20 February 2017

Rosebud totally loves taking baths.  She splashes and crawls around.  Her brothers occasionally bathe with her, and she loves that too.  Nut Brown showed her how to hold her hand over the faucet when the water's running to make it spray everywhere and now she does that herself.  She also crawls around the tub and tries to drink the bath water like she's a puppy.  She's so cute. 

reading a book with Rose Pink

19 February 2017

For Valentine's Day, Gia sent the kids a card that they completely loved.  Bobo said, "I want to send Gia a valentine!"  I offered to help him make one, and he said, "I'm going to make one just like this one for her."  He continued to admire it and then said, "I'm going to send this one back to her because I love it so much!"


My parents came to visit last weekend and they took us to Marvin's Marvelous Mechanical Museum on Friday, and then bowling on Saturday afternoon.  It was so much fun!  The kids had a great time rolling balls and trying out all the machines.  The bowling alley had a ramp that Bobo used to roll his balls down the alley - he tried out a bunch of different ways of getting the ball started, including head-butting it.  It was a good time for everyone.

18 February 2017

We just had a very unseasonably warm February day - high temp of 61 F.  Plus it was sunny and beautiful - so I spent a good chunk of the afternoon outside.  I actually got enough sunshine for once.  The kids played in the back yard with me and each other and Mr. Brown and I went for a long walk during Bridie's nap.  We walk around and around the block, so the kids can stop us every seven minutes if they need us.  Tonight I took out the recycling and it was a beautiful night, too!  Nut Brown said, "oooh, it's cold outside!"  I said, 'Not nearly as cold as it has been."  He says, "Yeah... it reminds of when it was... February!"  He's so funny.

17 February 2017

If we move to Florida, Rosebud will not remember the snow.

But here she is enjoying it, as much as any one-year-old wearing too many layers to move around comfortably can.

Nut Brown

Nut Brown & Rose Pink

15 February 2017

Rosebud is cute.

At the moment she's decided she's the sole owner of Mama's lap, and will shriek and shove Bobo off if he happens to sit on it where she can see.  Even cuteness has a dark side.

14 February 2017

Rose Pink gave her first talk in church as the youth speaker on Sunday.  She worked hard on it all week, especially Saturday all day, under Mr. Brown's tutelage, and gave an excellent talk about miracles.  Bobo very sweetly prayed for her on Saturday night, and she did a really good job.  It was so fun to watch her working on a new skill, and also taking the opportunity to study the gospel.  She's so awesome!

13 February 2017

Rosebud has a few words - much less than our older daughter at this point.  She can say 'up' and 'hot' and 'bye bye'.  We're working on ''mama" and "papa" and "cup" and "hungry" and some other useful vocalizations.  She also will give you high five!  She does babble a lot, more when she's tired.  Her favorite recurring vocalization is something that sounds like 'ladle ladle ladle ladle'.  She enjoys being tossed in the air, but she is not interested in being tickled at all - it doesn't make her laugh and she just squirms away from you.

12 February 2017

Bobo got Rosebud to wear his Sunday vest while he was supposed to be getting dressed for church.  They both thought this was hilarious!



10 February 2017

Matching ponytails for the girls for church!  We're so cute!

We are ALL so cute!

9 February 2017

Mr. Brown has been losing weight over the last six months, and he's down more than eighty pounds!  Here he is wearing some of Nut Brown's clothes!

He's had to buy several new wardrobes as he's decreased in size.  The last time we went to the thrift store, he came home with a pair of jeans that turned out to be size 12 husky - as in, sized for an overweight 12-year-old boy!!  But they fit him!

8 February 2017

This is what homework looks like at our house.  Bobo is working on his math.



7 February 2017

Rose Pink turned 12 this month! She opted for a 'manicure' birthday party, with the help of a professional who goes to church with us.

She is so excited to be moving into the youth program at church, and so amazing to me to see how mature she is. I'm so glad that she's in our family.

6 Feb 2017

We are using up craft supplies as part of getting ready to move, and I opened up the acrylic paint tubes that I've been saving for 'someday' (why do I do that?) and we painted.  It was a lot of fun to use really nice paint for creativity's sake.  Bobo asked a couple times after if we could do it again - but we used it all up and I'm not buying more at the moment!

The final result:

 

4 February 2017

Nut Brown received a gift card for Pizza Hut for Christmas from his grandparents. He was extremely excited to have an entire pizza all to himself!

1 February 2017

Our friends the Scotts came over to play D&D and we turned on a movie for the kids.  I don't remember why they didn't pull the couch around to watch it, but it was sure cute to see all the kids lined up on a bench!!

31 January 2017

Snowfall has been sparse this year, but we did have one big storm in January!  Rose Pink's snow love is languishing.  The kids built a giant snow cat on the front lawn.  Rose Pink coordinated building a snow ramp to get the middle section up, because it was too heavy to lift.

27 January 2017

Some pictures from a time when Nut Brown was coloring the whole piece of paper:

24 January 2017

Just before Christmas, I got an inquiry from an office in Florida about accepting a job there.  We prayerfully considered it and decided to accept.  We waited and waited and waited for the process to go through, and finally got an official offer on Friday afternoon.  Nut Brown wandered in right after I hung up the phone, and I said, "Nut Brown!  I got the call!  We can tell people now!  We're going to Florida!"  He and I gave each other about a thousand high fives, and then he said, "I have to make a list." And then he made this list of what he wants to do his first week in Orlando:

Unfortunately, on Monday afternoon, the executive order for a hiring freeze went into effect, and I'm stuck halfway hired.  The HR office is waiting for higher headquarters' interpretation of the order, and then we'll see.  Back to the waiting game.  Sigh.

20 January 2017

We have Bobo to thank for this chronicle of Rosebud crawling and exploring.  Bobo is going through the phase where he loves photographing everything, and has added to our collection of photos of our children's feet taken by themselves.

18 January 2017

We've tried lately to help Bobo do better at trying new foods and eat more nutritiously.  Over Christmas it felt like he was subsisting on cookies and peanut butter sandwiches for the whole month.  He's been surprisingly adaptive to the newly enforced standards of finishing dinner and eating vegetables in order to get dessert, although there are occasional bouts of whining and resistance.  We sat down to fish chowder the other night, and the conversation went like this:


Bobo: What's for dinner?


Mama: Fish chowder!


Bobo: But I don't like fish chowder!  (this statement disagrees with previous physical evidence)


Mama: You don't have to eat it if you don't want to, but there's no dessert unless dinner is eaten.


Bobo: hmph.


Rose Pink: But Bobo!  You could pretend that you have to attack the cooked fish!  And turn it into dead fish!  Like in our video game Castle Crashers!


Bobo: (with growing interest): well, what are these? -indicating some potato chunks


Rose Pink: Those are, um, rocks that you have to hop on to get over the stream.  But sometimes they attack you so have to defeat them too!


Mama: And you get to use carrot swords!


Bobo: But sometimes I eat the swords.


Mama: Yes, because you're so tough!


At this point Bobo settled down to eat his soup without further complaint, and ate the entire bowl.  Thank goodness for Rose Pink's creativity.

16 January 2017

I watched Nut Brown spend forty minutes this morning playing with Rosebud- carrying her around on his shoulders, watching birds out the front window, crawling under the bed, reading a book.  It's so fun to see how excited they are to hang out with each other.

13 January 2017

Happy birthday, Rosebud!  We all survived the first year - and I enjoyed it far more than I expected.  What a sweet fun little girl you are!


She has turned out to be different from our other children in funny ways - she LOVES stuffed animals, which our other kids are generally pretty indifferent to.  She is also by far our pickiest eater.  When she gets older we'll be able to negotiate more with her about this, but right now she is subsisting largely on black beans, blueberries, granola, apples and dried fruit.  We keep trying to feed her whatever we're having for dinner, and discovered that, like Nut Brown, she likes fish chowder.  We're also pretty sure she's lactose-intolerant, like all our babies have been so far, because the one or two times we've accidentally given her some dairy, she gets super fussy and gassy.


I'm looking forward to giving up bottles and formula and moving on to sippy cups and soy milk.  Yay for growing up!

12 January 2017

A friend made a flaming ball cake for Rosebud's first birthday!  (Her name means flaming arrow in its original language.)  Rose Pink said a little wistfully that maybe it would have been fun to have the same birthday after all... The cake itself was a hit with the birthday girl, and so were the gifts from her grandparents.  Congratulations on making it to one year, Rosebud!

7 January 2017

Artwork in the Bobo style.

also some writing - he was preparing a Family Home Evening lesson and wanted to talk about families and Jesus and faith.

5 January 2017

Back in November, Mr. Brown had Rose Pink and Nut Brown create thankful art.  Rose Pink came up with two drawings, while Nut Brown wrote two poems.

and the poetry:

30 December 2016

Rosebud took her first steps on Monday!  She's been standing independently for a few weeks, and she took a couple steps to me in order to get her new favorite toy- a spiderman ball from her stocking.  (she picked it out herself and she did a good job- it is so cute to watch her throw it, and crawl over and get it, and throw it again)  Our crawler is on the verge of becoming a walker!

29 December 2016

Christmas this year was differently scheduled than usual.  An elderly couple in our ward usually hosts a waffle breakfast on Christmas morning, and since the husband passed away in early December, Mr. Brown offered to come and help with the breakfast.  We had our Jerusalem dinner on Christmas Eve, and then the kids had stockings on Christmas morning plus the gift box from Aunt Holly, followed by church.  Then Christmas afternoon was spent helping at the waffle breakfast, and that evening, after eating ham and mashed potatoes, we began opening presents.  We finished opening gifts the next day.  So it was slower than usual, but the kids were good sports, and we got to offer love and support to our friend Beth.


This was Rosebud's first Christmas, and although she didn't really receive a whole lot of gifts, she enthusiastically assisted in ripping wrapping paper off things.  My parents sent her a riding toy, and she quickly figured out 1) how to push the buttons that played music (which she dances to in the most adorable way); 2) how to climb on to it by herself and 3) how to scoot it around both forwards and backwards.  She has even kind of figured out how to steer it, by rocking back on it so the front wheels come off the ground and moving it so it faces somewhere new when the wheels come down.  I am not 100% certain this is intentional.


My parents also gave Nut Brown a screaming monkey slingshot toy, where you stretch out the monkey's arms and let him fly through the air, and he screams as he goes.  Nut Brown thought this was pretty fantastic, but Rosebud was totally upset by it.  She would insist on holding the monkey in order to keep it from screaming, and if we borrowed it and made it scream, she would cry and ask for it back in order to protect it.  So cute, if a little disappointing for Nut Brown!  She is definitely more attached to stuffed animals than any of our other children have ever been.


The kids know that we fill their stockings, and we do it by going to the dollar store and buying whatever looks interesting.  It's a fun trip for Mr. Brown and I, and Rose Pink told me that these were the best stockings ever!  The kids put a giant Ferrero Rocher in my stocking.  They know what I like!


Bobo identified what he wanted for Christmas when he was purchasing gifts for his brother and sister, so we bought it for him.  It's a Batman/Superman plastic play city, with trapdoors and lights and a flying thing.  It's pretty awesome.  He completely loves it.  He can't get within three feet of it without stopping to play with it.  He took it downstairs so that Rosebud would stop getting in his way. Later after a bath, I sent him downstairs for clean clothes.  After twenty minutes, I went downstairs and discovered him busy playing with it, totally naked, in our chilly basement.  And this is my child who hates to take off his clothes.  He really loves it.  Nut Brown loves it too.  He told me that Bobo got the best Christmas present ever.


So many people were so generous to our kids - we thank you for loving them and loving us.  Christmas this year was a wonderful time for us to remember the Savior's love and seek to follow Him in acts of love and kindness.  Hopefully we can hang on to it into the next year.

22 December 2016

Instead of Christmas gifts, Mr. Brown and I lately have been giving our children $50 and a trip to the store the day after.  This is a flexible policy - we have also offered to either give them $50 or give them gifts, and let them choose.  So far we've always chosen gifts for Bobo, too, instead of giving him money.  It's helped us to simplify and de-materialize Christmas in a way that makes it much more enjoyable for us.


This year I was talking to Rose Pink about what she wanted to do.  She initially said that she wanted us to choose gifts for her, but then decided instead on money.  I asked her what sort of things she was hoping to receive or buy, and she sighed and thought and then said, "I don't know! Which is why I want money instead, because I really don't know anything I want!"


I was so pleased that she's so far managing to escape the materialism trap - that her basic needs are met, and she can't think of anything she just has to have in order to be happy.  If she manages to maintain this mindset I think she will be much happier in the long run!

16 December 2016

Yesterday Mr. Brown promised the kids to take them sledding if I could stay home during the baby's nap.  So I did.  We hadn't checked the weather report ahead of time, and the high was ten degrees Fahrenheit, and with wind chill it was below zero.  It was very windy, too!  Mr. Brown took the two older kids and went to the sledding hill in Madison Heights (advantages of homeschooling- sledding during the day!) and they had an unforgettable experience.  The wind was so stiff that it pushed them up the hill, and then they just flew down on the sleds.  Eventually they called it quits because Mr. Brown was concerned about frostbite, but they had a wonderful time.

5 December 2016

We have barriers up.  Rosebud has learned to climb the stairs but not to go down them.  Also we're trying to keep her out of the toilet.