irielife.net

Dear Family,

Greg LeCheminant brought by his pictures taken during our Colorado River trip last summer, July 2004. There were a few pictures that captured the family spirit of this trip, and I want to share them with you. One is of Greg with his daughter, Jalyn, who was 12 years old on the trip, shot from a perch near the rim, on the trail back from the Nankoweap granary.

The second is of Greg’s brother, Paul, whom I consider the alpha of the LeChem alpha-males. Many of you know him as the man who rowed Katherine so quickly out of the American River, when she was tossed out of a boat, smacked her leg, became hypothermic, and began fainting….right up until she was carried into the ambulance with the handsome EMT.
The third is of Paul’s kids, and a cousin, singing in the rain. All the LeChem families represented on the trip (four in all), were amazing.

In 16 days of camping, cooking, hiking, sharing the “hopper”, etc., I NEVER heard so much as a cross word. Of course, they have had about 10 years of practice.

This picture captures their can-do,lets-make-a-game-out-of-misery happiness. Amazing.

Reminded me of my own amazing kids, the ones who managed 14 days of Bowron: cramped car travel, mosquitoes, drought-turned-torrential-rain camping, etc., and created more wonderful memories than a mortal father is usually allotted.. like chocolate-black-toothed Car Dancing!

Love, Dad

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Dear Kids,

It is 6:30 AM, Friday morning, Jan 28, and I have just come home from
the hospital, where Katherine gave birth to Jack, at about 4:30 AM.

Jack is a handsome little boy, with lots of dark hair, huge hands, long
legs and a pinched, wrinkled face. After several hours of waiting, I
finally got to go in and see him. He was basking under the heat lamp,
pasted all over with those round sensors (when you are so tiny, a
1-inch diameter patch can cover a surprisingly large proportion of your
body… and when you are decorated with four of them.. well, you are
practically dressed) and, finally, contented. While Corey made his
closed eyes go squishy-extra-hard-shut with his camera flashes, I just
admired his competent breathing. See, he’s already mastered that.
Breathing. Deep, deep breaths, and, occasionally, a little half-hearted
wail. I could tell his heart was not in the effort… he was just
practicing super-breathing, and the little cries were more like
super-breathing exhaust.

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Rachel has started to figure out how to crawl. This video (click on the picture on the left) was taken the first day Rachel attempted to move from a sitting to crawling position.

Video size: 12 MB Format: .wmv

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Rachel is making tremendous strides in her development lately. All of the energy which she used to use for screaming is, of late, being spent exploring her world. She’s rolls over alot more often, she has started pulling herself up to a kneeling position
using the furniture, and she’ll be crawling as soon as she coordinates her legs and her arms. Today, she discovered that she is completely in charge of her tongue, and has spent much of the day playing with it. We caught some of it on video, which you can watch by clicking on the picture at the left.

Susie, somewhat wearied by 4 weeks of sick kids, decided to take the kids to the library. The picture on the right shows how the girls spent most of their afternoon — curled up on the couch buried in books (literally, at least for Camryn).

The video is large — about 11 MB — and in .wmv (Windows Media) format.

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{mosimage}Santa Claus stopped by our ward Christmas party a few weeks ago, and we got some video of the older kids telling Santa what they wanted for Christmas. Click on the picture to the left to launch the video (.wma format).

You can read about our visit to Santa Claus at last year’s Christmas party here. Happily, this year’s visit was not roiled by inter-sibling disagreement as to the metaphysics of Santa, as was last year’s party.

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The weatherpeople on our local TV news stations have been all atwitter this past week with the threat of snow finally becoming a reality. The past couple of winters were pretty action-packed, but this one has so far been a dud. And competition is a wonderful thing. Most stations are trying to keep us glued to our sets with ominous warnings about possible snow and ice and promises of segments teaching us how to cope with the cold, while at least one radio station promised not to succumb to “the fearmongering going on on the TV stations”.

Judging from the picture on the right, the weatherpeople on TV have got to be pretty disappointed. It did indeed snow last nite — it was just a pathetic little dusting, but it was exciting nonetheless. The kids were disappointed. Camryn really wants a white Christmas. We’ll keep hoping…

So far it has mostly just been bitterly cold. Like below-zero cold. We’ve never seen anything like this, not even while living in Utah. Last night about 1 a.m. I jumped out of bed after smelling something burning. I searched frantically through the house looking for the source. After finding the kids were okay, and that nothing downstairs was on fire, I checked the thermostat. Turns out our heat pump has an electric backup heater. When it’s so cold outside that the heat pump can’t extract any heat from the air (Dad will explain), a backup circuit kicks in and turns on an electric heating circuit. It almost never gets cold enough to need this, so I guess the burning smell was that of gunk burning off an unused heating element.

Oh, how we miss California at this time of year!!
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{mosimage}My version, amazingly simlar to Laura's (also sent to some Joneses via email):

Watch out for deer. After putting one in Laura's lap (almost), I see by this link
that I am far from alone. Still, three deer and counting is pretty good
(the others in SLC and Georgia). Of course, now that I am in the
Midwest I honor the cervidaic highway competitor by eating him or her.

Saturday, we were trying to head North to cut a Christmas Tree. After
being diverted three times due to a fatality accident, and having been
in bumper-to-bumper on one-lane county roads for about an hour, the
family gave up and headed South. Not a block from this decision (and
still in view of the officer redirecting traffic), I caught a deer at
about 45 MPH. It came left to right, but my left headlight took out the
deer's hind legs. If you can picture that, it means that the front of
the deer was above the van's hood (it was bounding you see). Therefore,
the front legs, chest, neck and head took out that huge Caravan
windshield. It was spiderwebbed so badly that Laura couldn't see a
thing from the passenger side, and it caved in a good 10 inches or so.
If I hit it the same way at my normal speed along that stretch (around
65 MPH), I'm pretty sure that Laura would have had an instantaneous
holiday fur coat.
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At this Christmas time of year, our hearts
soften just a little. We enjoy the laughter of little children, the
smell of evergreen boughs, the warmth of letters and news from friends
across the country. But, what of our animal friends? Is it possible
their needs can also be communicated at this wonderful time of year? I
assert that they can! In fact, I had the profound impression that a
deer we met the other day wanted something simple….just her two front
feet!

Yes, we were driving along last Saturday in our mini-van to
pick up a beautiful Christmas Tree. Northbound traffic was being
re-routed through varous 2-lane county roads due to an accident with
injuries. After almost 45 minutes to drive 5 miles, we gave up on
northbound endeavors and turned southward and home. Just 100 yards from
a 4-way stop (created by a policeman) we hit Blitzen. No, wait! Blitzen
was a boy-deer. This must have been his assistant! She bounded into the
left side of our car and up onto the windshield, leaving the safety
glass in a spidery web. Fortunately, none of us were injured. Randy
drove the car back around with some comment about "I kill it, I grill
it!"
Some locals stopped almost immediately, not to see if anyone was
injured, but to see if Randy wanted the fresh meat!! To which he
responded in clear minnesotan dialect "you betcha!"
He and Buz threw the deer into the back of MY mini-van and drove the
last mile home where they proceeded to gut it IN THE FRONT YARD and
hang it by a hind leg from an Oak in the FRONT YARD. The resultant
weight proved too much and the back leg tore off. Now we had a three
legged-deer. I was afraid Randy would now try hanging the animal by a
front leg, leaving more "hanging leg" christmas ornaments from the old
Oak out front.
A neighbor intervened to help Randy hang it by the neck instead. You
could almost hear the deer sigh in relief…."All I want for Christmas
is My Two Front Feet!"

Hope you all enjoy bright, happy, SAFE
Holidays! -Laura Lee
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Dear friends,
Gavin sometimes has trouble with constipation, but we’ve found an effective treatment for this. Works faster than any OTC drug I’ve ever seen…just put him in the bathtub!! Yes, friends, it works! I won’t elaborate further….but it’s not fun for Mom.
In other Lee family news, Alison seems to be enjoying married life, Rex passed his board of review for Eagle Scout (no court of honor sched yet) and Buz is back to diving season.
We miss you all, and the lovely weather in Santa Rosa. We have a little snow on the ground and it’s getting cold here.
Love and hugs,
Laura Lee
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{mosimage}
Susie spent some time this weekend adding new photos to the site. There
are two new albums — one of Susie’s trip to the zoo, and another with
some shots of the kids taken while Susie was experimenting with light
and posing for a future photo shoot.
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