on our report of what letters Max has learned. So we're doing something revolutionary to catch up. A cool video!! Below you will get to hear some of what Max has learned in the last few weeks. And you'll get to see him cheesing at the camera. What could be better?

I do have a couple of notes here though. Mostly about duh. On Duh week they learned about dogs and dinos and deer and dolphins (he told me later that day that dolphins eat "squids and shrimps") They ate dried apricots, dried pineapples and dried cranberries as well as deviled eggs (which Max LOVES) and doughnuts.
For Eh one day they had fried eggplant (did they seriously eat that??) and they talked about elections. We missed most of the Eh week.
This week is Guh and they've talked about geckos and goats and giraffes. Today for a snack they ate guacamole and chips! Yum! I wish I got guacamole and chips at my school.
The most impressive thing he's learned lately though is Russian. Yes, they're learning Russian at Max's school because the lady that runs the school, Miss Meela, is Russian. He's doing great and he keeps telling me random words. Today when I picked him up from school he went through a whole bunch of cards with pictures on them and told me what they were in Russian. I'm very impressed! So please witness for yourself.

Thanks for visiting! And dassvidanya (wow, can you tell that I don't speak Russian?)

Yay!

We're really excited today because Kris got invited out to USC's pediatric dentistry program for an interview in November. By this time next year we may be blogging from the beach! Keep your fingers crossed for us.

So far he also has an interview in Buffalo NY and one in New York City that also has programs in Rhode Island and Alaska. We're still waiting to hear back from a couple of other programs and so could have some other possibilities eventually. Results won't come out until the very end of January. USC is our favorite prospect right now for sure. We'll keep you all posted.

Awesome, dude!

Here's another great old picture for us to enjoy.
This one goes along great with the picture I posted last time of Cammon, Char, Megan and I.
Nice pants Kari!! I had plenty of jeans like that back in the day. And I love Kris's hairdo and Hobie or Morey Boogie or something shirt. Kris pointed out his shoelaces to me too, hot pink I think? Kelly is really the best part of this picture though. A pink Bartman shirt? Wow. Crazy '80s shorts? Sweet. And the socks and shoes just bring the whole outift together.
Great picture, don't you think?

Kris still makes that face sometimes.

It's GOOD to have family

Kris's brother Kelly and his wife Lechelle moved out here to KC in December of last year, and it's been so fun to have them around. We've great time feeding each other dinner and desserts, going out to eat, watching movies and just goofing around. But I was thinking today, after the batteries in both my cars died and Kelly came and bailed me out, how much we really count on them and how glad we are to have them around. I'd like to tell everybody a few of the nice things they've done for us!

Kelly lived with Kris and Max and me for most of the summer in 2005. Jobs were easier to get out here than in Utah county, and I think he was ready for a bit of an adventure. Anyway, we had a great time with him that summer. He and Max played together all the time, and he watched Max nearly every morning for me so I could go to the gym. That was really nice.
He was also there to switch off driving with us when Kris's youngest brother died and we had to drive all night to get home. It was definitely nice to have him with us during that time.
He left at the end of the summer and went back to Lechelle (they had just started dating when he came out here) and they proceeded to get along quite well and got married the next May.

They moved out here so Kelly could go to school at UMKC and apply to the dental school at UMKC (he's in the process now, wish him luck!!).

When we finally sold our house out in the suburbs and moved into the city, Kelly & Lechelle helped us soo much. We didn't have a lot of other help (besides Kris's mom, who I absolutely couldn't have done without--she came on such short notice too) and Kelly and Lechelle stuck with us through the whole process and did tons of hard and heavy work. That was nice.

Lechelle volunteered to make my birthday cake because Kris didn't have time to. That was nice. And they hosted a little surprise party for me.
Kelly was the first person I called when Kris fell off his bike and hit his head, broke his collarbone badly and couldn't remember anything for longer than about 5 seconds. Kelly helped me figure out where the nearest hospital was and came right there to take Max home. He and Lechelle stayed with Max until I was able to bring Kris home from the hospital, very late, and then they helped me get his perscriptions filled. They helped a lot of other ways during the rest of that hard time too, which we appreciated.
(My mom flew out at very short notice and helped me when that happened too--she was indispensable. What would we do without family?)
Kelly and Lechelle watched Max for an overnight when we went out to party for our anniversary.

Max loves Kelly so much. He's always pretending to be Kelly or calling Kelly on the phone or something. He also begs me to go to school or work or something so Kelly can babysit him.

Today my car died right in front of Max's school at 8:30 in the morning. Kris is gone this week, he's at a rural clinic out in the middle of nowhere Missouri, so I'm on my own. I called Kelly right away and he was there to jump me in 5 minutes. Then, 30 minutes later when I realized that the jump hadn't done enough so that the car would start again, and that the battery in the white grover was dead as well I called Kelly and he came and lent me their car. So I have their car in case I need to do anything. He's already planning to help me get the car to the shop or whatever we have to do tomorrow.

Now that's an awesome brother and sister, don't you think? We're so lucky to have them around.

Thanks Kellski and Lechelleski!! We love youguys!!

Adventures in Disneyworld

So I'm assuming everybody's at least slightly curious about how our Disney World trip worked out. I know all of my dear friends out there are hoping that Max recovered after my post about sick kids, and we were able to party for the rest of the week. Well, I hate to say it, but that's not what happened. Here's the story.

Max and I arrived in Orlando at about 11AM. The rest of my family (Mom, Dad, Char and Murph) all came later on that day. That night we went into MGM Studios and checked out the scene. We had fun. Here's a picture of Max and Grandpa with Herbie.


Here's a shot of Charlotte and Murphy being goofballs

We went back to the hotel that night and all slept great. The next morning we got up bright and early and headed out to Epcot. We did the "Soaring over California" ride first. Have any of youguys out there done that? It's a blast. You fly over all these different landscapes in CA in a big hang gilder thing. We highly recommend it. Here's a shot of Max and Uncle Murph waiting in line.



Cute boys. They had a good time together. Murphy especially liked getting his hair pulled, and loved the elbow digging into his brains. Good thing he's a patient uncle.











After this we headed over to the Nemo ride, which Max loved. I think we went on it three times in a row. This was great except for afterwards I thought I dropped my phone into the ride and started freaking out. Murphy and Char went to find it for me--luckily after we had bugged everyone about it I found it safe and sound in my bag. I felt like a dope. A lucky dope but a dope nonetheless.
Mazzles and Nemo:
After the Nemo ride we explored the aquariums that share the building and saw lots of fun fish. We also went to see the Crush show (the turtle from Nemo) and it was great. It's pretty amazing to have an animated turtle actually answer your questions in real time.







Char, Murph, Max and Grandpa checking out the Stingrays

It was after this that things started to go downhill. We headed to the Magic Kingdom for lunch and a fun afternoon. Lunchtime was when I started to suspect there was something funny going on with my Max. He wouldn't eat any of his food, and his meal was like the most delicious mac & cheese I've ever tasted, in a Mickey Mouse shaped dish. He wouldn't eat a single bite. Then he had ice cream for dessert with delicious patriotic red white and blue stars. Did he eat a bite? No. Did I have to hold him in my lap through the entire meal? Yep!Looks pretty tasty to me!
We headed out to do some fun rides after this such as the caurosel, Dumbo, Peter Pan and other fun stuff.
Max got really tired and fell asleep in the stroller at the end of the day. He slept for about an hour and then woke up very upset just as the fireworks show started. As soon as he heard the first firework go off he started screaming, and cried all through the bus ride back to the hotel. He had a fever so we gave him some tylenol and put him to bed. He seemed good enough once he was in bed. Hah.

That night he woke up at like 2AM, seemingly ready to party. He sort of went back to sleep, but then an hour or so later he woke up puking. He puked for the rest of the night and all morning until about 1PM. That's when I wrote that post about sick kids. Sometime after noon he started to feel better and so we took him to get something to eat. Here are some pictures:
Max with the cool "castle cup" trying to hydrate himself.
Here he is in his PJs. It really looks like were on vacation here, doesn't it? Here are a couple more. I love these shots.
So we had him rest and recup for the rest of the day, hoping he'd get over his bug. He didn't throw up again that day, so that was good.
The next morning we were optomistic and headed out to the Magic Kingdom again. We mostly went to Tomorrowland. It was really fun and he seemed to be doing alright.
Murphy drove and I took pictures. I love how these turned out.
This was just before the rocket ride almost made ME puke. I didn't though. At least not right then.
We ended our time at the Magic Kingdom by putting Max in jail with Zurg. For some reason his Grandparents decided to bail him out and take him with us on to the next adventure.
We headed out to the Animal Kingdom to have lunch. Murphy decided to grow a moustache while we were waiting for the bus.
Max thought he was hilarious, as usual. He didn't think I was that funny even though I was making the ugliest face the world has ever seen. Oh well.

We went to lunch and Max said he was starving and that he wanted a hot dog. I got it for him and he snarfed it down. About 10 seconds after he snarfed the last bite he puked it all up. Yes, at the table where everyone was eating. Luckily I caught most of it in my hands. Blech.
After that he tried to pretend that he was ok again. Hmmm. After that I actually started to feel pretty weird, which I was not excited about. We stayed to watch a show that was a live musical kind of puppet show of Nemo. It was great, but after that I thought it was a good idea to take Max back. I was right. Dad and I took him back, and on the bus he had a huge puke. It was really gross. Luckily we had one of the towels from the hotel room in the bottom of the stroller, and I managed to grab that and so there was less mess than there might of been otherwise.
So after that he was ok, and went to bed. My dad and I however were not that ok and stayed up most of the night puking or trying not to puke. Fun huh? The next day Max and I were supposed to fly home. I was losing my mind thinking about the idea of trying to fly home with a possibly pukey 3 yr old while feeling very nauseous myself. It was a very scary thought. Luckily my mom had gotten some trip insurance and she called them up. They sent a doctor out who gave me some great anti-nausea pills and declared us unfit to fly for that day. So we stayed in bed that day too. I think Max watched Toy Story on my computer like 15 times.
So my family left early on saturday morning and Max and I finally got a flight later saturday. Somehow we made it through the whole process of getting to the airport, and Max was great flying home. He kept getting really mad at me though because every time he opened his mouth or coughed I would grab a napkin or something and get ready to catch puke. He'd say "NOOO! I'm NOT puking" And luckily he didn't.
So that's how the sad vacation went. It went by so fast that unless we'd taken those good pictures I would actually have a hard time believing it happened at all. There was a good part though, and it was that we got to see my family and hang out and spend a lot of time with them, and that's the whole point of Disneyland in the end, hanging out with the people you love.

So there you go. Our story, not in a nutshell. More like a coconut shell or something.

New blog installment starting NOW!

If you can't tell from my exclamation point in my title, I'm really excited about the new blog installment I'm starting with today.
It's going to be: Fun/Cool/Funny/Nostalgic/Embarrassing old pictures. I got out my photo scanner the other night and had a lot of fun looking at old pictures and got inspired.
My definition of "old" in this case is anything earlier than today. So pretty much anything is fair game. I'm looking forward to having a lot of fun with this, and guys, it's not just going to be family pictures, so if you pay attention you may just see yourself!

Today we're going to start out with one of my favorite old classics. I actually have no idea what year this picture is from.
I just love our outfits. I love Cammon's tight pants and tight shirt, and Char's rainbow heart sweatshirt (mom did you make that?) and pink sneakers. I love my amazingly pleated red pants that taper so nicely. And of course my suspenders!! I also love Megan's sweatshirt that's got to be something from Westridge or something, and her ponytail braid coming out the side of her head. You can also see how my front teeth didn't fit my face for about 5 years.

My absolutely favorite about this picture though is how happy we all look. It's so cute.
What year was this? Whose party were we going to? Anybody? Anybody?
Good picture mom.

And since this is the first installment of this new tradition I'm going to add a bonus picture here. This is another one of my classic favorites. It's the Randle kids on vacation in Arkansas in 1990.
There's actually another picture that goes with this one that's my real favorite, but I don't seem to have it. I don't know if it comes before or after this one, but Cammon still has the same oh-so-natural smile, I'm smiling and Murphy is pulling Charlotte's hair and she's making a horrible face. It's really funny. But this one has it's own charm to it too. Murphy and Charlotte established the tenor of their relationship early in life. :)

So I hope everyone will look forward to the next installment--and just for you Hendricks out there, this will not be limited to old Randle pictures, that's for sure, so watch out!!

Big B, Little b, what begins with B?

Time for another installment of the alphabet, better know as What Max Learned at School.
We're a little behind because of traveling, but bear with us if you can while we try to catch up.
Max had two weeks of learning about Buh-the sound of letter B. At his school they don't talk about letters by their names, but by their sounds.
So, it was all about the buhs.
Here is a picture of the board at school. Click to see a larger image. It's covered with Buh things. I especially like the buh-buh-beard and the buh-buh-bug, which actually I was just told by Max is a beetle! Wow, I obviously haven't been to preschool in a while.



Sometimes it's a little embarrassing because I can't always identify everything on the board. Well, usually I can, but sometimes when put on the spot I can't always think of what the picture is representing that fits with the letter.




They went backpacking one day, walking down to the park that is just down the street to play on the toys and picnic eating bologna sandwiches. Among other things they talked about birds and bugs and bears and bats and beetles and butterflies. They heard the story of the Bremen Town Musicians and learned some Russian words that went along with it.
One day they made bead necklaces. I thought Max's turned out really cool. I liked his bead choices. I thought that maybe he'd made it for me to wear, but no, unfortunately he wouldn't let me wear it.




I'm not sure why these pictures ended up being shirtless--he usually does insist on wearing a shirt. I was just thinking we'd seen a few too many striped shirt pictures on the blog, and that day he was wearing a *surprise* striped shirt. So whatever.

What snacks did they eat during the Buh weeks you're wondering? Well among others, they ate: bleu cheese, brie cheese, broccoli, bagels, brussel sprouts (I say to that buh-buh-blah), blueberries, blackberries and beets (again, I say buh-buh-blech!!).

They made bean bags one day, that turned out great, and another day they did some blot art. His ended up looking very much like a bat to me, appropriately.


So the buhs turned out to be fun. Our biggest school challenge with Max right now is coloring. He really has no interest in coloring, especially not in staying inside the lines of anything. So we're working on that. So far no progress, but I'm sure eventually we can learn how to make it fun. Or at least that's my hope.
Stay tuned for the next installment.

A Box Full of Puppy

Who can resist a box full of cute puppy? Just thought we'd share ours to brighten everyone's day.


And yes, I said brighten, not frighten!!

"My Favorite White New Land Grover" max

It's been a long, eventful life for this Land Grover (that's what Max calls them) since we first bought it about a year ago. I was itching for a new ride after the windows on the Saturn wagon quit working--naturally the AC was also broken and too old to be inexpensively fixed. I was driving to and from school, becoming drenched in sweat each time I got in it.
One fine day, I was out riding my bike when I spotted a white Land Rover for sale. It appeared to be in good condition and the asking price was low enough that I could actually afford it. Secretly, since the days of snapping the sway bars and ripping the skid plates off my dad's pickup, I had always wished for a true 4x4 to call my own. When I noticed the sticker in the window of the Rover stating "4x4 of the year", I knew we needed it. Sure enough, Ginna agreed and although we had to let a lot of air pressure out the tires to fit it in the garage it was ours.
We hadn't owned the thing more than a day when things started to go downhill. We took it to our "trusty" local mechanic to have it fully tuned and update all maintenance before we started to drive it. For about $1500 he changed the brakes, spark plugs and belts, then cracked the windshield (which they denied, but I took it whole and got it back cracked!), worsened the power steering leak and didn't put the wheels back on tight, so they almost fell off on the freeway!
Next came two wrecks in two months--both not our fault, and yes, the Favorite White New Land Grover kept Ginna safe in both instances.
We decided that since the cumulative insurance payouts were more than the value of the car and slightly less than the cost of fixing it in the body shop, we'd try to find something else. But, after having a Land Grover, it's really hard to shop for another type of car.

We looked at just about everything, including some mini-vans, but in the end, we knew what we wanted: another Land Grover. So, we bought the Red New Land Grover and we really like it. I kept the white grover in the garage since I couldn't really sell it and I honestly, I didn't want to.

If you read our posts then you'll know that our subaru recently died. Suddenly, we were at a crossroads. New car or fix the white grover? The choice was clear. We needed the grover back. I also needed to do it on a budget. So, I undertook the whole project myself. I have no knowledge of auto mechanics, bodywork or anything like that. Still, I needed to fix my grover. I took off all the broken panels and used a sledge hammer to straighten the big dents, I bought a true Australian safari bumper and put off-road tires on it.
I bought replacement lights from the junk yard and somehow managed to salvage the stock grill. The fenders are still not totally fixed and I couldn't get the hood straight, but oh well.

I also got ambitious and fixed the powersteering leak. I bought the tech manual for the car and took off a whole bunch of stuff, so I could get to the powersteering pump and fix the leak. I can't believe it worked. Now Max's favorite white new land grover is back in action and I'm using it to drive to school. There were some choice moments during the rehabilitation of the white grover and I still want to have the body work done by a shop someday, but until I'm rolling in the benjamins, we'll be rolling in the Favorite White New Land Grover.