25 July 2026

someone (D) has been having fun with twos.

Our turn to clean the church, and Mr. Brown is teaching the boys how to properly care for the sacrament equipment and preparation space to ensure cleanliness and reverence.  It was a beautiful moment to watch him teach them some of their priesthood responsibilities.

 

22 July 2026

Today we became a minivan-less family... the Pan has been having issues and it was time to bid it farewell.  My parents generously offered to sell us their Toyota Camry, so we are now a two-sedan family.  We bought the Pan because Rosebud was on the way and we needed accommodations for four kids.  Right now we have one kid away at college and the second on his way out the door as well, so we don't need a minivan any more.  The Pan entered our life when we needed it, and it faithfully served until it wasn't needed any more.

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We have 113 books checked out from the library right now.  This is what 113 library books around the house looks like:

Yep, they are everywhere.

 

21 July 2026

 What a week!

The house we stayed in had these wonderful porches with a lovely view.  It was a peaceful spot to sit when the house got a little too noisy with all the excited people in it.

Rosebud immediately connected with her two girl cousins from Georgia.  They were largely inseparable the whole week, and the night we arrived they went to the pool together with Grandma.

On Wednesday, Mr. Brown and Nut Brown and Rosebud went to the water park with my brother Mark's family.  D and I stayed home with Grandma and Grandpa.  D had hurt his ankle and didn't want to do a lot of walking, plus he was not yet sure what to think about his cousins.  He played a lot of his favorite video game and rested.  Eventually Grandpa took us all out go-carting (a bit of a letdown for D because he misunderstood how the pedals in the go-cart worked) and out to lunch.  It was a quiet day for us, and a lot of fun for the others at the water park.

Bears were definitely a thing.  There was a stuffed bear in the house, and it made Nut Brown nervous enough that he asked if we could put it in the closet.  We did see a bear sniffing around our trash cans.  We were all squealing and taking pictures and he completely ignored us.

Thursday, we hung around the house all morning, and in the afternoon we rode a mountain coaster near the house and did some mining for gems by washing away dirt in a sluice.  That evening everyone went to dinner at Dolly Parton's Stampede, which was pretty cool.  Watching the trick riders was fun, and the food was pretty good for a place that's serving a couple hundred people at once.  Nut Brown was really into the audience contest they had, until he realized that it was probably rigged.  We had a lot of fun eating and watching the show!

Friday, we went to Ober Mountain with Grandpa and my brother and his son, and we enjoyed a bunch of slides and a coaster and a chance to do archery!  It was really hot, and the rain kept us from the alpine slide, but we had a good time with all the rest of it. (Thank you, Grandpa!)  

Riding the ski lift up to archery - silent and beautiful.  And it turns out that Grandpa did archery in high school so he was helpful as the rest of us learned!

Ice skating- I had to tell the boys to slow down because they were skating so well and so quickly!  They were having a lot of fun but unintentionally putting some other less experienced skaters at risk.  

Saturday, Mr. Brown took a bunch of teenage boy cousins to an escape room, and Rosebud went with her girl cousins to a different escape room.  Rosebud was glad for an activity where she wasn't talked over or ignored... as sometimes happen with big brothers.

Sunday, we went to church.  My men were particularly handsome.

By this time, my sons had gotten comfortable with their cousins, and they played a lot of games (both video games and card games) and made a lot of happy noise together.  Here they are celebrating the end of a card game by dancing on the table benches.

We also gathered for an official family photo.  I think everyone is in it except for Rose Pink!

And then Monday - headed home, with stops at both Buc-ee's on the way.  Rosebud said a very sad goodbye to her cousins.  They have a secret handclap now and I watched them do it with such sad faces when I went to get her for our departure.  The boys were all ready to be home again, although they had both enjoyed themselves.  Big thank you to Grandpa and Grandma for hosting us all!

15 July 2026

 My parents invited my family and all of my siblings' family to a vacation in Tennessee this summer, and it was finally time to head down there!  Rosebud has been counting down the days for about two weeks.  She's super excited to see her girl cousins that are her same age.

There was a little alarming health issue for me on Thurs/Fri/Sat of last week, but when I finally went to the ER with it, the chest pain turned out to be strained cartilage on my ribs and the ear/jaw/throat pain was a cyst in a salivary gland.  It was all manageable with some medication, so we didn't have to cancel our trip!

We packed on Monday and got on the road early Tuesday morning.  We drove down to Pigeon Forge in a very uneventful manner in a red minivan we rented, which Mr. Brown calls 'Cherry'.

Kids had a good time, alternating playing video games on the Switch with reading books and looking out the window and other activities.

There are two Buc-ee's on the route, and we stopped at both of them!  Once for lunch and once for dinner!  That was definitely a highlight because we love Buc-ee's and miss it from when we lived in Texas.

We arrived safely at the house my parents rented.  My parents and my brother's family were already there, and cousin connections were revived.  Rosebud is sleeping in the same room with her girl cousins, and D played foosball and shuffleboard and video games with the ones his age.  Happy to see that they will probably be having fun together this week.

This morning Mr. Brown took Nut Brown and Rosebud to the water park with most of my brother's family.  D and I stayed home because he took a fall yesterday and had some big scrapes and a twisted ankle.  Grandpa took us go-carting (fun) and to lunch at a car-themed restaurant (fun) and then we did some grocery shopping for dinner and also ice cream :) . D has also been playing video games and reading his book and having quiet time, which I think is probably the best choice for him today.

12 July 2026

 This morning Rosebud decided to occupy herself by using some of her craft supplies.  She got out a soap bar sized chunk of wax and began work on a bird sculpture.  We looked at some bird pictures, and she sketched it out and then made a mockup of it in putty eraser, and then dove in with the carving.  When Nut Brown saw what she was doing, he asked if he could join in.  She gave him one of her other bars, and he started work on a human figure.  They spent a long time working steadily on their projects.

2 July 2026

 

My raspberry bushes have been wonderful this year.  And we're having another summer with a local CSA order so we get fresh corn and other vegetables... the best tomatoes ever, and more zucchini than my kids want to eat.  We are eating good this summer!

30 June 2026

 

28 June 2026

 Mr. Brown left town for a family wedding and going to Trek as soon as he got back, so I took off work and the kids and I went places!

June 18th was the last day of school.  Therefore, ice cream!  Their mouths are open because they're singing, probably something from Hamilton.

On Friday, we went to Philadelphia.  We had lunch in an unexpected restaurant and it was really good.  It didn't say it was Russian, but the food tasted very Russian to me, and it was so, so good.

Then we went to Philadelphia's Magic Gardens, just down the street.  I was curious about it, and the kids humored me.  We were not that impressed with it though.

After that we walked up to the Museum of Illusions.  I hadn't bought tickets ahead of time because I was trying to maintain flexibility in the schedule, so that meant that we had extra time to sit outside the museum and rest after the walk... about 45 minutes of extra time.

Rosebud taking a picture of a bird that she was feeding crumbs to

The boys, singing.

But then we got to go inside and the kids forgave me because the museum was so cool.

Nut Brown was trying to dive into the manhole.

There was also a spinning tunnel to walk through that made me sick, but the kids ran through it a bunch of times.

Finally, there was a setup with the furniture attached to the ceiling.  The following has the actual shot on the left, and the rotated picture on the right.  The first one is Nut Brown, who is literally sitting on the ceiling, and that is cooler than the rotated shot.  But the other ones are funny illusions with D and Rosebud.

That evening, Rosebud and I went to see a movie in the park downtown - The Princess and the Frog.  Very fun!  Boys, unsurprisingly, were not interested.

On Tuesday afternoon (23 June), we drove down to the Baltimore Museum of Industry.  Rosebud had been on a field trip and she assured us that it was amazing.  Turned out to be a little less amazing as ordinary museum guests because they didn't have as many activities as they do for school groups.  I don't know if I would go again, but it was an interesting one-time visit.  And there was an old car that could be climbed on and driven, which was fun because it has a totally different feel than new cars.

Nut Brown has Fridays off, so we went to DC on Friday.  We took the train!

Which didn't really work because both Nut Brown and Rosebud got motion sick riding it.  Riding the metro in DC was a big hit though.  All three kids were interested in following the maps on the wall of the car and tracking our progress.

First stop: food truck by the Natural History Museum for lunch.  It was expensive, but really, really good.

Next we had tickets for a tour of the Capitol.  On our way there, we dashed into the National Archives to see founding documents - it looked like it had even more interesting things to see, but we didn't have time.  Maybe next time we go.  It helps that both Nut Brown and D are interested in early American history at the moment.  Thank you, Hamilton musical.

On to the Capitol.  We had to throw away the rest of our food to go on the tour, which was irritating.  I'd planned on snacks to get us home and now we had nothing.  I was really hoping that this tour would be good.

Well, it was not nearly as good as I had hoped.  We only got to see three rooms: the basement, the rotunda, and the old Senate room, which is now a statuary gallery.  What we did see was neat, but we all wished there had been more to see.  Photos above are from the rotunda.  Most of what the guide pointed out to us were the statues contributed by each state of notable people - every state gets two, and they can be swapped out every two years.  It was interesting to see who was chosen.

We stopped by the Library of Congress on our way to the metro station to go home.  We saw Thomas Jefferson's library.  LoC had replaced any missing volumes with other copies (same publishing run) and there were only a few empty spots.  He had a lot of books.

There was also a Gutenberg Bible on display, but no other books.  The gallery that has special books was closed.  We'll have to come back here again some time.

We were exhausted when we got off the train home.  Therefore- pizza for dinner!  We treated ourselves at Bacco's instead of Domino's.  We were so tired.

The next day, on Saturday, Rosebud and I went to the air show as part of Fleet Week down in Baltimore.  The Blue Angels were flying, and also the British and French equivalents.  It was an amazing show!!

By the end of the week, even Rosebud was too tired to do anything else.  We almost didn't make it to the air show, but I'm so glad we did.  It was so amazing to sit under a cloudy sky and watch the planes.