Chilestalk, Holy Smokes, Status King, Matthew Crawls, Stinkyball,

For Family Home Evening we painted desert scenes as a backdrop for our Stupendous Play, Jackie and the Chilestalk. Solomon drew a cactus and a trapdoor spider. Adam drew a curled up snake and a boulder on a hill. So much detail! We performed the play the evening after Christmas. We recorded a video of it. It’s 24 minutes long and you can see it here.
Mandy directed it. My favorite parts are: Adam's cow costume and the way his golden eggs keep falling to the floor, Solomon's jokes and Star Wars imitation, Theron's fake Spanish accent, Jordan's Giant voice, Kaylisha's care of the golden goose, and Mandy’s love of chiles, “The hotter the better.” Mandy is going to use it as a personal progress sign-off, but it was so fun we’ll probably do another.

Christmas morning as Seth played a new game he yelled, “Holy Smokes!!! I lost my tooth out.” He had tried to use his tooth to open a part of the game and out it popped—his first one. He got a quarter for it under his pillow, so he’s anxious to lose the other three that are also loose. I’m just glad he lost this first one. His permanent tooth was already grown in behind it so he looked like a shark with two layers of teeth.

These Christmas holidays have been particularly good. Neal and Trisha and their four children stayed with us for a week and a half. It was loud and chaotic and so fun. I love to have my children know their cousins so well. I loved having Neal and Trisha around. It’s so great to have another pair of hands to do the work and such an interesting adult to talk to and share ideas with, in between taking care of children. We went caroling, out to pizza, had several game nights and I’m sure I’m missing some of the fun activities we did. We ate dinner together as a whole entire Harmon clan every night, rotating the responsibility, and I thought that was such a good idea. Since Jenny and Nate (and little Lydia) were staying at Mom Harmon’s house, it brought us together every day. Cousin Michael cried when it was time for him to go home, and that means that it was a good visit!

A significant topic during the Christmas holidays was a new Harmon business idea: Status King. It’s a Facebook application that is a contest, the person voted with the cleverest status wins a free t-shirt. It just started and the energy is exciting. People are really enjoying playing it and the fan base is growing fast. The commerce part of Status King is selling t-shirts with a Facebook profile photo and status on it--Individualized, custom t-shirts that are affordable and interesting. That part is being programmed and put together right now, but I think it’s one of the best business ideas I’ve come across in quite a while. It’s like Café Press (if you know that business) for Facebook. Very Hot idea. And taking it from idea to reality in a week has been soo exciting.

Matthew just crawled. He’s been making crawling motions—pushing himself backwards, rolling towards what he wants, but today he crawled using all four limbs. It was the electric heater—he wanted to touch it. I got there in time, but WOW I’m going to have to go through my entire house and lift everything up high again. I forgot about that part. Still, it’s so exciting to see him crawling. If you’re on Facebook you can see a 46 second video of him crawling for a red ball.

The Cub Scouts just picked up our Christmas tree. As they drove away I remembered that last year at this time I was miserable-pregnant and our Christmas tree made it as far as our front porch. And there is sat there for months! Not this year. Yahh, I’m starting 2009 better than 2008.

Seth called a basketball a “gas-ketball.” Solomon explained, “It’s a new game. When the basketball goes through the hoop, it lets off a smell.”

Happy New Year.