Real Families, Real Answers

While hunting for something to watch on BYU TV today to get my mind off of politics, I came across a show called Real Families, Real Answers. (To get to it, click the BYU Original Production tab once you are on byu.tv) I watched the first episode and was really impressed, especially because, although it is a BYU production, the families they feature are from a variety of faiths.

The show is beautifully produced and pleasant to watch (having the music written by Sam Cardon is a big plus too!). It probably also helps that the director is Blair Treu, who appears to be an experienced LDS Hollywood director, and former ABC News anchor Jane Clayson Johnson narrates the series.

I think it is a new series because so far there are only two shows available. It looks like they will be following a set of families throughout the series and talking about what they do to have a healthy family. As well as featuring BYU professors, they also interview marriage and family expert William Doherty in the show who makes some excellent points about making your family an intentional family.

As pointed out in the first 2 episodes,
these are the nine characteristics shared by successful families

There is more information about the show here as well: http://kbyutv.org/rfra/

macaroni and cheese comin'!

To improve Mac and Cheese (which makes me wonder why McCain and Palin never adopted the moniker Mac and Cheese?), add some salsa before you eat it.

Just me and the 4 youngest today

My wife and oldest daughter M12 (on this blog I am not going to use first names -- fortunately we didn't use the same first initial for any of our children, so this works out well) went on a temple trip this morning to St. Louis with the Young Women (yes M is already a young woman), so it is just me and T10, B8, C4, and A1. So far I have done two loads of dishes, minus the cups on the top layer that never get clean. We just leave them in there hoping they will get clean, but day-after-day they disappoint us.
We have also made a lot of progress today on Zelda: Twilight Princess which we play on our old school Gamecube. In a lot of ways though I think the Gamecube still is better than the Wii - it's cheaper, and you don't need a lot of space to wave your arms in. Plus, Link is still left handed when you play the GameCube version of Twilight Princess, which is truer to the franchise (disclosure: I am a lefty myself). The game is rated T (teen) but I am making sure to stay ahead of the kids enough to find anything that merits the rating. So far I don't see anything much worse than the other Zelda games.
A1 (1-year-old girl) is walking around holding some Pokemon cards that undoubtedly belong to one of her brothers. She is singing some kind of song about them and waving them triumphantly. She just threw them across the kitchen floor and is recollecting them. I'll never understand why the boys leave these out if they really are as valuable as they claim them to be.
I am noticing an odor as A1 walks by that elicits my instinct that tells me "I wonder how long I can go without changing her diaper before it becomes a problem." If you wait to long you undoubtedly will change it and realize you caused a diaper rash by delaying. Looks like I will delay no longer.