31 July 2015

Good things that come out of children's television: pointillism executed with acrylics and qtips!

21 July 2015

Nut Brown has been on a roll losing teeth.  Last Thursday at the park he said to Mr. Brown, "Papa, I think I have a loose tooth."  Mr. Brown looked in his mouth, and then he pulled the tooth out.  It had been so tightly jammed between two other teeth that by the time Nut Brown noticed it was loose, it was ready to come out.

On Sunday at church, Nut Brown was playing with another loose tooth, turning it so that it was at funny angles.  Bobo was totally weirded out by it.  Then Nut Brown went to the bathroom, and when he came back he showed me his tooth in his hand - he'd pulled it out himself in the bathroom.  Right when he got back, Bobo asked to see his mouth.  Nut Brown grinned at him and Bobo exclaimed, right in the middle of services, "You missing teeth!"  He carefully examined Nut Brown's extracted tooth, and then said to me, "Are you missing teeth, Mama?  I'm not missing teeth.  See?"

20 July 2015

Rose Pink & Nut Brown wrote a book!  I especially love the page numbers.

17 July 2015

At our last stake conference, Nut Brown produced this image of Joseph Smith's First Vision:

Also this drawing of a dragon:

16 July 2015

Mr. Brown gathered everyone in the kitchen one night and decided to read scriptures together while they were eating ice cream since it was already late.  He saw he had everybody and said, "Now that I've got everyone in the kitchen..." and went to get the scriptures.  Nut Brown immediately got up and went and sat on the cellar stairs out of sight on the other side of the kitchen, so that when Mr. Brown came back, we weren't all there any more.  Prankster!

15 July 2015

Rose Pink is going to be a mermaid in play that she and a friend are putting on.  We were working on sketching out her costume.  She was not satisfied with my understanding of what was needed, so she drew for me a step-by-step process of what she wanted to happen.

 

14 July 2015

The city recently painted bike lanes on the roads here, including on the road we ride to the library.  On a recent trip I let the kids ride in the bike lane.  They took pride in riding right over the bikers painted on the pavement in the bike lane.  Rose Pink said to Nut Brown, "Where did you get on that last one?  I got another skull."

13 July 2015

Nut Brown was playing around the other day with our initials, melding them in various ways.

11 July 2015

When we read the scriptures lately, the kids have fixated on the phrase 'the reign of the judges'.  So whenever we run across it, we repeat the following four lines:

1. It was raining judges?
2. That must have been a heavy rain!
3. Nah, judges are mostly full of hot air.
4. Now a rain of frogs, that would be something!

Even Bobo will jump in to start it.  It's fun to be silly together.

10 July 2015

At our 4th of July feast in the backyard, Bobo offered thanks and said, 'Thank you with it's so beautiful... it's so beautiful...'  It was a very sweet prayer of thanksgiving for the beautiful afternoon and anticipated meal, and it summed up both Mr. Brown's and my feelings of gratitude for our place in life at the moment.

8 July 2015

At the park the other day Nut Brown was being wheelbarrowed around by Mr. Brown.  Bobo wanted to do it too, but wasn't able to keep up quite so much with Nut Brown.  So he wheelbarrowed over to Nut Brown and tackled him, so they ended up rolling around on the grass.  Ah, said Mr. Brown.  The recurring strategy of younger brothers.  If you can't win, wrestle.

7 July 2015

Thank goodness for friends.

4 July 2015

The kids treated us to a 4th of July parade in the front yard.  They marched around from the back singing the Emperor's march from Star Wars and then threw confetti on us.  Happy 4th!

2 July 2015

We bought a minivan and went to Maine in June.  Mr. Brown's family was having a family reunion there and we were excited to visit!

On the way out we stopped in Kirtland, Niagara Falls, Hill Cumorah and the Sacred Grove.  Also we stopped in Albany NY at a cool graveyard.  Here lies Chester A. Arthur.  We were listening to the Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman, so it was a good place to get out for a bit.

When we got to Maine, there was a moose to greet us.

One day we played miniature golf with pirates.

while Bobo slept

but eventually he woke up and he and I played a round together.

Happy pirating for all!

The rest of this post is largely a photo dump of all the rocky beaches we hung out at, because basically what we did was go to the beach, over and over, and climb on the rocks and dig in the sand and pick up shells.  It was a lot of fun.

The water was much too cold for most of us, but Rose Pink enjoyed wading.

Also we got to walk on the bottom of the ocean when the tide went out- we walked across the bay to an island.  Very cool.

A bear bid us goodbye as we left Maine.

The trip home was just driving, for two straight days. 

We saw a lot of neat stuff and did a lot of fun things!