Ben and Marinda update

We all covenanted to post once a month on this beast, so I'll blast out an update. You can all see Marinda's perspectives on our blog, but I'll add my two cents here. We really enjoyed conference this time around. The talks were so good. I missed the Saturday afternoon session although I went back to listen to Oaks's talk which was phenomenal. It's nice to hear the judge talk. I also really liked Christopherson's in Priesthood. We've been talking in class about national identity and how crazy everybody in the world is getting. Even the 23rd chromosome is being questioned. It's nice to hear truth every six months. The girls are all still awesome. Caroline continues to have problems controlling the VOLUME of her voice. Said volume appears to operate in inverse proportion to her caloric intake. Our friends have a six month old cankle laden offspring that weighs as much as Caroline. Today, we went looking for vans. The girls were having a blast opening and shutting the van doors by pushing buttons, but a shriek from Caroline may or may not have been induced by her head getting stuck in said door. Emily is reading like crazy which is kind of scary. She's also repeating things I say which is much MORE scary. The adjective "freaking" has been creeping into her vocabulary. Not one of my stellar contributions to her character. She sings primary songs to herself a lot. She and Caroline are well versed in contemporary music, too. Never fear, Steve. Today in the car, the requests/demands from the peanut gallery were the usuals. 1) "Disappear" by INXS; 2) "Dog Days" and "Kiss with a Fist" by Florence and the Machine 3) "Lonely Boy" by Black Keys, and 4) "Far Away" by Wolfmother. I must admit it is amusing when Caroline yells out (and I do mean YELLS) "I want Kiss with a Fist!" from the back seat of the car. At least with Emily the verbal requests start softly and slowly crescendo until she gets my attention. Caroline's vocals go straight to 11. Caroline has also demonstrated a penchant for violence towards her father. I was seriously brained by a matchbox car the other day. She had maniacal smile across her face as she pelted me point blank in the nose. Don't know where she gets that kind of mischevious aggression. Marinda is perfect. She controls the volume of her voice and hurls only non-threatening items at me. We are hoping for orders soon to confirm our assignment in Germany. We will advise as soon as we get them. Take care of yourselves, and have a Feliz dia de Colon. Ben