Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Band Concert

Brandt had a band concert tonight.  The elementary honor band played, as well as two bands from Centennial.  Brandt's band played Starsplitter Fanfare and Dance Celebration.  I thought they did remarkably well.  I couldn't really see Brandt (big instrumentalists sit in the back), but I could hear the trombones from time to time and I told myself it was definitely Brandt. 

I'm sure.  (eye roll)

Blythe wasn't thrilled about being there, but I read aloud to her while we waited and in between the bands, and that held her over. 

I did not get a decent picture of the band or Brandt at all, but here are some blurry bad ones as proof that we were there. 

Brandt is in the middle in the blue shirt.
I captured him walking away, post-performance.

Returning to his seat.
My guess is, as long as Brandt plays in the band, these are the sorts of pictures I'm going to be able to capture.

The Littles Are Over or Funny Children

Mikayla came over to hang out with me today.  Her kids crack me up.  They are just so funny.  Here are some pictures from their time with me.

Kal played us some tunes on the piano.

I was fishing something out from underneath the couch, 
and Cora bodyslammed me.  
She literally threw herself on me, smashing down on me as hard as she could.
Brick quickly followed suit, dog piling on me.
That grimace on my face represents legitimate pain!

Brick needs to take a Dr. Seuss book to school to celebrate his birthday (Dr. Seuss's),
and so I read several of them to Brick to see which he liked best. 
One was Dr. Seuss' ABC's.
When we got to Big H little h, I read, as you can see, "Hen in a hat. Hooray! Hooray!"
Brick immediately said, "No! Bock! Bock! Bock!"


Cora loves to play with our telescoping backscratchers every time she comes over,
and today she was wielding them like swords, slashing and flailing while shrieking,
"Hi ya!"  
Stand away from the danger-danger girl!!

Monday, February 26, 2018

FHE Treat

Today Blythe wanted to make cake for our Family Home Evening treat.  I said yes.  She whipped it all up, doing all the measuring herself, and then pestered me to frost it while it was still in the oven.  The wait was killer!!  But when it was time to frost, I made the frosting and then let her use the offset spatula to ice it herself.  She struggled a bit, but she hung in there and kept at it.  We all enjoyed it for our FHE treat.

Funny Children

Asked Brandt this morning, "Why do all the guys who go in bobsleds have to be called Bob?"

Mom: "Because otherwise it would be a fredsled."

Brandt: "Or a mikesled."

Saturday, February 24, 2018

Scout Snowshoeing

This morning, Kent and Brandt, in the company of quite a few of the eleven year old scouts, went snowshoeing at Wasatch Mountain State Park in Midway.  They met with a naturalist who talked to them all about animal adaptations for the winter, what animals live in the area of the state park, and what tracks they might see.  She told how rabbits will suck on their own scat to extract water, and then popped what looked like a rabbit poo pellet into her mouth.  It was actually a Milk Dud, and she passed some around for everyone to have one.

Everyone was outfitted with snowshoes, and the naturalist took them out to see tracks.  There were lots, and Brandt and Kent said it was pretty cool.  Kent also said a couple of the scouts very foolishly walked out onto the partially frozen lake, as though looking to fall in so other scouts could practice their rescue technique.  Fortunately, nothing catastrophic happened.




Monday, February 19, 2018

President's Day Sledding

It snowed during the night.  Lots of snow!  Inches!  Finally!!  This is the first significant snow we've had all winter.  Today the kids don't go to school, so I suggested we go sledding first thing.  Both Brandt and Blythe were keen to go, and I called Mikayla to ask they wanted to join us, too.  Cora hates sledding, Kal would likely hate sledding, but Brick loves it, so we took him and left Mikayla and the others home. 

Rock Canyon Park was busy, but we were able to sled in our favorite spot.  It wasn't too, too cold, and we had a good time.  We did a train several times, made snow angels, and went down and up lots of times.  Brick was good about climbing up himself, proudly calling out each time he made it to the top, "I win!!"  He went down once with me on the front of the sled, but he got a face-ful of snow, and then insisted on being in the rear all the rest of the times.  He couldn't see as well, but he also didn't have a frozen face.  We lasted about 45 minutes, then came home for hot chocolate. 

Hoorah for snow!




























Sunday, February 18, 2018

Hungry Visitors

Cora was over today.
She was hungry, as usual.
And when she's here, she eats.
She wanted cheese.
She took matters into her own hands.
That can't be good for the refrigerator.

In addition, Brick wanted to make muffins, so we did.
I'm not sure he really liked them, but Kal sure did.
He sat on the kitchen counter and snarfed a whole muffin, then looked for more.



Saturday, February 17, 2018

Soak Up the Sun


Although it wasn't super warm today, it was sunny and clear and nice enough to be outside.  Apparently even nice enough to be without shoes.  Brandt was soaking up the sun on the hood of the car while eating pretzels and chatting with me and Kent.  

Friday, February 16, 2018

Spelling Homework

Today Blythe showed me an activity she likes to do on Spelling City, a computer program that has games and activities she can do to help her with her weekly spelling.  It's paragraph writing, the goal of which is to use all her spelling words in a paragraph.  I thought what she wrote was so funny I needed to include it, complete with her spelling and punctuation (or lack thereof).  

The words she was to use are: flower, voices, tower, mound, cowboy, gown, front, south, howling, annoy, noises, pound, hound, pouch, thousand, wound, grouch, cough, grown, voyage, cookie, zoom, huge, drought, and downtown.  

Here is her paragraph:
One day i was going out side and i saw a flower whitch i like to call a south voyage. Any way i stooped down and something got in my lunges whitch made me cough like there was a drought downtown. Afterwords for a cupple of minets i souded like a grouch who was warring an ugly gown whale a hound was howling and the noises where anof to geve a huge tower a wound and a frown that would make a cookie apper. whal i was outside a fast car whent zooming bye a pound of cheese pooped up out of a mound then a cowboy said zoom a thousand and pulled out a pouch that hade a grown when it heard voices. i am going to annoy you right
Hooray for fourth grade!

Happy Helper

Blythe helped me make muffins today after school.  She came home without Brandt.  As she biked home, she had passed him playing in the field with friends.  She was hungry and wanted a snack, and I suggested we make muffins, pretzel chocolate chip muffins.  Don't those sound good?  She was delighted to help, measuring things, stirring, scooping the batter into the muffin pan.  Only thing she wasn't thrilled about was eating them.  She didn't like them for some reason.  I certainly did.

While we made muffins and talked and read and hung around, Brandt did not appear.  Ever.  Time passed.  More time passed.  Eventually, at 4:30, three hours after school got out, we went looking for him.  I have never worried about the kids getting home from school safely--we live close to the school, lots of other kids are going the same way, Provo is safe--but it was very uncharacteristic of Brandt to not check in.  Blythe and I found him at the school still, playing with David and Andrew, so engrossed in their fun that he had no idea school had been out so long.

Brandt didn't like the muffins either.



Field Trip Friday #87--Pop-Up Art

I got word of a great exhibit of pop-up art at the Provo City Library, so today, for Field Trip Friday, we went to see it and check out some books.  Blythe wanted me to buy a book through book orders, but it was more than I wanted to spend and I was fairly certain that the Provo library would have it, even if the school library didn't.

The exhibit was cool.  They had proof pages from a number of different books, then actual pop-up pages from those books.  There were some pages that you could see flat, then the mock-up, then the actual page.  I'm amazed at how technically savvy a pop-up artist has to be, figuring out small pieces that fit together to make a larger something.  There was a little quiz the kids could take for a prize, and they meticulously read each panel to make sure they didn't miss anything.  Kids will do a lot of a Starburst or two.

We checked out lots of books and lots of movies, and came away with a basket-full of good reads and watches, I suppose.

I wanted a decent picture of the children, but they were not cooperating.
So I said, "Look as bored as humanly possible."
Not too bad.

The stack of books Blythe checked out.
Do you think she can read them all in three weeks?
I do.
As I think about it, I'm fairly confident that Brandt didn't check out a single one.
He played a computer game the whole time we were in the children's section.

Wednesday, February 14, 2018

Stair Master

Mikayla had a doctor's appointment today, so I watched her kids.  Kal wants to go up and down the stairs, repeatedly, but he's not very good at stairs yet, and ours are wood and treacherous.  It's totally danger-danger, but all my efforts to keep him away are fruitless.  So today I just sat on the stairs with him while he went up and down, making sure he didn't fall head over heels, or sit back right off the stair.  That's how his mother found us when she got back from her appointment.


Valentine's Day

We had a fun Valentine's party with the DeMartinis on Monday to celebrate this holiday of love.  We had heart shaped pizza, salad with red stuff in, fruit, and pink punch, then decorated sugar cookies with lots of pink frosting and sprinkles.  It was great to be together; the kids played, the adults talked, we all ate cookies.  It was LOVE-ly.  I took a picture of Blythe decorating her cookies, none of Brandt.  He slapped frosting on his cookies, then ate them immediately, before I was even aware he had done it.





A couple of weeks ago, just as February began, Blythe came to me and said she wanted to make a Pusheen the Cat valentine's box.  I had no idea who or what Pusheen the Cat was, but she checked a book out of the library and read it to me.  Pusheen is a very fat, gray cat who likes to eat and be fancy.  

She wanted her Pusheen to have a fabric tail, a hole near the bum for her to retrieve her valentines through, and a pink tutu.  How on earth she wanted to achieve this was almost more than I could imagine, but when Blythe has a vision, she is relentless in making it happen.  I just get swept up in the tide of action.  I suggested we make a papier-mâché body (as finding a round box is really impossible), paint it gray, use some crêpe paper to make the tutu, and perhaps attach a fabric tail.  That part was going to be tricky.  

We began ten days ago to do the body, using a balloon, lots of torn up newspaper, and modge podge, a pre-mixed glue-ish stuff.  We did a double layer, then left it to dry between water pitchers and under books so that the balloon would dry with a flat bottom so it could sit on her desk, and not be too pointy at the top.  It worked great, except we discovered we hadn't used enough newspaper and needed another double layer, at least.  So after two days, when it had dried completely, we did another round of gluing, then hung the thing from the dining room fixture and let it dry another two days.  Then we painted and let dry again. 

Initial layering of newspaper and Modge Podge

Books holding down the balloon which is balanced between two pitchers of water.

 
Very likely the most useful utilization of Handbook of Middle English ever.

The next challenge came in making the round gray ball look cat-like.  We had some gray cardstock, so we cut out ears and feet and just make slits in the body to hold the paper.  Blythe colored gray spots with a pencil, just the right darkness to contrast with the body.  She used a Sharpie to draw the face, and I managed to convince her that a paper tail would be adequate.  We then used the crêpe paper cut in small pieces to make the tutu, gluing them around Pusheen's fat body.  Blythe added a fancy pink bead necklace, and Voila! one Pusheen the Cat Valentine's box.  When I asked if she was pleased, Blythe said, "It's even better than I had hoped!" and squealed in delight.  

Phew!

There was a competition at school to see who had the best, most creative, cutest, or whatever box, and Blythe, who had her heart set on winning, did just that.  I'm not sure the valentines she received actually fit in the hole we had cut in the top, but Blythe was thrilled with the whole thing and proudly showed it off to one and all.  I was pleased that I could help her realize her dream.  
  




You might be wondering what Brandt did for his Valentine's box.  He used the same Cupid Yoda box he's had for four years.  We just store it in the top of his closet and he has reused it year after year.  So easy.  

I had grand plans to make a fancy dinner for the people I love, but I had a Provo School District Foundation meeting until just after 5:00, Kent and Brandt and scouts, and I ran out of time, so we ordered carry out Panda Express and shared Chinese food.  Everyone was fine with that.  Even me.