Adorable video that should go more viral than "Charlie Bit my Finger" did

Yes, the title says it all. We watched that "Charlie Bit my Finger" video a few weeks back, after hearing some friends rave about how cute/funny it is. It's not all that funny. Nope. And it doesn't have even half the cute-factor this one does!!

Adorable, isn't he? I love listening to little kids talk and tell stories. =)

~Kiwi~

Snowed In and Bored...

We were snowed in today (Probably yesterday by the time I publish this), and got a bit bored, so I decided to document our adventures! These were taken with a computer's webcam, so they're not the best quality, but I thought you might enjoy them. =)

 I discovered some interesting camera settings:

 This next one is using the 'sharpen' setting. I was getting so bored that I was ready to clean and pack up! You know you're bored when...

 ...you voluntarily clean and watch the sheets dry!

I was amused by the dog, though.

Finally wore out my slippers, I think. I looked down and there were several more holes than usual. =/ I'll miss 'em.

Made a delicious pot-roast for supper! A bit dry in the end (hence the gravy), but tender as can be and not bad for a first try, even if I do say so myself! =)

Now we're watching Dick Van Dyke episodes (It may look like a walnut....) and chilling on the computers. =)



Boy, this day was exhausting! ;) Goodnight!

(here's where Kiwi would sign, but she's asleep right now.)

More on Helga

(Read THIS POST first, if you haven't already.)

Helga wasn't entirely happy with living in a cabin in the woods. Back in Norway, her family had been well-off and lived in a two-story Victorian home (this was when Victorian homes were new). Her old home had been beautiful. This was just a cabin. How could you compare the two?
She decided that Something had to be Done about this. So she saved her money. Her plan was to buy something from Sears & Roebuck to make the house beautiful once a year with the money she had saved. The first time she paged through the Sears & Roebuck catalog, some blue checkered curtains caught her eye. The second year Helga saved and saved, and had enough money to buy a beautiful rocking chair. The third year, however, she didn't have enough money for what she wanted. Helga sighed and flipped through the catalog again. No, there was nothing else she wanted; nothing else that would do. She had to have this. So Helga ripped out the page and pinned it to the wall. THIS is what she would save for.
So for the next 5 years, Helga saved her money. Olaf put any extra money he made into the money jar, and so did Solvieg. Even little Elsa put in the few cents she got each week from her hens! The third year, little Lena was born, so the amount of money they were able to set aside decreased, but Helga still managed to save some.
Finally the day came when Helga had the money for her dream! Helga filled out the order form on the latest Sears & Roebuck catalog and sent it in. They had to wait five whole weeks, but what's five weeks when you've waited five years?
At last the railroad station sent them a message. "There's an abnormally large and heavy crate here for Helga and Olaf. Come get it!"
Olaf hitched their two oxen to the wagon, and borrowed two more from the neighbors, then they all piled in and drove to town for Helga's crate. It took several strong men to lift this thing into the wagon, and the oxen strained to pull the wagon over the hills! Once home, Olaf unhitched the oxen and took off one side of the wagon. Carefully, he tipped the wagon onto it's side, sliding the crate onto the ground right in front of the cabin's door. Helga could barely hold still, she was so excited! She helped Olaf pull the boards off, until they could see the contents of the crate.
Helga couldn't believe her eyes. There stood what she had wanted for five long years; there stood the item that would make this the finest cabin in the whole of Wisconsin...nay, the finest house in Wisconsin!

Concrete steps with wrought iron handrails! These were surely the finest handrails in the county, and they gave the little cabin a...dignified air. Helga was now fully satisfied with her beautiful home. It had become (in her eyes, at least) just as fine as her two-story Victorian house back in Norway!

Helga's steps, years later.

Helga's gorgeous handrails.

To Be Continued

Photos courtesy of Sven, Olaf & Helga's son.

Let me tell you a little story...

Lars and Solvieg lived and fell in love in Norway in the early 1860's, and when they were married they decided to move to the United States. The two of them packed up their meagre belongings and, after saying a tearful goodbye to their family and freinds, they left for the United States--Wisconsin, to be exact.
Lars and Solveig built themselves a good-sized log cabin a little ways out of a small town. There they lived for a long time.
After a few years they had a son, who Solvieg named Olaf. Olaf was a nice little boy who grew into a fine young man. When Olaf turned twenty Lars took him aside to talk to him.
"Son," Lars said, "you need to go back to your mother's town in Norway and find yourself a good Norwegian wife. Find yourself a fine wife, bring her back here to love with us in our cabin."
So Olaf obeyed his father and traversed the long journey to Norway for a wife. A few months later he returned to Wisconsin with Helga in tow, and Lars and Solvieg loved her from the start, and Helga loved Lars and Solvieg and the little cabin right back.
The two couples lived in the cabin happily, but Lars passed away several years later, soon after his first grandchild was born. Everyone was sad about Lars' death, but took comfort in caring for little Elsa.

To Be Continued

Earth's Enigmas

My friend loaned me an...interesting...book the other day, and I thought I'd share a few parts of it with you-all. The book's title is Earth's Enigmas, by Charles G. D. Roberts, and was published by L. C. Page & Company in May, 1903. Here's the "prefatory note." (everything in red is my input)

"Most of the stories in this collection attempt to present on or another of those problems of life or nature to which, as it appears to many of us, there is no adequate solution within sight. Others are the almost literal transcript of dreams which seemed to me to have a coherency, completeness, and symbolic significance sufficiently marked to justify me in setting them down. The rest are scenes from that simple life of Canadian backwoods and tide-country with which my earlier years made me familiar.
This edition (the book was published twice, the first time was in 1895 by Lamson, Wolffe and Company) is enlarged by the inclusion of three new stories, entitled "The House at Stony Lonesome," "The Hill of Chastisement," and "On the Tantramar Dyke;" and what is more important, it is enriched by the drawings of Mr. Charles Livingston Bull, for whose sympathetic interpretations I take this opportunity of expressing my gratitude.
C. G. D. R.
New York, April, 1903"

Now, I will not type out the whole book for you, or at least I won't do that today, but I will share a story or two. Let me warn you, though, that they are mildly morbid! Just a little on the weird side. I'll start with one of the ones I am pretty sure was a "transcript of [a] dream."

In the Accident Ward

The grass was gray, of a strange and dreadful pallor, but long and soft. Unbroken, and bending all one way, as if to look at something, it covered the wide, low, rounded hill that rose before me. Over the hill the sky hung close, gray and thick, with the color of a parched interminable twilight. Dew or a drop of rain could not be thought of as coming from such a sky.

Along the base of the low hill ran a red road of baked clay, blood red, and beaten with nameless and innumerable feet. I stood in the middle of this road and prepared to ascend the hill obliquely by a narrow footpath, red as blood, which divided the soft gray bending of the grasses. Behind me the road made a sharp turn, descending out of thick clouds into a little blood-red hollow, where it was crossed by an open gate. In this gate, through which I had somehow come, stood two gray leopards and a small ape. The beasts stood on tip-toe and eyed me with a dreadful curiosity; and from somewhere in the little hollow I heard a word whispered which I could not understand. But the beasts heard it, and drew away through the open gate, and disappeared.

Between the footpath (which all the time gleamed redly through the over-gathering grasses) and the rounded brink of the gulf there seemed to be a fence of some sort, so fine that I could not quite distinguish it, but which I knew to be there.

I turned my eyes to the low summit of the hill. There I saw a figure, all gray, cleaving the grasses in flight as swift as an arrow. Behind, in pursuit, came another figure, of the color of the grasses, tall and terrible beyond thought. This being, as it seemed to me, was the Second Death, and my knees trembled with horror and a sort of loathing. Then I saw that he who fled made directly for me; and as they sped I could hear a strange hissing and rustling of their garments cleaving the grasses. When the fleeing ghost reached me, and fell at my feet, and clasped my knees in awful fear, I felt myself grow strong, and all the dread left my soul. I reached forth my right hand and grasped the pursuing horror by the throat.

I heard the being laugh, and the iron grip of my own strong and implacable fingers seemed to close with a keen agony upon my own throat, and a curtain seemed to fall over my eyes. Then I gasped for breath, and a warm pungent smell clung in my nostrils, and a white light swam into my eyes, and I hear a voice murmuring far off, but in an accent strangely familiar and commonplace, "He's coming round alright now."

I opened my eyes with a dim wonder, and found myself surrounded by the interested faces of the doctors and the clean white walls of the hospital ward. I heard a sound of someone breathing hoarsely near by, and a white-capped nurse with kind eyes stepped up to my pillow, and I perceived that the heavy breather was myself. I was lying with my head and neck swathed in bandages, and a sharp pain at my throat. Then flashed across my memory the crash and sickening upheaval of the collision. I wondered feebly how it had fared with my fellow-passengers, and again I saw that instant's vision of wild and startled faces as the crowded car rose and pitched downward, I knew not whither. With a sense of inexpressible weariness, my brain at once allowed the terrible scene to slip from its grasp, and I heard a doctor, who was standing at the bedside watch in hand, say, quietly, "He'll sleep now for a couple of hours."

The End.

Different, isn't it? That sounds just like a dream; confusing. I think that maybe he could have let up a bit on the details of his surroundings at the beginning. I would go ahead and type up another story, but I think two dream sequences in one post would be a little confusing, don't you? And my fingers are getting tired. So I don't think I shall type up much more tonight.
so how are you-all doing? I haven't been getting many comments lately...*cough*...so I don't know what y'all are up to, or what you think of my blog, or anything! Speak up! :D
And I'll leave it at that. There ought to be a picture post on my photo blog within the hour; go check it out!
~Kiwi~

Three more things to check off my To-Do List!

The barn dance was fun!!! My feet were killing me by the end, but it was worth it! I danced the first dance with Kristen dancing the man's part (Did I mention in my last post the severe lack of young men??), and that was great. We added our own little doodad to it; a twirl after promenading home. For the second dance, I thought Kris and I were dancing again, but she thought I was dancing with someone else, so I saw her go off with Mike. Thankfully, Scott saw me looking lonely and partnerless and asked me to dance. Er...more like dragged me off to dance. :D T'was fun. He's a pretty good dancer (he only stepped on my feet once! ;), once we got going well. The third dance was with Jumbo Shrimp a bit, then Sis, and for the 4th, Kris and I were back together again.
It was so much fun!! And I can't wait until next year, so I can do it again!
So that took two things off my List: Learn to square dance better and Find someone to square dance with me.

Saturday, Sis and I drove to a Gem and Fossil show. That was really interesting, with all the different gem stones all over, and tons and tons of fossils. What I liked best was the fact that you could touch most things. I love to touch and feel things, not just look at them. (that's why museums are rather dangerous for me!) And they had trilobite fossils that you could look at, or pick up and turn over, or whatever. I could have bought some, but they were on the expensive side. (Check out my Photo Blog in the next few days for pictures of the rocks!)

Sunday, part of the volleyball group got together at Kiwi's Konfusing and Krazy Korn Maze. Hence the third thing checked off: Get lost in a corn maze, and I mean Really Lost!
Oooo, wait, I should write this into a story! And I'll use the flash-back method, to add Drama. *Ahem*

There the five of us were, surrounded by tall green stalks of corn and barely able to see the tops of the stalks, much less the grey clouds threatening rain. Evan looked at the map. Then turned it upside down. And tried sideways. Maybe the other way would work better?
"We're lost." He finally admitted.
Actually, we had been pretty much lost for quite a while, but now it was official. We were now in an area (hopefully on Earth) never mentioned by any cartographer. Ever.
You see, we had had the grand idea of going through a pair of local corn mazes. It started out well. The day was a Sunday, rather grey and chilly. The time: 2:30 pm. The location: Kiwi's Konfusing and Krazy Korn Maze. The participants: five young adults who went to the same church. No, wait. We had started off with a few more, four more to be exact. Who knows where they were by now....

~~~~~~~~~~Two Hours Earlier~~~~~~~~~

Sis, Bekah, and I arrived on bikes at 2:20, ten minutes early, but most of our party was already at the Farm. Evan, Andy, and Lisa were standing out in the parking lot, shivering already. As we bought our tickets, the other half of the group arrived: Steve & Julie and Erick.
Excited, we headed into the Impossible Maze.
"Impossible? Nah, we can do it." Evan scoffed at the sign.
"No maps!" ordered Julie, but we took them anyway. The goal of the maze was to find your way to each of the twelve checkpoints and get your card punched at each one, to prove you'd been there. We decided to race our way all through the maze. Steve, Julie, Lisa, and Erick took off in one direction (mapless), and the remaining five of us strolled peacefully to checkpoint No. 1.

We didn't use the map. We could find our way to most of the checkpoints easily, we thought. Andy led us straight to 3, skipping 2 on the way. Then out came the maps.
"According to the map," said Evan, looking left and right, "This way ought to be a dead end." Bekah jogged down to check.
"No, it's not a dead end. It takes you in a circle. The map must be wrong."
We scratched our heads and bent over the map again.
"It's is wrong! They gave us phony maps, just to make it even more impossible! How cruel!"
All five heads shook slowly.
"Well," Andy took out his map. "It was correct about the basic placement of the first three. It's just wrong with the exact paths. So, number 4 is up that way," he pointed north, "and a bit that way." His finger moved a bit eastward.
Off we trooped, up one way and over another way. Sis and Andy disappeared behind us, and, with a cackle, Evan lept ahead and vanished around the corner. Bekah and I gave a shout of dismay and raced after him. But he wasn't there.
"Perhaps (puff puff) he's around the next (wheeze) corner!" I said, trying to run and talk at the same time. We dashed around it, and came face-to-face with.....a dead end. "Back track! Turn right!" I cried, thoroughly lost. Flying around the corner, I nearly ran into a calm, composed, smirking Evan.
"Hello. I was wondering where you guys were."
It took self-control to keep from slinging mud at him.
We meandered through the maze until we reached the next checkpoint entirely by chance. And so we continued until we met No. 8. Number 8, over half-way there. Number 8, only four more to go. Number 8, not connected by any pathways to Number 9.
We passed the same puddle 6 times. I know because I counted. I can describe it to you, too, if you wish. This mud puddle was straight down the middle of the path, right after a T intersection. If you turned left, it would take you to a dead end. Turn right, and you splash through the long, skinny corn leaf-filled puddle, if you aren't careful.
We went to Number 8, and then tried to follow the map to Number 9. We couldn't get there. So we turned around, returned to 8, and went a different way. Closer, but still no cigar.
Finally, through some....ingenuity...., Evan, Bekah, and I made it to the 9, leaving Sis and Andy to find their own way. Sadly, er.... Thankfully, they caught up quickly.
After Number 9, we had no more troubles, and got out quickly.
Total elapsed time in the Impossible Maze? 2 1/2 hours.
Did we win the race against the other team? It depends on what you mean by 'win.' If you mean time-wise, Steve & Julie's team won. If you mean 'winning-by-getting-through-the-maze-with-all-the-card-punches,' uh, no. They just tore through randomly and gave up halfway through. Then went all the way through the other maze while we were still in the Impossible one.
So to rejoice in our victory, the five of us plus Lisa went in for some doughnuts and apple crunch.

:D

Sorry, it's not the best story ever written. Not even the best one by me! The problem was that I had the idea, but kept getting interrupted before I could put it all down on paper, and because of that, lost the vision for the story. I'll try re-writing it for my next blog post, maybe.
Or perhaps I shall let you readers do that!
Yes: 25 blogger points to whoever can come up with the best version of the story and post it on their blog.
Rules:

• You must include the following characters: Steve, Julie, Erick, Lisa, Andy, Kiwi, Evan, Bekah, and Sis.
• The story must take place at Kiwi's Krazy and Konfusing Korn Maze and Farm Market.
• You must have my team in the maze for 2 1/2 hours.
• You may not leave out any of the following details: place, names, time taken in the maze, the fact that we got lost, the fact that my team won.

Other than that, you may use your imaginations! Entries are due by Saturday at 12:00 pm CST.
Have fun!

(Pay attention to my photo blog, pictures from the maze ought to be on there by Sunday.)

And so long folks! I'll talk with y'all later. 'bye.
~Kiwi~