Well, an important part of our Whistler journey was this van we followed, whose bumper sticker said "Elect Jesus King of Your Life." Kind of makes the issues seem simple, eh (as they say in Canada)? Of course, this is an American vehicle seen in the purple mountains majesty of our own America (God Bless It). We tried to get close enough for a better shot but thought safety first, eh?

At Whistler, our nephew Christopher keeps his thumbs in tip top athletic condition with his play station, or whatever it is. This boy's thumbs are ready for anything. They are ready for the '10 Whistler BC Olympic Games. And below find the girls playing cards in between episodes on said play station or whatever it was. I am happily ignorant of all that jargon, and hope to remain so for the rest of my life. Enough Whistler I suppose, except to say that Rose and I did have a perfectly pleasant time making chicken salad for the masses of hungry skiers. Thanks Rose for halving a thousand grapes!

We're back, we're sick, we're sick sick sick sick. The children were forced to be a bit feral for a couple of days, which couldn't really hurt them, and in fact Ani did a pretty good job of taking care of us all, which involved getting us liquids to drink, feeding herself and her brother, and getting herself to school. Good job Ani! It will be nice to feel better someday soon. When I'm sick I pretty much feel like I have always been this way and will never be any other way again. What a worthless flu shot I got.

This is Ani.

We're all very sick (except for me) with the flu. My mom and dad have it the worst - we think that Tim is getting a little better. I just have a cold and cough, which is lucky.

When we got home from Whistler, BC, Frodo greeted us by saying "hello pretty birdie". He still has a way to go, but he's getting there!

It's been pretty nice weather out here, but we've all been too sick to enjoy it.

Whistler was as awesome as we were hoping for! The snow was great, and it was sunny and warm. There couldn't have been better skiing! We also had fun ice skating and swimming.

Home Again!

Here we are back from Whistler BC!!! We are all sick as dogs. Tim had it worst, with a feaver and evil cough, but we all have a nasty cough, hard to talk, and general aches and pains and lackluster feeling... However, dispite the evil bug within, Whistler was great!!! Sunny and warm with surprizingly good snow, Ani and I had 3 amazing days of 8-3:30 skiing! We skied the olympic downhill run and giant slolum courses as well as the most excellent "Moror Cross" run! Highlights were Ani's first boot hike up to Blackcolm Glacier where the bumps were soft and forgiving. Vast wilderness and amazing skiing! We also skied the gladed bump run of Authers Choise and many cruisers and terrain parks. Jon got way too much air at one point, but landed on his butt safely.

Laura got out Cross Country skiing every day and Tim was still feeling fine on the first day and he cross country skied once. Everyone skated and swam. Tim discovered he loved riding the Gondolas and he and Laura spent many hours riding the various gondolas and eating french fries at the lodges.

Laura's brother Rich is well and the cousins Rose and Christopher are as entertaining as always. Our 11 hour drive home through traffic and the fog of sickness was a great starter for our trip accross the country next year! And at HOME- there were red sox tickets in the mail for Fenway Park in July, crocuses are up and blooming in the yard and our dogs and bird are very glad we are home! Soon will be a link to Uncle Richard's utube video of us skiing!

Happy Valentines Day! 6:30 AM Tim comes running into our room yelling there is dog poop on the carpet… As I pick my heavy head off the pillow to yell at the dogs, I feel the evil itchy tingling of a new cold sore on my lip. It is pea soup fog and cold. Happy Valentines Day! Laura has a school board meeting tonight too.

Laura here! OK, I am working on filling President Obama's cabinet because I just know he will ask me right away:
Google any of these folks if you're unfamiliar with them; you'll see how right I am!

Agriculture - Wendell Berry: Farmer and prolific author and advocate of local economies, Berry understands the detrimental changes in farming that are so damaging to our diets, our communities, and our culture.

Deputy Secretary of Agriculture - Michael Pollan: Pollan has an immense understanding of food policy and nutrition and the relationship between diet and health, and our health and government subsidies and policy.

Interior - Terry Tempest Williams: She's an eloquent writer and advocate for the environment in the western states.

Education - our own Tim Knowles - education hottie and evil genius progressive public schools reformer. He knows how to do this.

State - Samantha Power: She is an expert on genocide and the historical lack of U.S. intervention in genocide throughout history. She is the Professor of Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at the Kennedy School at Harvard. Her new book is a biography of Sergio Vieiro de Mella, the brilliant diplomat killed in Iraq in the U.N. bombing in 2003. Power is actually Obama's foreign policy advisor in his campaign already, and it was this choice of Obama's that turned me unequivocally to him as my choice.

Energy - Al Gore. 'Nuf said.

Health and Human Services - Dr. Paul Farmer: founder of Partners in Health, global health and social justice DOER (as opposed to talker). Any of his proteges at Partners in Health would probably be equal to the task, as he's kind of busy, I'm sure.

That's as far as I've gotten; I admit I'm pretty clueless on the transportation front and some others as well. Don't worry - all that's left is commerce, justice, defense, lavor, transportation, treasury, homeland security, veteran's affairs, housing and urban development. Let's go, people! My fantasy is the White House crawling with brilliant 40-somethings changing this planet.
Got any suggestions? Post them and I'll consider them, but make no promises.

Dogs more Black Dogs

The number of black dogs keeps increasing at our house! River and Bear are the only ones, but judging from the dog hair in the corners, I think we must have more. Frodo sometimes crawls under my tee shirts and roots around. Here he can be seen sneaking a peak out my armpit before disappearing back into my shirt. River is sweet and dumb. Bear is smart as a monkey and both need a lot more attention than is possible to give them. Frodo just orders everyone around.

Obama continues his winning ways. With the football season in desperate shambles after the superbowl, Obama is really the best thing going!

Dinner Rolls That We Can't Eat

This is Ani again.

Last night, I had a dream that I was surrounded by hot, steaming dinner rolls, but I couldn't eat them because we're gluten-intolerant, which includes wheat. They were everywhere, and I was about to take a bite out of one when I woke up.

Wow, I have created at least 2 monsters with the blog. As Tim says, "blog blog blog bla bla bla." He says that will be his contribution to this project. We can and will send videos eventually.

We are all very hopeful that Obama will prevail and fill the White House with smart, creative, articulate 40-somethings to fix this world. I am developing my fantasy cabinet appointments. When I finish I will post them.
Laura

Our Anna's Humming Bird pair are still around. They fight and squeek and fly fast by. While it is gray, rainy and crazily windy our winter is starting to move by. There is more daylight and the bulbs are up but not yet flowering. The gray is opressive but at least we are off to Whislter Canada for a week of snow and real winter!!! Then in April Laura and I will be off to the city of Sin- Lost Wages- for a 3 day conferance of mine at the Flamingo Casino! We have tickets to see Spamalot! Laura will read books by the pool during the day while I am conferencing and we will eat and people watch at night!!! FUN!!!

We are in our weekend ruteen of laundery folding, vacuming, bickering, homework, music practice, dogs wanting something and later I will play soccer at 3 with a bunch of 20 somethings...

Music Music everywhere

A couple weeks ago, Ani had a band consert with her Flute. She is ok at the flute but great at the piano. Maybe she is better than ok at the flute but I really wouldn't know. We are publishing this to show that Ani has actually worn a skirt and does indeed where something other than a sweat shirt!

Walking the Dogs

Hi. It's Ani again.

We had a really nice dog walk this morning, and I got a bunch of pictures. There were about 8 ships out today, which is a lot more than normal.

It was gray, cloudy, and cold, but we still had fun. We walked to the first bridge on the trestle and back again. In the picture to the right it shows are house as being brown. It's brown now, but before the 30 hour long wing storm in December it was gray. All the water washed the stain off and made it brown.

L37 and Tim

Here is Tim in the Red Sox sweatshirt he has worn since mid October 2007!!! L37 is having some inside time and Tim is sporting a bandage from a hot melt glue gun incident.

Whistler!!!

Hi everyone! This is Ani.

We can't wait to go to Whistler, Canada again for a fun week of AWESOME skiing!!! We'll be staying in a condo with our Uncle Rich, along with Rose and Christopher. We're going to do downhill skiing, cross country skiing, ice skating, and swimming in the outside pool! Also, we'll miss a week of school, which is always fun.

ANI, TIM, LAURA and JON are still alive even after the EVIL Giants beat our NE Patriots... We will try to update this regularly.

The only up side is that Obama is doing OK but not as well as Hillary. It seems hard to imagine how Obama will make up the 80 plus delegates he is behind after super Tuesday, but we are sure hoping he does. We think that he is fine and that the Hill is not really electable.

Here's Jon and Frodo munching away at their chicken bones. Frodo will eat anything that you put in front of him that resembles food, and won't stop eating until you take it away or are done. Frodo is doing great! He can whistle and can almost say "pretty bird". He's really close! He's a really nice bird, and he has a great personality.

Bear and River are doing pretty good. River has fits where she runs around the house doing this weird thing with her head, but she's still a good dog. Bear is the same good dog that he's always been, of course.

L37, the rabbit, is also doing good. We don't see her much (she lives in the garage), but we bring her up to the house sometimes.

3graves1snyder

This is our family's blog. We've decided to catch up with the times, mostly for our parents across the country. Hi Moms! Hi Dads! Hi cousins! Hi godparents!