26 January 2021

Photo by Rose Pink.

25 January 2021

 Rose Pink copes with being back in virtual school.

23 January 2021

Some pictures from our long walk on Monday (hooray for federal holidays).

 Bobo came home from school last week and was telling a story at dinner about a conflict he had with another student.  Bobo said, "I was right of course..." and then tried to backtrack to show more humility but we had already started laughing, because his assumption was just like this family.  Although it can get it us in trouble, it was funny to hear it crop up again and mark him as one of us.

21 January 2021

 Bad news comes in threes... yesterday morning, the car keys went missing.  Yesterday evening we discovered that the water heater was leaking (Nut Brown casually announcing that "by the way, there's a big puddle of water in the garage").  This afternoon, the high school called and said that Rose Pink had been 'exposed' to COVID and needed to quarantine at home until February 6.  At the moment, it's going about every twelve hours.  Waiting for the next one...

On the other hand, Rosebud spent hangout time with me today, practicing reading.  She can read the first two Bob books all by herself, which she is very proud of.  We just added the letters 'n', 'i' and 'f' today.  When I had to pay attention to work, she occupied herself with paper, colored pencils and scissors, producing a multitude of lovely irregular polygons that she brought me in handfuls.

20 January 2021

 I wanted to note that over Christmas break, Rose Pink painted her All-stars so that they are streaked with sunset with shadow trees on them.  She also painted her dresser knobs with nail polish in all different patterns.

We had birthday week at our house last week, with the girls each marking one more year.  Rosebud turned five and was counting down the days.  We did have to break it to her that she only gets one birthday per year.  She had cupcakes and posole for dinner.  Rose Pink had leftover posole for her birthday dinner (even better after two days in the fridge) and a red velvet cake.  Lots of ice cream and gifts for the girls.  Mr. Brown and I gave Rose Pink sixteen candy bars for her sweet sixteen.

This morning Mr. Brown got up to rush through a carefully planned schedule of breakfast, Bobo drop off, ortho appointment for Nut Brown, return by eleven a.m. only to discover that the car key had disappeared.  Five and a half years is a pretty good run to have only one key for the car but now we can't find it.  He rescheduled everything and walked Bobo to school, and then found a locksmith who is coming tomorrow.  We are planning to buy two copies of the key.

11 January 2021

 Yesterday we had some spectacular snowfall - 4-6 inches accumulation.  When we were driving home from church, I was certain that if this were Michigan, the salt trucks would have been out for sure, and they would be thinking about plowing.  Then it continued to snow all afternoon!

The kids were ecstatic.  In spite of not having proper snow gear any more, they dressed as warmly as they could, went out and played, came in for hot chocolate while their gear went through the dryer, then put it all back on and went for a second round.  It was so much fun for them.  The cherry on top was the cancellation of school for today.

 Mr. Brown and I were somewhat less enthused about the snow.  We stayed inside and stayed warm.  Snow sure is beautiful when it is falling.  And this morning when Mr. Brown and I were out walking in the cold sunshine, it was nice to have a bit of winter.  Mr. Brown in particular prefers the clear change of seasons from fall to winter to spring to summer.

5 January 2021

We walked nine miles on Saturday morning.  Photos courtesy of Rose Pink.

There's a mostly paved trail about 30 minutes from our house that goes along the San Gabriel River in Georgetown.  We've been there a few times and love the walk.  It's shaded and sunny and close to the river in many places.  It goes up and down and has a fair amount of variation in the terrain.

Rosebud got over her fear of riding downhill on her balance bike when Mr. Brown told her that she could ride her bike or carry it, and after a hill or two she decided she could probably ride it down instead of carrying it.
 

3 January 2021

Now that Rose Pink has a camera on her phone, I think she will be providing most of the photography on this blog!

 We drove up to Dallas to spend New Year's with the Atchleys.  Bobo here is holding the Minecraft stuffed animal that Aunt Heather sent him.  He was very much in love with it (I thought he'd outgrown stuffed animals, but I was wrong).  We had two days of unlimited screen time and the boys were completely immersed in video games pretty much the whole time.  I got two naps in :) and spent time sitting by the fire.  It was a nice holiday.  Happy New Year!