14 March 2022

We had a fire pit night last week in the backyard with some friends that Bobo decided at the last minute that we should invite over.  They were available, and he was so excited that he made this sign to put on the front door so they would know to come straight into the backyard.

We had a good time together.  We roasted hot dogs and marshmallows and ate chips and potato salad and talked and laughed together.  Nut Brown built the fire and it worked very well.  Mr. Brown has scheduled fire pits every other week so that we get to enjoy a bunch of them before it gets so hot we don't want to be outside any more.

12 March 2022

Some more treasures from Rosebud.  So impressed with her interest in writing.

9 March 2022

Rose Pink has started working at Sonic!  She carhops, takes orders, and makes drinks.  We are so proud of her!  She is learning lots of skills, and not just the ingredients of cherry limeade.  We also enjoy her stories about malfunctioning machinery and funny orders that people place!

27 February 2022

Mr. Brown made cottage pie (shepherd's pie) for dinner the other night, the same day that we read about Esau selling his birthright for pottage in Genesis.  At dinner, Mr. Brown suggested that maybe a filling of lentils for the cottage pie would be an interesting experiment, and Rose Pink said, "That would make it pottage pie!"  Our kids are so funny!

25 February 2022

Bobo: What's for dinner?

Mr. Brown: Slugs.

Bobo: Again?

24 February 2022

I love how Rosebud has just decided that now she can write, and she does.  On this piece of paper she is listing our family's names.  She writes all the time, and is not afraid to attempt spelling.

The boys came down dressed the same (blue shirt, black pants) on Monday morning, and sat down to play video games together.  Twinkies!

23 February 2022

Nut Brown brought this drawing of an elbow that he did home to me last week.  White colored pencil on black paper.

17 February 2022

Bobo built a Minecraft sword out of sugar cubes.  Here he is pretending to lift it off the table.

15 February 2022

Valentine's Day is not a day of extraordinary celebration at our house, but with two elementary school kids there was a bit more preparation for it.  Both of them had to make a Valentine's box and bring valentines for their classmates.

Rosebud took a shoebox that Rose Pink decorated for her, and she opted for folded boxes with a couple pieces of candy inside.  (she used some of her Halloween candy and then I gave her some leftover Christmas candy for the rest)  She decorated the boxes, and I cut them out and creased the folds, and then she filled them and folded them up.  She was very pleased that she could do that by herself.

Bobo also made up valentines for his class (all 25 members - such a big class!)  He chose a hedgehog stamp and incorporated three of his favorite things: Minecraft, Star Wars and sharing information with others.

He was lukewarm about making a box, so Mr. Brown and I made a paper mache volcano for him.  Rose Pink helped with the painting and the clouds. 

He said it was the best one in the class.

Our ward had a family dance for Valentine's Day on the previous Saturday.  Here is Rose Pink competing in the limbo contest (in three-inch heels!).  She was one of the last contestants, too!  I wish I had gotten a better picture of her in her dress.  She was wearing a formal with silver heels and she looked fantastic.

Here is Rosebud helping blow up balloons ahead of time to help decorate.

On Valentine's Day morning, the kids woke up to yarn trails that led from their bedside to a small heart box of chocolates.  The yarn goes all over the house.  I love strewing it all over the night before.  They ate those for breakfast, and then we hurried out the door for elementary school with Valentine's boxes and bags of cards and forgot Rosebud's backpack.  For dinner, Mr. Brown made borsch (because it is valentine's colors) and heart-shaped chicken nuggets.  Happy day of love!

10 February 2022

Bobo is doing a poetry unit at school and he brought home the following:

For one of the acronym poems he wrote that he was "Annoying" and when I asked him about it, he said that's what people always told him at school.  He is not having as much fun at school this year as he did last year.

9 February 2022

Rosebud gave her first talk in Primary on Sunday.  She wrote it herself - literally wrote it on the piece of paper on her own.  (She spelled obedient as "obeedeeinte") I helped her add some clarifying sentences at the beginning and then she was ready to go.  She practiced it a lot - this photo is of her reading it to her siblings on the couch on Saturday.  On Sunday she got up when called and gave it like a pro.  Super great to see!

7 February 2022

We got a cold snap and a bit of snow and ice!  The kids were all very excited by it and spent as much time outside with it as possible.  

Bobo in particular was entranced with it and went in and out and in and out to be with the frozen water.  We wouldn't let him slide on the ice because of his broken leg, but he spent a lot of time playing with it in other ways.  Rose Pink and Nut Brown took Rosebud sledding down a small hill on a piece of cardboard, and had a lot of fun.  The kids loved the snow!  Fortunately there was no threat of power/water loss like last year.

        

4 February 2022

Yesterday was Hedgehog Day at the Brown house.  We are in the middle of an ice storm so we couldn't get out to buy doughnut holes to make into hedgehogs, so Mr. Brown and I made doughnut holes out of paczki dough and fried them up and rolled them in sugar and called it good.  The kids enjoyed them and there were a few left over this morning for breakfast!  Unfortunately I didn't get any pictures.

2 January 2022

Here is a note that Rosebud spontaneously produced for me.  If you read it where 'c' makes a hard 'k' sound, and if you know that she left it on my desk with a paper snake that had been torn, you can see that it's a request to fix her snake.  I think this is the first time that she's written something to convey a message.  It's so fun to see her learning and getting more comfortable with the written word.

28 January 2022

Rosebud lost two teeth yesterday.  One of them came out while she was eating an apple at school, and she let Mr. Brown pull the other one out after she got home.  One of the best things about going to school for her has been the increased independence that she has been learning.

27 January 2022

Bobo has migrated from cast to boot.  Here he is pretending to have a peg leg.

23 January 2022

I got a 3D puzzle of the Eiffel Tower for Christmas and Bobo was super excited to help me with it.  We finished it together.  He really liked the Sears Tower puzzle we were given earlier as well and wanted to have it in the picture as well.

Grandpa sends us the comics to read.  Here is Bobo enjoying them over breakfast.

20 January 2022

Driving Rose Pink and Nut Brown to seminary last night and they started singing in the car.  We sang "Return to Sender" and They Might Be Giants songs, and Billy Joel's The Longest Time, and "Fools Rush In".  It was a lot of fun.  I think it was triggered by a letter waiting by the door to go out that had "Return to Sender" written on it, so we were all humming when we left the house.

18 January 2022

 

I took two pictures at Christmas this year.  Here they are!

Last year Mr. Brown got me to make up a schedule for all the events of Christmas, and it worked so well that I did it again this year.  It helped me prioritize effort to make sure that everything that needed to happen did.  I put some extra effort into gift shopping, because of the shipping problems, and as a result, our Christmas shopping was done (including the kids shopping for each other) by the beginning of December.  We had a very fun month making cookies, singing carols, and enjoying our Christmas decorations.  Mr. Brown wanted to make sure that the kids did some fun stuff besides video games while they were out of school, so he made a list as well as we scheduled a fire pit night, watching Christmas movies, decorating sugar cookies, sleeping by the Christmas tree and some other fun things.  It was low stress due to the careful planning and overall we had a good holiday.

Last year Mr. Brown introduced the idea of marking the 12 days of Christmas with little treats for the 12 days following Christmas.  We had pear custard pie, Dove chocolates, Chick-Fil-A, a karaoke party, doughnuts, deviled eggs, root beer floats (which covered both maids a-milking and swans a-swimming)... then nothing for 9 & 10, then pirouette cookie tubes and Drumstick ice cream cones to finish us off.  It's a fun way to taper off the holiday season.

The holiday was only marred by illness - Rosebud picked up a really bad cold and shared it progressively with the rest of us.  We had been planning to travel to Idaho for New Year's but ended up canceling because we were so sick and not feeling well.  It was a big disappointment for us even though it was the right decision.  The kids finished being sick before school started again, but I was still sick that first week back.  It was really a whopper of a cold.

6 January 2022

Rosebud drew with a set of colored pens that Rose Pink gave me for Christmas.

Rosebud's drawing of herself from a church activity.