Apple of our Eye

We picked up 13 different kinds of apples at the store yesterday, and had a taste test this afternoon. After much tasting and deliberation, the Jones family ranked favorites are:

1) Fuji (#1 choice by Hal & Teresa)
2) Cortland (#1 choice by Allie & Ty)
3) Gala (#1 choice of Courtney & Dad)

Fuji did well, making it on almost everyone's list of favorites. Granny Smith and Golden Delicious also had multiple votes. The Rome apples looked really neat because they were red inside, and the Ambrosia apples had an interesting taste. After the voting was complete, we realized that 13 apples was too many to get everyone to eat, so we pulled out the dipping caramel, and that did the trick.














We've done some other tastings recently-- we tried different kinds of cheese one day, and different types of butter (on Saltine crackers) the following week. The refrigerator is still packed with perhaps more butter than we will use in six month's time, and has an interesting smell, too.

Under the Christmas Tree

Merry Christmas! Here's a picture of Courtney helping Dan extract an airplane and other elements from his new "Diego Rescue Unit". Had a really fun Christmas, and a great time singing and visiting at Mom & Dad's the next day.

We intend to goof around and play games up through the start of the new year. Love you all!

Cool Holiday Greeting from Amy

Check out this funny Jib Jab movie that my sister Amy sent!

Dan making Christmas Cookies

Here's a photo of Dan helping his Mommy make some cookies for Allison's class at school.

Trimming the tree

I was so inspired by Mom's snowball fight video, that I decided to make one of the kids trimming the tree. Starring Tyler, Natalie, Dan, and Levi!

A Historic Post

I listen to NPR sometimes, and I get a little bit annoyed when I hear "an" used with "historic" rather than "a historic". With a name that starts with "H", I am sensitive to this because it makes it seem like "H" is not a consonant, or that it does not even exist. The linguistic rule is that a/an is used only based on the sound of the word, not the spelling.

Consider that even words that start with vowels use "a" when it sounds like they begin with a consonant-- "a used car". Why can't "a" be used consistently with "H"? Would it sound OK to say "an hotel" or "an hippopotamus"? I really don't think so.

Having lived in Britain, I know that sometimes "h" is not pronounced very strongly, so I think this is a throwback to old days. So, I think "an historic" is a bit pretentious and somewhat confusing for everyone. I say we stand up for the letter "H"!

Kilgore cemtery

I did my first full cemetery transcription, and you can find it here at Interment.net. It's named Kilgore cemetery, near Odon in Daviess County Indiana. It has a lot of Teresa's Byrer and Kilgore ancestors. We transcribed it the day after Thanksgiving, and it just took a few (chilly) hours.

How Dora the Explorer taught my toddler to lie and steal

Teresa made Christmas candy yesterday, and Dan took some off the counter and ate it while she was not looking. The funny thing was that when she asked him who took the candy, he immediately answered "Swiper," the thieving fox from Dora the Explorer TV show. Pretty funny! We always assumed that PBS kids shows were a good influence. Not quite.

Ho ho ho!

We are getting into the Christmas spirit. Here's Teresa helping Dan trim the tree. It's Dan's year to put the star on top of the tree, and we're getting ready to do that. The other tradition that we did today with surprisingly little mess was the kids all put a painted handprint on the skirt around the Christmas tree each year. They did great- it's fun to see them growing over the years.

Had a ward Christmas party last night-- it was chilly when we went in, and there was snow all over the ground when we came out.

Not sure how ambitious I'm going to be with the outside lights this year-- we have a huge pine tree in the front yard, but I'm not sure I could get any higher than the bottom half of the tree... we'll see.