30 April 2020

Splurged on bubble blow and water guns on our last trip to Walmart.  Just listened to Nut Brown organize a game with Bobo and Rosebud where he blows bubbles and they run around and try to shoot them.  My life is so good.  My kids are so awesome.

29 April 2020

Rose Pink still does her makeup most mornings and sometimes she does exotic and fun things.  The other day she made herself up to match her purple dragon necklace, with purple eyeshadow and lipstick.  It was fabulous.  Rosebud loves it when Rose Pink shares makeup with her.  She clearly feels like a big girl doing big girl stuff with her older sister.

26 April 2020

Ever since I brought home the headless horseman Halloween decoration and told Rosebud and Bobo the story of the headless horseman, Rosebud has refused to go anywhere in the house by herself.  Our house is not that big, but if no one is downstairs, she won't go downstairs, and if no one is upstairs, she won't go upstairs.  The first thing she asks when you ask her to "run upstairs and get some socks" is, "Is somebody upstairs?"  At first I tried to argue about it with her, but now we just all accommodate her and go upstairs and downstairs with her.  (The house is really not that big.)  I'm just documenting here one of her funny quirks at the moment.  It's been going on for a couple months now.

Rosebud also gets frightened very easily when watching movies, and when she does, she has nightmares when she goes to sleep and wakes up screaming.  We turned Wednesday nights into family movie night, and we are taking turns picking the movies, but we have found out that we have to be really careful with what we choose for Rosebud's sake.  Bobo is actually pretty easy to scare too, so we watch lots of relatively tame (but still enjoyable) movies. 

They get this from me - I do not like suspenseful movies at all.  We planned to go as a family to go see the last Star Wars movie over Christmas, but Bobo started acting weird and finally it came out that he didn't want to see it - just the thought of it made him nervous.  So he and I and Rosebud stayed home, and the older kids went with Mr. Brown and when they came home, Mr. Brown said that all three of us had made the right choice.

25 April 2020

Our stake invited the youth to do a sing along to the youth theme song from a couple years ago called "Peace in Christ" as part of celebrating Easter.  Rose Pink likes to sing and she liked the song, so she decided to do it.  I recorded her singing it one night at least a dozen times, and finally on take thirteen, we got it just right, mostly thanks to Mr. Brown's assistance.  I love listening to her sing in this video.  She's amazing!

21 April 2020 (2)

We decided to renovate the kitchen.  We had just started working with a kitchen designer when the quarantine started, but we decided to go ahead and complete the renovation.  Almost none of the renovation has worked in the way that we expected it to, but we are super excited about how things are turning out.  Doing this during a quarantine means that there is less work available and so the contractor is getting the whole job done in basically two weeks. 

We took out the wall between the kitchen and dining room, and got rid of the two peninsula countertops to open the whole room up.  We got rid of all the cupboards, and we're only going to have two sets of drawers and the under sink cupboard - the rest are open wooden shelves over the counters, and freestanding wire shelves.  We are getting a new fridge and a new sink too, and new paint and new flooring and new lights.  The new counters are actually going to be mobile metal kitchen carts with wire shelving underneath - easy to move around and to clean.  The whole kitchen is going to be unconventional but incredibly suited to us. We also had the contractor push the back wall of the house flat and put in a sliding door to replace the standard back door.  We love it so much already when we walk in to look at it at the end of the day every day.

The kitchen/dining room area is about 25% of the floor space in the house, so the rest of the house is pretty crowded with all the stuff from the kitchen.  We move the living room couch upstairs to the library, and put the fridge and wire shelves and one of the metal kitchen carts in the living room.  The boys' room has also absorbed a lot of the unopened food and also paper products.

We ate fast food three times last week, but I think we've kind of figured out how to muddle through for this week.  Mr. Brown made pulled pork in the roaster oven on Sunday and we've been eating on that all week (yum).  We also have griddle that makes quesadillas, and a hot plate that makes scrambled eggs and boils water for mac n cheese.  Also a tiny microwave that heats tinned beans and other leftovers.  Tonight Mr. Brown made baked potatoes in the crock pot.  I wash the dishes in the bathtub upstairs.  (We are using vast quantities of paper plates and bowls at the moment.)

Picture below is the hole in the side of the house for the sliding door.  So excited for our new kitchen!

21 April 2020

Sometimes fun-ness just pops out when you're supposed to be brushing your teeth.  Bobo is pedaling while Rosebud is riding and they were having a really wonderful pretend time together.  I missed getting a picture from yesterday when I found them pedaling together, one on each pedal.

15 April 2020

Let me just say that I love stay-at-home orders.  One of the things that has been great about staying at home is that the kids have time to get into all the kits and projects that we've accumulated but never started or completed.  I have a shelf in my bedroom that I've started putting them on, and so when the kids come moaning to me about being BORED and wanting another video game turn, I suggest that they check the shelf, and there's usually (not always) something on there for them to get interested in.  Right now the boys are working next to me putting together a wooden airplane kit that someone gave us, sanding and gluing and painting.  Yesterday Bobo found fingerpaint on the shelf, a Christmas gift, and he and Rosebud took it outside and used it all up painting on  paper and each other and the sidewalk.  The other day, Nut Brown found a wooden building kit on the shelf for a lockbox with working gears and he has been working on that (another Christmas gift).  Besides these one-time use items, I am also putting on there games from the game closet and other items like modeling clay that sometimes we forget that we own.  I think it's great that we have a chance to really enjoy this stuff right now!

13 April 2020

We were checking out at Lowe's on Saturday when I realized that Rosebud had just randomly picked up a magazine and was leafing through it, as if she could read.  So cute.

10 April 2020

We are packing up the kitchen and trying to find places for everything as we contemplate living without a kitchen for a month during the renovation. I think this will help us settle into the house much better, especially because it will let us really move into the kitchen, which hasn't really happened yet because we were so unhappy with it. 

In the moving process, we uncovered a cache of Christmas presents that we hadn't played with at all.  Christmas in April! Perfect for COVID quarantine!  The kids are throwing flying balls out the second story window.  Super fun.

9 April 2020

Getting Rosebud into bed and we discover that she needs something from my bedroom.  I say, "Run get it!" and she starts off and then turns to me and says, "Should I go fast or in slo mo?"  

I love easy questions!

7 April 2020

Seven pairs of roller blades purchased (so far)

Hundreds of hours spent holding my kids' hands as they learned to skate

Watching Bobo help Rosebud learn to handle her new skates..... priceless.

3 April 2020

Rose Pink has been doing online things to share with her church group.  One of the daily challenges was to take a picture of an animal.  So she made up Rosebud as a kitty for the picture.  Rosebud was completely in love with her makeup and with the idea of being a kitty.  She wouldn't let me take the makeup off at the end of the day.