1 March 2026

This morning at church I watched D get the sacrament table ready and spread the cloth out with another teacher, and I felt so joyful at his growth and development.  He's such a great young man.  He and Nut Brown sat next to each other and talked about a manga they're both interested in, and I was so grateful for Nut Brown's good influence on D.  D idolizes him.

They spent most of the afternoon working on creating a card game together.  I was taking a nap in the sunshine in my bedroom (luxury) so I didn't see the specifics, but it was good times for them.  We ate dinner (ice box delight leftovers) with miscellaneous conversation, and suddenly they both jumped up and cleared the living room floor so they could wrestle... but Nut Brown called him back to the bedroom and they came out in dress coats and hats and decided to fight/reenact a fight from this manga they're enjoying together.

The game involved throwing their hats at each other.  They were having a great time together.

When I moved out here with Rosebud and D three years ago, it left Mr. Brown and Nut Brown and Rosebud together in Texas.  Mr. Brown said that the time Nut Brown got to have as a kind of only child was really good for him.  He did a lot of growing and maturing, and that was really evident when they got to Maryland.  I especially noticed how much more patient he was with D, whose ADHD can really push everyone's buttons sometimes.  Nut Brown does still get frustrated with D, but he also genuinely enjoys him as well.  I love to see them being happy together.

 

23 February 2026

More snow today. School was canceled for today, and the base was closed so I was off work as well.  It was heavy, wet snow, that clung to the trees and houses and outlined everything in white.  So beautiful.

We went to the store in the afternoon, and the kids climbed on the piles of snow in the parking lot, still hanging around from the big snow we got a month ago.  After that big snow, it was below freezing for two weeks afterwards, and nothing melted.  I never thought I would be so happy to see forty degrees as I was when the cold finally broke.  Maybe it will finally all melt.

 

21 February 2026

 Grandma came down to visit us today!  She got to hang out with Nut Brown and D and Rosebud for awhile, and then she took us to dinner at a hot pot restaurant, which was really fun!  I didn't get any pictures of the dinner, but here is a photo of Rosebud with the balloon animal that one of the waiters made for her.  (He really liked her.)  

The men had already left because they were getting ready to go to a dance - D's first youth dance!  Nut Brown and Mr. Brown had worked hard to prepare D for the dance.  We practiced asking girls to dance (Nut Brown coached us) and then Nut Brown took him through the entire dance - how to talk to the girl, how to answer questions, what to do if she asks too many questions, how to end the dance.  Nut Brown is such a wonderful older brother.

D did not like the dance, but he stayed the entire time, and that was more than I had hoped for.  Maybe they will grow on him.

20 February 2026

 D has started wearing a hat to school every day.  Not a ball cap, but one of our fancy hats - we have a fedora, a top hat, and a black hat with a wide brim.  He picks one of them every day and he looks so good in them!  I love that one of his spontaneous ideas is working out well for him.  I drive him to school every day, and I really enjoy being with him in the car for ten minutes every morning.

17 February 2026

 President's Day, I'm off work and the kids are off school, and Rosebud asked if I would take her to Target to spend a gift card she got for her birthday.  We walked the store and assessed items and costs and she chose carefully to stay within the budget of the gift card and get the items that she wanted the most.  It was a good learning experience for her, and it was really fun to spend time together.

I also brought a gift card from Starbucks that I was given for Christmas, and we had a treat together afterwards! Which we ate in the car because I had to dash (after 90 minutes at the store) to help a friend clean her basement.

16 February 2026

Last year, the Susquehanna Ward had an adults-only Valentine's dance, and invited our ward.  Mr. Brown and I decided that we should host one this year and invite them, to see if we could make it into a tradition.  Then January came around, and we decided that we didn't have time.  But we went ahead anyways.  After finishing up Rosebud's party, this was the next big project.

He invited a couple of people from our ward to help throw it.  We held a planning meeting and then just went with it!  Mr. Brown said it would be so cool to have silhouettes on the wall with speech bubbles saying corny pickup lines, so we met up with good friends and spent a couple hours making them.

 I made little table decorations (I bought these silhouettes on Etsy) with silhouettes and pickup lines too. We asked friends to hang lights in the gym, and the rest of our team took care of the food and table decorations.  Spencer and I obsessed over the playlist, but we did finally get it together and found someone to DJ for us.  

It turned out so beautifully!  Unfortunately, I ran out of steam and the speech bubbles didn't make it up on to the walls.  But the silhouettes looked great!

We had a lot of fun.  In between dancing sets, we also taught and enjoyed some social dancing - the Virginia reel, and one other.  Which was also really fun.  What an evening!

I took the day off on Friday to prepare (dance was on Saturday) and Mr. Brown and I went shopping together!  I found this sweet purple suit to wear to the dance.  I felt very dapper and dressed up.  Plus it matched Mr. Brown's bowtie, so we were an excellent couple. <3

14 February 2026

Morning valentines! a box of Little Debbie Nutty Buddy bars tied to the end of a string that goes all over the house.  Nut Brown had to leave early for work, so I made his string really short - it went straight from his bed to his bin.  When he got up, he was not happy- he said to Mr. Brown, I can either find my treat or I can eat before I leave for work.  Mr. Brown said, you might try it- I think it might not be as complex as usual for you.  He found it in about ten seconds, and Mr. Brown said that he felt loved and understood, so that's a bonus for Valentine's Day.

Dinner was at Burger King because of set up for the dance that took all afternoon.  (Yes, we're throwing a dance!  More to follow about it!) I sure love these kids.
 

3 February 2026

Hedgehog Day!  Turns out that we didn't have any chocolate sprinkles in the basement, so we had rainbow hedgehog donut holes this year!  We also experimented with things that weren't chocolate icing to hold the sprinkles on, and decided that jam worked and chocolate syrup doesn't.

I love having little traditions outside of the usual holidays!

(please note in the background the wheat grinder that D set up and decided to have a couple of weeks of grinding wheat because why not.  We used his output in baking.)

 

2 February 2026

 Kids back at school today after a week off because of the snow storm last Sunday.  We got eight inches of precipitation, and the last of it turned the top two inches of snow into ice.  It hasn't gotten close to freezing for the last week either, so basically all of it is still here. So the kids were at home all week.  Neither one of them asked for an opportunity for playdates, and I think they both found it very restful not to have to go to school.  Rosebud spent a lot of time playing the piano and learned to play a couple hymns (As Sisters In Zion and Nearer My God To Thee).  She also got her ukelele out and messed around on it.  Without the pressure of school, it was easy to see how interested she is in music.

1 February 2026

 

31 January 2026

Rosebud asked for an ocean-themed birthday party this year.  We worked on it for all of January and finally hosted it the last day of the month.  We made a sign out of fish on a net that said "Happy Birthday Bridie" and put up seaweed in our ocean-colored dining room.  Nut Brown hung up a sheet over the fan to make it look like we were under water.

The girls started by painting treasure chests a solid base color, and then they played an egg-and-spoon game that was ocean creature bath toys instead of eggs.  Next up was making ocean-themed suncatchers out of cardstock, tissue paper and contact paper.  They turned out really well, although cutting out all that cardstock ahead of time was a lot of work for me.

We made a grotto at the bottom of the stairs where they descended to "rescue" a stuffed animal party favor.  For some reason they put them all on their heads for the photo.

Back to the table to decorate their chests with paint markers.

Next up: cake.  We ended up with fancy cupcakes from a local bakery because our plans for the cake fell through - it didn't turn out at all.  But the fancy cupcakes were awesome!

Good time for everyone!  Happy birthday, Rosebud!

 

30 January 2025

Blizzard of the year.  We got eight inches of snow on Sunday, and the top three were ice.  School was canceled all week!  The city did a pretty good job plowing - once we got our driveway shoveled, the road was clear for us to get out.  But we mostly just stayed home.  Only about half the people shoveled their walks, so we walked on the street when we went out.  Nut Brown still went to work, but I was off work as well and we had a quiet, restful week at home.  (School is so stressful for all of us.)

Also, Rosebud asked for the keyboard to be set up in her room because we needed the living room for something else, and she was so involved in her piano playing that she wasn't ready to stop.

 

24 January 2026

Playing video games together. D loves company and Rosebud likes to spend time with him.

 

22 January 2026

 Rosebud has developed a cute little exchange that we say to each other in a sing-song voice when she's being tucked in.  "I love you too, I love you too, see-you-in-the-moooorrning, love love love!" Recently she added, "Infinite lovies!" as an exclamation at the end.  It makes my heart happy every time.