halloween and stuff

Its already Christmas and I just realized I never posted Halloween pictures. Whitney looked so beautiful and was so proud of her costume, that it didn't occur to either of us to put any make up on her. That means she felt pretty stinking beautiful. Thank you Aunt Kristina! As you can see from Spencer's costume, the older kids wouldn't have felt so excited and proud of their costumes if it had been up to me. I blame last year. My costume efforts met with so little success that my confidence hid timidly in the corner this year.

Rob's costume was pretty awesome too. Can you tell who he is?

Caution: Brag Fest Ahead

Whitney is my little budding artist. She got the quarterly award for most outstanding Kindergarten art student. She loves to draw and paint. This is one of her favorite books. She asks to check it out from the library every time we go. She loves the beautiful illustrations.  

Last Sunday morning, she asked to use my oil pastels and copied every page of the book that she could before she ran out of black paper. 

I love how well she captured the emotion of each of these.

You have to click on this one to get a better look at how well she copied the color and strokes and smudging on this one. I LOVE IT!!!

Its possible that I may be swayed heavily by love, but I think she may be the most beautiful, talented girl I've ever encountered.

more goings-on

I take fewer and fewer pictures every year. More often than not I forget to bring my camera to fun or important things. During the 11 days Kristina was here for a visit, I only managed to pull out the camera once. Here is a selection from that occasion:

Aunt Kristina picked up a little treat for the kids at IKEA: an art easel.  A day never passes without a drawing session at the easel for each kid. Strong work Aunt Kristina!

Again, totally unrelated: I LOVE the places Stuart falls asleep.

This is me working on my piece at the Round Rock Chalk Walk (and my little helper keeping me company briefly.)

Thanks to James Christensen's creativity and talent, it turned out pretty well. Unfortunately I don't have any good pictures of the finished product. With all the coming and going of Rob and the kids, the camera didn't make it back before it went to its new home. This is the best I've got (but you get the idea): 

While Rob's parents were in town, we did LOTS of movie watching and card playing and food eating. We also took a lovely morning trip to the botanical gardens in Austin. The weather was perfect, the company was wonderful, and even the kids loved the gardens and fun places to run and climb and play. Its an ethereal Austin must-see. And then there was McDonalds, which was so transcendant that it finally occurred to me to pull out the crappy phone cam. Once again, here's a selection from the one time I pulled out the camera during their trip (and didn't even manage to get a picture of the kids with their Mutti and Papa.)

Good times. Noodle salad. :)

kindergarten

So much fun stuff has occurred lately! A visit from Aunt Kristina, Whitney started Kindergarten, the triumphant return of Rob's parents from their mission in South Africa and consequent visit to Texas, a street art festival, Stuart's preschool co-op, and many less note-worthy but time-consuming blather.

First things first: Whitney LOVES kindergarten!

On her way out the door on the first day of school.

These pictures are unrelated to Kindergarten except that that is the cute face she wears to school everyday. Actually, this is a trial hairdo we did for the Primary Program, which I completely forgot about on the day of the program. Good thing I took 200 pictures of the practice run. Look how beautiful that hair is! 

Ah man I love that face!

Anyway, back to Kindergarten: Tonight, as we were snuggling at bedtime, she sighed deeply and said, "Mom, do you know what I love? School." Yesterday at dinner, Rob asked the customary "what was the best part of your day and what was the worst?" Whitney's "worst" was coming home from school. When I semi-involuntarily pouted, she rescinded her answer. Too late. I get it. School's cool. I'm not.

This is what happens when her dad oversees the homework initiative:

(That says "2 dogs pooping down the street." Make sure you click on this one for a close up. You don't want to miss any details.)

The assignment was to write a sentence and draw a picture to illustrate it. Rob claims he read her the instructions, but before he got a chance to offer her help, she had already "completed" the assignment. I tore it out the next morning (but gave it it's rightful place of honor on the fridge) and had her re-do it. Afterall, she had to sit in the penalty box on the 2nd day of school for giggling about "poopy" in music class. Her teacher reported this to me, laughing and slapping her knee. I'm grateful she has a sense of humor (clearly the music teacher does not)--and I'm sure it will continue to come in handy for just such scenarios--but I opted not to push our luck with the homework assignment.

More to come. But not tonight.

You're welcome, Dad.

Stuart's 4!

I hate checking my blog dashboard day after day with nothing new from anyone, and I know I'm among the guiltiest. And yesterday Lindsey reminded me what a treat it is to see a new post from people you love, so here I am. 

These pictures are WAY overdue. 

When Whitney opens presents, she nods and smiles cooly at everything until she's sized everything up. Stuart, on the other hand, lets it all hang out. He hyperventilates over every gift. And he means it. Doesn't matter what you got him, he will carry it around for weeks, talking to it and assigning it a multitude of names and terms of endearment and crying when he can't take it to bed with him. This year, that even included the gift bags.

Yargh, me Stuey! 

Pinterest and all its "convenient" and "easy" ideas. Please. Seems to be making my life more complicated. Stuart saw a picture of these as I was perusing pages of useless ideas and had to have them for one of his multiple birthday celebrations. (He takes after his dad. Birthdays are a thing of joy and anticipation and celebration for as many days as you can squeeze out of them.)

The splash park party.

The birthday hat. Whitney insisted that he needed a birthday hat. He chose a "wolf crown." I don't know what he had in mind, but this seemed to do the trick. 

These pics (above and below) aren't birthday pics. Just more random places he's fallen asleep recently. His primary teacher took the bottom one with her iphone. I love her for it. It cracks me up. That's how I feel at church too.

why aren't you here yet!?

subtitle: Why Round Rock Should Be the Final Destination of Everyone That I Love

Everyday that I'm here, I fall deeper and deeper in love with this ward and community and the weather and the Texas landscape, etc. There are a couple of key players in my life, and you know who you are, who still haven't moved here yet despite the application of my most acute powers of persuasion. 

Well, maybe this will do the trick: real, undoctored, gen-u-wine phone pics of some of the awesome places we've played just in the last few weeks. Right here in Round Rock. Just imagine our children laughing and running and playing together while we laugh together, cry together, chat and complain together, bake bread and laugh some more together, on a bench under a shady tree (except for the baking part.)

Play for All Abilities Park. Its a mouth full but its worth every syllable. This is a million dollar project just completed by the city of Round Rock for children of all abilities. Over 50,000 sq. ft. of fun. I love this park almost as much as my kids. Do.

Endless play equipment including play and therapy equipment for children with special needs.

A little village with school, hospital, auto shop, library, etc., for bicycling and scootering, equipped with traffic signs, functioning traffic lights and parking spaces.

A gigantic shady sand pit with fixed digging equipment and dinosaur fossils to unearth. And much more.
Are you convinced yet? Can you tell I love this place?

One of our lovely HOA swimming pools. Big and clean with greenery and a 3 inch wading pool for toddlers.

The toddlers are not included. That one is ours. 

Here is another favorite, "the princess park" because, as you can see, it has a princess castle. It also has lots of fun playground equipment not pictured here.


And lets not forget, the crown jewel of the summers here:

Numerous splash parks! And for all your splashing needs, this year also features lots of rainfall!

Also, did I mention baseball, football, music, races and running paths, green belts, history, children's museums and more? And Porters?!

When you're ready to make the right decision, you know where to find us. We'll leave the light on for you.

spencer's favorite perches

We've actually had a lot of fun goings-on lately, but most of those pictures are on my phone. Someday I'll learn to load them onto my computer. Till then, these are pretty cute too.

Everyone else gets to play on the computer. He gets incensed if he doesn't get a turn occasionally too. 

The kitchen table is another favorite perch of his. He's picking up on the fact that this is where I send the kids to put anything I want to keep him out of--like food and drink, painting/coloring activities, board games, all the good stuff. He's no dummy. Anymore.

This is a weird windowy thingy that connects the dining room and living room. I don't know why he loves this one so much, but he climbs up here 15 times a day and pats the window sill and squeals happily.

If that slobbery shirt looks familiar, its because these were all taken in the same afternoon. He really gets around.

Easter 2012

Happy Easter. I wish there wasn't so much sugar involved in the holidays that fall on a Sunday. We had two of the best Easter talks at church yesterday that I had the misfortune of only partially hearing thanks to the peaking and crashing of blood-sugar among my two older kids (and a few others in the congregation, to my relief. Apparently I'm not the only parent who lets their kids eat chocolate for breakfast on holidays.)

Stuart asked if he could wear his cowboy boots to church yesterday. How do you say no to that outfit!? You don't. Also, he requested hair like Jake from the Neverland Pirates. I have no idea what that looks like, but apparently its very similar to Austin's, of Austin and Ally fame, because the same hair do appeased two days in a row.

Spencer is a full time walker these days. Whitney was not holding him up here, but helping me avoid this:

I think he looks like a Muppet in this one with his legs off camera and his arms poised like Elmo's.

Stuart has a tendency to check out when the camera is around. This is the only one I got of him with his eyes focused. (He was laughing at Rob trying to get Spencer's attention. Really successful photo shoot. As you can see.)

Undies, BK crowns, and egg dying. Doesn't get much better than this to a 3 and 5 year old.

So beautiful... Everything she does, she does with great enthusiasm: egg decorating, being naked, laughing, loving her family, etc. If her hair is insufficient indication of how easily tamed her energy is, I would direct your attention to exhibit A and B:

exhibit A

exhibit B

Chocolate and Ratatouille for breakfast.

Cute little bed head. He carried his chocolate bunny around all morning. His favorite breakfast of frosted mini-wheats just didn't have the usual appeal after that.