John. 'Nuff said.

Today's blog post is about my brother, John! I think he deserves some blog time because he is the only boy in the house, and lately, he has come up with the wackiest things.
For instance, yesterday John decided that he wanted to be a stunt double. Therefore resulting in jumps off the couch, the top of his bunk-bed, somersaults, and other things like that.

He also has become interested in weapons, and will find anything that looks like gun, knife, sword, or bazooka and store them in his personal collection. Nerf Guns are very rare in the Karako household. (espesially since John lost all of the bullets)

This is one of my favorite photos. Look in the background and you will see.

And what would John be without Legos? Give him Legos and he will make the coolest things out of them. One time he made an airport with a working elevator. The picture above is one of his recent creations.

Famous quotes from John:

(when offered a piece of candy) "No thanks, I'd rather have a brother."

(while in the car listening to some music)

Me: "That sounds like Oprah."

Betsey: "You don't know what Oprah sounds like."

John: "Opra is a play performed in song."

Tarps and plastic toy box lids

Ah, the joys of snow. Snow today started about at four in the morning yesterday. But then it was just sleet for a few hours, and then the snow really piled up. By noon we already had about six inches and it was still coming down.

Well, by the time it was lunch time, Dad decided that we needed some supplies if we were going to be stranded. His snow-day-supplies include, three pizzas, three different kinds of soda, lots of hot cocoa, ice cream, pretzels, cashews, cinnamon rolls, bacon, and orange juice.  Basicly everything that we don't really need. Well, that's Dad for ya. We were going to get sleds, but Target was closed and Wal-mart didn't have any. Some superstores. :) Then we did doughnuts in the Wal-mart parking lot. (bonus points for that!)
It took us about an hour or two to finally get there and back because of all the snow and ice on the roads. But finally we got home with all of our loot, and then came the long and tedious business of locating all of our snow clothes, mittens, boots, scarves, and hats. Not to mention some sort of device to serve as suitible sleds. Last year, we used toy box lids and shovels. Therefore breaking all of the lids, and losing the shovels. This year we found that tarps work very well for large amounts of people, and slid down our sledding trail at very high speeds. The last drop on the sledding hill is more like a jump, because we go over it super fast, and then we take air. But coming down is not so much fun, as we land on our behinds and then they get very sore. We also happen to make huge pile-ups at the bottom of the hill, which is when we can't stop and then pile into each other. The bigger the pile, the better.
But over all, for the weirdest sled ever, I think the tarp wins!

From Freckles to Sadie, and everywhere in between

As most of you may know, we have a new puppy! She is a ten-week-old lab mix. We found her in her crate outside our church door, with a note hoping that she would find a good home.

We originally named her Freckles, because of her freckled nose. But then we decided that her freckles might grow out, and that the name Freckles wasn't very feminine. So after much deliberation, from names like, Butterscotch, Sprite, and Skittles, we chose Sadie.

Sadie loves her new home. We moved her into a bigger crate in the dining room so she could see all the happenings in the house. Snickers has become her best friend and will sit in front of her crate and they will bark back and forth at each other. (whether that is a good thing has yet to be decided)
Rizzo, however, is a different story. Oh, Sadie absolutely loves anything that Rizzo does to her, but sometimes he gets waaaaayyyy to crazy. Like last night, Rizzo was playing around and decided that he wanted to glom Sadie. (glomming is what we Krackos call it when Rizzo drools all over a smaller dog) He has good intentions, but he is just to big to be playing around with an 18lb puppy.

Sadie is quite the character. When she plays in the snow, she will lick it up, dig a hole in it, stick her entire nose in a drift, and just bound around scattering little snow flurries all over the place. When we took her to the vet yesterday, she caught a glimpse of herself in the vets mirror above the sink, and she started barking at her reflection.

No More Raking! :)

Last week we had a small wildfire experience in our backyard. Ee heh.
It all started right after Mom left for work. Soon after, I was emptying the coals/ashes from our wood stove, as it had gotten enormously full. I put them in the ash pile outside, and observed that they were smoking a bit.
I thought, no problem, coals do that all the time. So I went inside.
About a half an hour later, Betsey and John left to go to a friends house for a party. (John was a guest, and Betsey was babysitting.)
And another half hour later, Chrissy looked outside the doors leading to the deck, and said, "Brittany, the backyard's on fire!"
"Chrissy, it's just the coals from the ash pile, nothing to worry about." I said,
"No seriously, the backyard is ON FIRE!!!"
Reluctantly, I got up from my school, and looked outside. Sure enough, the backyard was enveloped in smoke, and flames were licking at the leaves ten feet away from the propane tank. I went outside to survey the damage, and immediately called the neighbors, who came over with a 100-foot hose, and a ton of shovels. At first the fire seemed to be beating us, and calling the fire department was a very good option, but then at the last moment, we finally got it out.
The neighbors told Chrissy and I to stay on the deck until it got dark, to keep an eye on all the spots where it might re-start. So, we stayed on the deck watching Phineas & Ferb on Mom's computer, until the sun went down. There were a couple of times when we needed to spray a log or two, but other than that, all was quiet.

The area of damage.

Start of a new season

Finally, the day we have been waiting for all year, the day after Thanksgiving, the day that listening to Christmas music becomes legal in our household, the day that officially marks the begginning of the Christmas season, Christmas Decorating Day! Right before breakfast us kids had a utensil fight in which the defending parties built forts, and the attacking parties gathered ammunition. Ammo consisted of plastic fork catapults, poisonous crayon darts, paper plate Frisbees, poker chip hand grenades, and much more. After the conquered party cleaned up the mess, we had breakfast, got dressed, and started one of our favorite Christmas activities.

 John and his beloved stocking.

Suzy, while hanging up one of our many wreaths

Mom's personal choir

It is has become a tradition for John and I, to put up the tree and untangle the lights. Untangling the lights is John's favorite job. I think you can see why.

Chrissy's decorating job, a pink-covered piano.

And Mom's special angel thingie, covered in pink.

John, playing with the syncronized lights.

Chrissy, with her cranberry/popcorn body suit

John and suzy, helping, but not helping, me string the lights.

Betsey's pride and joy, the mantle

And yet another Betsey decor design, the dining room chandelier

More of the same.

My wonderful lighting job.



Reminiscing

I love the rain. When the clouds are dark, and when it seems like its evening in the morning is the best. When it rained in California, if it rained at all, it would pour. Our backyard would get flooded every time, and our patio would be like an ankle-high pool.
We had one of those plastic car strollers that you would push with a metal rod. One time Betsey and I were playing outside on the patio, and one of us would sit on the hood of the car, while the other one pushed the back. When we got up to speed, the pusher would jump onto the the back of the car, and let it glide to the end of the patio. Then we would tumble off and do it again. Then we would go "swimming" in the knee-deep hole in the corner of the backyard. By the time we went inside, we were cold and wet, but happy.

Today we don't have the car anymore, and our porch isn't big enough to "surf" on, but I still like cuddling up in a blanket watching the dogs play in the rain. I have also come to like thunderstorms too. The first and only thunderstorm I saw in California, was at night so the lightning show was spectacular. Mom woke us up at about midnight to show us that is was hailing, lightning, and thundering. It was the first thunderstorm us kids had ever seen, and we were all scared at first, but as the lightning and thunder abated, (the hail didn't) we gradually got up enough courage to go outside, hold our hands out, and catch hail as it fell from the sky. The hail melted pretty quick, but that didn't stop John from trying to eat it.

Meteor Showers

Last night was the coolest night ever. We had been awaiting it for about a week now, ever since we learned that there were going to be meteor showers. On the night of the meteor shower, we all went to bed at 8:30 to get up at 2am, and watch the Perseid's Meteor Shower at it's peak. We saw about 20-30 meteors and about five big meteors that we all oohed and aahed about. The biggest of the five was blueish in color, and had a trail that was about a foot long from where we could see it. I wish we could have gotten some pictures, but our camera didn't have the recommended minute long shutter time. But it was still super cool none the less.

While we were waiting between meteors, we picked out a few of the constellations, like the Big and Little Dippers, a few stars, like Sirius, the North Star, and a few planets, Mars and Venus. Speaking of planets, in addition to the meteor shower, there was also a planet alignment on the same night, which is very unusual. And not to  mention, there was Comet Something-Or-Other passing through earth's orbit at the same exact time! Just goes to show you that only God can whip up a three-for-one deal like that.

First Batch Of KICK IT! Photos

Unfortunately, the first time I tried to post this it went all wacko, so I had to delete and make a whole new post so I could post it. Hope this works better for y'all!

All of these pictures where taken by Betsey, but I got to them first. You might see some more on Betsey's blog in about a week, so I won't post very many.

Kendall

Audrey, the goalie for the day

Tick-Tock

I think this picture is super cool!

Eric and the sprinkler

Mr. Horn and the sprinkler

Chrissy; The serpent in black

Some other soccer excersise which I don't know about....

The water girls, armed with spray bottles

Me, Chrissy (Sibling), and Courtney (BFF)

Nolan

More sprinkler

R.I.O.T. Lock-In

Wednesday July 28, 2010

Today we will have the long-awaited-for-totally-fun-completely-awesome, R.I.O.T. (Revival In Our Time.) Lock-In. The last time we had one, we played a game called Underground Church, where you all are trying to get into the room that has "The Soda Bottle Of Salvation". But, you have to avoid guards or else you will go in prison. We also had a big Call Of Duty Marathon, (Actually the boys had a marathon, us girls played poker.) and then we tried to stay up all night. (The girls failed miserably.) But this one will be different! For us Karako's are resting up all day today to out-last the boys! And this year will be different in other respects, because us Karakos will not be the only girls there. Courtney Cogdill, special friend to Chrissy and I, will also be joining us tonight. Results to see who has won will come later!

Friday July 30, 2010

Yesterday we had the funnest lock-in ever! First, after everybody got there, we all piled into the church van and went to Track Four to give out popsicles to the workers, do some go-carts, bumper boats, bumper cars, and more go-carts. Then, we got back to the church and played Underground Church until four in the morning. Then we played a couple games of Mofia, and then played one more game of Underground Church before getting out Call Of Duty. But, unfortunately, at about five, Courtney and I went downstairs to sleep. Shortly afterward Chrissy came to join us, While Betsey, Maxinne, Eric, Wyatt, and Will stayed up all night. (Michael, Evan, and Collin gave in too.) So techinally, it was a tie. But I must say, if Courtney had not brought two big bags of snacks and drinks, we would have been very hungry people. Thank you Courtney! :-)