20 December 2021

Some artwork from Bobo recently:

This is work in pastels.  I hung this on my wall by my desk.

A note he left me on Saturday morning, with the update "Boing canceled because of weather"

Project in art class

Sometimes it's really fun to have kids in the same school, because they come home with similar efforts, like this one where the teacher had them drawing crowns over the heads of the animals.  (Bobo on top, Rosebud below)

14 December 2021

Last night was Rose Pink's choir concert in Dallas.  Since it was on Monday, I was the only one who went.  We left home at 7:30 am and drove up to Dallas to the Meyerson Center downtown.

Then the waiting began.

When you're in a concert that involves five choirs and 400 people, there is a lot of waiting.  They found their stage positions and practiced moving between them for the various numbers, and then did a full rehearsal.  Then it was 4 pm and we all went back to the holding room for our choir until the first show at 5 pm.

It was quite a show.  Rose Pink was of course amazing, and her choir was amazing, and all the choirs were amazing together.  Rose Pink's choir sang "Beautiful Savior" and "The Little Drummer Boy" and "Carol of the Bells" and many, many others.  My favorite was a version of "Mele Kalikimaka" that involved drums and hula dancers and chanting - very high energy and so much fun.

There was a second show at 8 pm, which I got to attend rather than assist backstage.  After that we had a quick visit with some friends who came to see her.

Then it was off home through rain and dense fog.  We got home at 2:30 am.  It was a very long day, but a really great experience.  I'm so glad that she has the chance to rehearse and perform with this choir.

6 December 2021

This weekend Rose Pink's choir performed as part of a Christmas program at the church where they rehearse.  Rosebud and I attended the program.  We walked past various outdoor scenes of the Savior's birth and life and death and an empty tomb, and then listened to the choir sing.  It was fun to do it together with Rosebud, and Rose Pink's choir sounded wonderful.  Their official concert is next Monday on 13 December in Dallas.  Looking forward to that as well.

2 December 2021

Here are some of the treasures that Rosebud has brought home from school lately:

This is a self-portrait.  She filled in the blanks at the bottom with: "My name is <her name> and I like BABIES."  This is interesting because I don't think she has a lot of experience with babies.  Her Primary teacher told me a couple weeks ago that Rosebud drew a picture of her family and said that I was pregnant, because she really wants a little sister.  (This wish is extremely unlikely to come true.)

So pleased that she has friends at school.  Although there has been a learning curve in social relationships that is sometimes hard for her. 

I'm including this one to show how much she likes to color.  This was a math exercise but she has carefully colored the leaves in multiple different colors.

Fun in art class.

I think it's a mermaid?  That is trick-or-treating?

29 November 2021

Benefits of being the youngest in the family.

25 November 2021

Happy Thanksgiving!  It was just us this year, which was lovely, and Rose Pink made six kinds of pie for us to eat at 'Pie Overdrive' which is what Mr. Brown called the dessert section of dinner.  Yum.

23 November 2021

At the park, swinging on a squeaky swing, Bobo says to me, "I think there's an elephant hiding in this swing."  I reply, "I hear it!"  He added, "It has seventy different vocalizations."

Cleaned out Rosebud's toy shelves this weekend and discovered that she was keeping her travel snacks from our last trip up to Dallas in her bedroom on a shelf.  And she hadn't eaten them all yet!

16 November 2021

Bobo wiped out on his bike on Saturday morning coming back from the donut shop and broke his leg.  We didn't realize that it was broken for two days because it didn't look any different from his other leg so we thought it was just a strain of some sort.  When it didn't get better, we took him to the doctor and sure enough, it was broken!  He has a big green cast and crutches now and is learning to get around.  He's been enjoying the perks of getting to watch a lot of tv and play a lot of video games and read a lot of books while laying on the couch resting.  But today he was a little mopey about not being able to go outside in our beautiful November weather to jump on the trampoline.

Rose Pink took this picture of Rosebud in our backyard.  Rosebud came home from school the other day and told us that her class had an impromptu hair-cutting party that day!  Her teacher was out that day and during an activity where they were using scissors for a craft, someone had a bright idea that spread like wildfire and the sub completely lost control of the class.  More than half the kids went home with less hair than they had that morning.  Rosebud didn't get her hair cut (some of the haircuts were involuntary) and she didn't cut anybody else's, but she told me that she started to collect her friends' hair since they didn't need it any more after they cut it off.  The sub had to call the principal to get order restored.  The image of a bunch of kindergarteners cutting each others' hair and ignoring the teacher's pleas for order crack me up.  I spent a lot of time laughing about it, which completely mystified Rosebud.  She kept telling me that it was VERY SERIOUS - which of course it is and I'm sure that was the message she got from the adults at the school.  And then she added in a sad, thoughtful voice, "And they took all our scissors!" and I'm just exploding with laughter again.

31 October 2021

Halloween trunk-or-treat at the church.  Mr. Brown is threatening Nut Brown, the elven archer.

Bobo and Rosebud and I were dressed as characters from Avatar the Last Airbender.  It was fun to work on the costumes together!  I ordered Rosebud's costume from amazon but it still hasn't arrived, so we ended up working out a last minute substitute using a white gi that we dyed blue.  Rosebud was pleased with it, and people recognized her.

Rose Pink spent hours on the makeup for her costume.  She's a doll with jointed limbs.

Since Halloween itself was on a Sunday, we dressed appropriately for church.  Rose Pink sat next to me at the organ helped me quick transpose some prelude hymns into minor keys for a spooky prelude.  It was fund to see who noticed besides the ward music chairman.

Sunday evening we went trick-or-treating with some friends in our neighborhood and met up for chili afterward.  That was fun too, although the trick-or-treating was not that great.  Bobo in particular had a great time with the other kids his age. Happy Halloween!!

 

27 October 2021

Some more Halloween fun from school.  The school librarian invited the kids to bring in a pumpkin made up to look like their favorite book character.  Bobo decided on Yotsuba and Rosebud chose Chi, a cute kitty from a book series called "Chi's Sweet Adventures" that she just loves.  The kids and I worked on them on Saturday and took them in on Monday.

26 October 2021

Last Friday was Fall Fest at the elementary school.  We all got costumed up and went.

Some of us did the pumpkin roll.  Rosebud came in last place and we were all cheering for her, "Go! Go! Go!" and she exclaimed, "Oh no!  I'm tiring!" and continued the Brown Family tradition of having a larger than expected vocabulary.

Rosebud and Bobo both won 2-liters in the ring toss - very pleased with themselves.  So Nut Brown and Rose Pink immediately decided that they needed to also, and they did.  There was a lot of soda drinking the next day.

It was really fun to see how kids kept running up to us and saying "Hi!" to Bobo and Rosebud.  Eventually I gave Bobo a bunch of tickets and he ran off with a group of kids to have some fun with them.  This was just what we were hoping for by sending them to school.

The teenagers wandered off with Mr. Brown to go play board games with a couple in our neighborhood, but Rosebud and Bobo and I closed the place down (I may have bought too many tickets).  It was fun!

One of the booths was a guessing game (how many M&Ms in the jar etc) and Mr. Brown and Rose Pink spent some time doing math and entering guesses.  Today Bobo came home from school and pulled a giant bottle of candy eyeballs out of his backpack and Mr. Brown said, "Oh, you won something!" and Bobo said, "No, YOU did!" because it turned out that Mr. Brown correctly guessed the number of gumballs in the jar.

25 October 2021

Over Columbus Day weekend, Bobo and Rosebud and I spent an afternoon at the skate park.  Unfortunately I didn't get any photos of Bobo, only video.  He was having a great time moving around on his skates.  Rosebud was busily happy too, practicing skating around and around and around this bench. 

After she was comfortable with that, she moved on to skating up and down a very small rise in the sidewalk.  She fell down several times but got up and kept going.  Bobo's protective equipment was chafing him so he took it off, but then he wanted to do some more adventurous tricks (skating on top of a bench, some jumps) I told him not without his hand guards/knee guards/helmet on.  Maybe we need to get him some nicer guards.

After awhile we went over to the playground:

And then we went back to the skate park for another hour.  I spent the whole afternoon sitting outside in the sun.  It was wonderful.

22 October (2)

Halloween activities are picking up around here.  Having kids in public school has given us a lot more Halloween in our lives.  Also, the city sponsored a "floating pumpkin patch" last Saturday, where they put the pumpkins in the city pool and invited the kids to jump in and get one.  It was on the chilly side so Rosebud wouldn't get in, but Bobo splashed in and swam around with his pumpkin for awhile.  It was such a novel and fun thing to do!

22 October 2021

Getting ready for school on the day of the Fall Festival.  The kids are allowed to wear their costumes to school and Rosebud is dressed as a ballerina.  I braided her hair and pinned a fake rose in the back.  Her actual costume is Katara from The Last Airbender but it appears to be stalled in shipping somewhere (thank you pandemic) so we were improvising.  She was pretty happy with it (it is, after all, PINK).  Bobo opted not to wear a costume to school.  Tonight is the Fall Festival at school and they are really excited to go and trunk-or-treat and play games.  Hopefully it will be as fun as they have been told it will be.

18 October 2021

Church youth dance in early October was outside, and it was a costume dance!  It was Nut Brown's first dance, and he has been looking forward to it for awhile.  Several earlier dances were cancelled due to COVID so he was really glad that this one came off, although he moped around for a few days ahead of time worrying that it would be cancelled too.

He decided to dress up as an elven archer.  I made his cape, very proud of myself.

Rose Pink played around with half and half makeup and decided to go with a half and half costume.  She altered the clothing herself and sewed it together.

Mr. Brown went with them as support for Nut Brown if he needed it.  He wore black with a cape and a black N95 mask for his allergies.

Nut Brown did not need any support- he was off and away and had a great time.  Rose Pink got to hang out with one of her church friends that she doesn't see very often, so that was a lot of fun for her too.

17 October 2021

Some creativity from Rose Pink using melty beads.  The fish on the bottom left was an experiment in melting on both sides.

13 October 2021

General Conference weekend!  We love it!  The kids make word lists and they get a mini M&M or a penny each time they hear one of the words.  We ran out of M&Ms at one point and this is Rosebud keeping tally marks of how many times she heard her words.  She would draw a line across the page and then mark down through it.

After awhile tally marks get old and by the fifth session she was occupied by drawing on Rose Pink's leg, which amused both of them.

Love General Conference weekend!  I love setting aside the whole weekend to listen to the apostles and prophet and other speakers.  I love how much my kids listen in order to get M&Ms, and I love that Rose Pink has insisted that we have a tradition of making ramen for conference lunch on Sunday until it actually became a tradition.

11 October 2021

My parents came to visit at the end of September for a weekend.  We went hiking in Balcones:

and went to see the school play that Rose Pink had a hand in putting together (Little Women):

(the Davids sitting together)

and then Grandma and Grandpa took us to  play place with go-karts and mini-golf and pizza and even a tiny roller coaster.

(that's Rosebud cautiously driving one of the slowest go-karts ever built)

also there were bumper boats and we had a bunch of fun soaking each other.  Yay!

Sunday we went to church and then hangout all afternoon.  Grandma had brought a bunch of neat things to share, including some rocks, ancient Syrian bracelets from Aunt Gert, a collection of raptor feathers and first edition stamps, and these nifty bubble blowers made out of water bottles that blew bubble snakes:

Nut Brown was sick all weekend (strep) but the rest of us had a good visit!  Rose Pink planned the menu with some help from Mr. Brown, and then carried it off very nicely.  We stayed in a guest house together that belongs to a friend of mine and it was very nice.