Truth or Dare....

This is the end result of a friendly game of Truth or Dare. Kaylee "dared" Tyler to allow her to draw on his face with a Sharpie, Kaylee claims "it was the worlds best dare" until... she said "DARE" a while later.

The good news is that no-one had to go to school with "facial hair" :)

A Very Merry Thanksgiving To You!

Now that Danee's a "big girl", she "gets" to go into Nursery at Church...  Last Sunday was actually the first time she spent the whole time in there, which made Cindy and I very proud.

But my pride swelled to possibly  unhealthy levels when I saw the craft she had made while being a big girl...



YES!! Her first handprint turkey picture!!

While I'm sure we'll enjoy many many more of these, we're currently savoring this first one like so much giblet gravy!

"A Night at The Museum"

The Young Women at church held their annual "Young Women of Excellence" program last week. Each girl entered a piece of art or something that would represent what they had been working to improve all year. It was a great night, and didn't Kaylee look lovely!




Lot's of great pieces from Music to Photography, everything was really nice.






The Food Was Super Yummy Too!

Just Another Day in the Neighborhood!

With Danee....

Ugly Dolls

The last week of summer vacation was weird around here. My own children started school a few days before my daycare kids went back to school and then my own kids had the Friday off before labor day. I also had one family that is military and were preparing to move to Guam..so... they didn't start school at all.

This left me with two babies and a handful of school aged kiddos to entertain for a day. I decided to use up some of my scrap fabric I had lying around and make Ugly Dolls... or Monster Dolls if you will.






Each child did all their own hand sewing ( I used the machine for the outside seams), the kids all worked really hard and their dolls were indeed UGLY! :)

Kidz White Board Art - Corporate Propaganda Edition

(hey facebook readers, the 'book pretty much always screws up my post formatting when they import, so just head over to www.thebrinkerhoffs.com and read this in its native form!)

Wow, I can't believe how bad I've been about posting new things!! There are at least two things per day that I think, "Okay, now THAT HAS to go on the blog!"

...and then it doesn't.

Starting and Running my own one-man business has been the hardest, most time-consuming thing I've ever done, and even though it's only a few months old, it's also already been the most rewarding. Things are coming along nicely, and there's some big news brewing on the Tech Services 4 All front... stay tuned, eventually it WILL make it to the blog!

But first, the reason for this post... Remember the white board that the kids love to doodle on?

Well last night, Andy Andrew Drew put up a little corporate propaganda for the ol' Family Business, and it was so good, such an Epic Win, that I just had to share it here...



YES!!! STICK IT TO THE SQUAD!!!

Kidz Art - White Board Edition

A few months ago, we bought a white board to write the kids' chores on, in the hopes that they'd pay attention and do the aforementioned chores...

...and after a week, the board became home to kids' graffiti, anti-chore slogans and similar things...

And then last Friday night, Cindy and I came home from a Temple trip, and the white board was laying on the kitchen table, where Ellysa had transformed it from an ordinary white board into a three colour (counting the white itself) masterpiece!



(click to enlarge)

Pretty impressive, huh?

April's Book of the Month - Secret Agent Stick!

April's book of the month is the first in his newest series (currently a series of 3 books plus a spin-off), and is called...



It's one of the longest, and one of the best books he's ever written - click this link to read Secret Agent Stick!

Andy's Book Of The Month: "Flame, The Racing Tire"

Over the last couple weeks, you've seen a lot about our 16 year old daughter Ellysa. She's riding the Water Polo wave right now, as a sophomore on the varsity squad of the area's dominant team!

Meanwhile, our 16 year old son Andy is excelling in other ways. You see his weekly comic strip, "Rodney & Jim" here every Sunday, but he does much more than that... Andy started writing books several years ago - but in the past year, they have achieved new heights in the Three Q's: Quality, Quantity and Quantifiability. (Or Length. But Length doesn't start with Q, and I really wanted to go with the Three Q's, so Quantifiability it is!)

Last year I scanned one of his books in and made an e-book out of it, and we emailed it out to select friends and family, to great reviews - no surprise to us, because we thought it was great in the first place!!

Anyway, for the past several months I've wanted to start featuring one of his books each month on the blog, and I realized today that I already have "Flame, the Racing Tire" on the computer as an e-book, so it's the perfect choice to go first! It's embedded below, with a link to the full-screen version below that.



Or to view in full screen, just click here!

Pretty good, huh? We're really proud of his writing, and the books he's written since "Flame" came out, have pushed much farther into the realm of Awesome Youth Literature. Stick around for them!

Also, Andy started his own blog this week, and I invite everyone to go over and say hi! He's listed in the blogbar on the left, or you can just click here!

New Feature: Kidz Art!

I've been wanting to do this for quite a while, and since I finally got my act together and scanned something in, here's the first installment of Kidz Art! All four of the kids do really great art - creative, funny, maybe a little disturbing... all the things that parents always say about their kids' artwork. The only difference is that ours actually live up to the hype! =)

So to kick off the series, here is one that Kaylee did a few weeks ago. She didn't name it, and I like to call it "The Little Dead Girl". See? just a *little* disturbing... at least she's a cute little dead girl, and she's smiling.. and it's raining bones... ummm.... okay, maybe a little bit more disturbing... but still a very good picture!