Selfie Alert

There are 18 of these on my phone, each one indistinguishable from the next.

Sometimes I Don't Mind the Snow

How To Get Christmas Lights Up On Your House

1. Beg your dad to put lights up for weeks.

2. Insist that it happen Thanksgiving weekend.

3. Find a treasure trove of lights in the garage, handed down from an elderly neighbor who no longer hangs lights on her house.

4. Happily untangle all lights when Dad protests that they're too tangled.

5. Explain to Dad how to fix imperfect strings of lights.

6. Wrap the solitary tree in the front yard with Christmas lights yourself.

7. Walk 6 houses down the street to borrow a ladder from a neighbor when Dad says he can't hang lights on the edge of the roof because it's too high.

8. Place hooks on the edge of the roof when Dad says he doesn't have a way to hang the lights.

9. If Dad continues to drag his feet, climb up the ladder and hang the lights from the hooks yourself.

10. Sit back and enjoy the fruits of your labors. And don't forget to tell everyone you know that you are solely responsible for the beautiful light display at your house.

A First

During an intense game of Cops and Robbers with lots of cousins tonight, Eliza got carted off to jail. She was apparently being uncooperative (resisting arrest?) and a minor struggle ensued. In the course of the quarrel, Eliza bumped the back of her head twice.

She was very upset for a little while, but tried to return to playing with all of the kids. Soon she was back on the couch, though, with her head in my lap. And when I got up, she fell asleep in the couch.

Shortly after I put her to bed, she threw up and got a bloody nose. Also, she had trouble remembering how she hit her head.

So, yes. I'm pretty sure we can say that we have now had a child get a concussion.

At the moment Eliza is sleeping soundly, but has been able to answer questions when we've woken her up. And 3 hours after the first vomit arrived, she hasn't had a repeat episode. So, knock on wood, I think she's okay.

Don't try this at home, kids.

The kids watched American Ninja Warrior tonight.

As soon as it was over, they started playing downstairs.

After hearing a few crashes and thuds, I went downstairs to investigate.

I'm not sure why I was surprised, but I was... they had made their own Ninja Warrior course.

Don't worry. There was only a little bit of blood.

So much to be thankful for.

Thanksgiving Eve

We enjoyed sleeping in this morning but managed to get piano practice finished and the younger kids did a lot of reading time before 11 so that we could have some time to go to a local family fun place before lunch. We had passes the kids earned for summer reading, so we went, and they bounced and ran and climbed and had a ball while I studied my MoTab music for an hour. While we were driving home from the fun center, Jack finished the book he started this morning, which he was very proud of! The book was I Survived the San Francisco Earthquake of 1906.

After lunch, Luke went down for a nap and the girls helped me make pies. Jack was helping for a little while, because I'd told the kids that they could choose to help with pies or clean the house. But Jack's interest in baking soon waned and he managed to do a little bit of cleaning before sneaking off to play. I wasn't too upset though because the girls were really into pie-making. Cat made both of her pies pretty much independently. The first was a family favorite, peanut butter fudge. The second was a not-from-scratch apple pie using canned pie filling and frozen pie crusts, but she assembled it very well, even cutting out little leaves in the top crust. The leaves don't show up well in the picture, but they were there. Eliza helped me with pumpkin pies and chocolate pecan pie bars. 4 short hours later, the pies were done and the kitchen was clean.

While we were waiting for the pies to bake, the kids had some friends over to watch The Muppet Movie and eat popcorn and pie crust cookies.

Then right before we ate dinner, we got a short but exciting thunderstorm, complete with hail, which soon turned to snow. Jack exclaimed, "I KNEW we were going to have a white Thanksgiving!" The snow came down pretty heavily, and I had the pleasure of driving in it to pick Cat up from basketball practice. But it melted pretty quickly, so Thanksgiving might not be white after all.

After the kids were in bed, Luke got up, as has become his habit, and got to watch Ben perform major surgery on my computer before I put him back to bed.

Alas, the surgery did not achieve the outcome we had hoped for. Which means that the pictures for this post will have to come later.

Oops

I accidentally published this on my other blog.

http://brettsturn.blogspot.com/2016/11/one-of-nature-best-toys.html?m=1

Blogging from my phone is a bit of a challenge but at least I have a way to keep it up until I have a working computer again...

Election Day

At breakfast that morning...
Me: Who would you guys vote for if you could vote today?
Jack: Clinton
Me: Why?
Jack: Because she looks like a nice president.
Eliza: Clinton and Trump look the same.
Jack: No they don't! Hillary doesn't have orange hair!
Luke: I would vote for Dinosaur!

Luke, Po and I voted together. We were in and out in about 15 minutes so I didn't even have to get out my fruit snacks. Or Luke's. (Poor Po didn't have any.)

We let the kids stay up late watching election results but as the reports of Pres-Elect Trump winning state after state continued, I started to get pretty upset and it was nice to have the lateness-of-the-hour excuse to send the kids to bed.

I am still really sad about the outcome of this election. But I refuse to be divisive. I will try to be supportive of our next President. And I appreciate the fact that our country will have another chance to choose a good leader in four years.

Cap'n Luke

This is Captain Luke and his loyal pirate crew. He enlisted me to join the crew soon after I took this picture, telling me to "fight the old ladies."

I'm not sure who these old ladies were or what they did to bring upon themselves the wrath of Luke, but I hope they will repent of their ways and beg for the captain's forgiveness. I'd rather not fight them. I would probably lose.

Snip Snip

They got about the same amount cut off.

2-3" looks slightly different on long hair vs. medium-length hair, doesn't it?

Friends + Taxidermied Animals + General Conference = Awesome

Ben's former mission companion brought his wife and daughter up to Utah to attend General Conference in October.  We met up with them one afternoon to eat lunch and peruse the Bean Museum.  We also met up with them at Conference on Saturday.  Ben and Jack managed to sneak them down to the lowest level of seats to sit with them were excited that they could all sit together and I'm pretty sure the breakfast they all had before conference that morning was one of the best things about the day for Jack.

I stole the following pictures from their blog:

It was such a treat to get to see these friends!  We love it when people are in town and we get to spend time with them and catch up.  It's hard when there are so many people and places to see, so we feel blessed when friends make time for us.

Piano Update (with lots of videos for the Grandparents)

Because our piano teacher was getting ready to have a baby and would take some maternity leave, and because we were all kind of burned out after last spring, and in an effort to save some money, we decided to took a hiatus from piano lessons for about four months.  We continued to practice, and our teacher even had us send in videos of the kids playing the pieces they were ready to pass off, so it wasn't a complete break, but we definitely slowed our pace and decreased our stress level, which was nice.  There was plenty of this over the summer:

And because of our teacher's requirement that we send in videos, I have videos of the kids playing pieces that have never been performed in a recital or competition.  Here are a few:

One thing I began doing over the summer was implementing a mandatory Creative Piano Time for Jack and Eliza.  They often had a hard time focusing on their required pieces/exercises when I practiced with them and wanted to do things like count all of the keys on the keyboard or play one of the pieces they recently learned at warp speed.  So they would have to sit down at the piano and play - whatever they wanted - for a while before I would practice with them.  This helped to get the piano-wiggles out, so to speak, and we were able to practice better.  If they ever did get off-task, I could remind them that what they were doing would be fine during Creative Piano Time but not during practice time.  I laughed when I found Jack reading a book during his CPT.  He's not the first kid to attempt to read and play piano at the first time, but it struck me as funny anyway.

We resumed lessons about a month after school started and were mostly focused on a duet festival happening at the beginning of November.  They had all started working on their pieces over the summer, which means that they'd spent months working on this music.

Cat and her partner practiced together a few times and performed for friends/neighbors/family members about 20 times - their teacher recommends at least 10 practice performances before a recital/competition so they definitely went above and beyond.  They were rewarded for their hard work by being chosen as winners in their age division.  They participated in a winners' recital last week and received a ribbon and a cash prize.  It really does pay to practice!  Their pieces were "Rondino" by Jon George and an arrangement of "The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" by Tchaikovsky.  They chose to perform Rondino in the winners' recital.

Right after their judging time, which was in
a recital hall in the back of this music store.

Winners' Recital

Jack and Eliza's pieces were both hard for their ability levels.  They played Beethoven's Minuet in G (of "Music Man" fame, but they didn't use the think method, I promise you!) and Turkey in the Straw.  Jack was able to learn his parts with confidence but Eliza really struggled with the Minuet.  It was definitely harder than she was ready to play, but I wonder if she would have gotten a better handle on it if we'd worked harder on it over the summer.  As it is, she learned pretty much every note of both pieces by rote, which was tedious and exhausting, but ultimately successful.  As of this writing, they still aren't completely solid on the Minuet, but they'll keep working on it and perform it at the Christmas recital, so hopefully I'll have a better recording then.  I'm including it in the videos below, though, so you can see how challenging the parts are, especially for Eliza, who got stuck with the secondo part on that piece.  Jack and Eliza were not chosen as winners, but I'm really proud of them for working hard to learn challenging music and giving the competition their best.  I also loved that they were partners because it made it easy to coordinate practice time, even if it was a challenge to get them to be serious a lot of the time.  I also like that they can play their pieces together whenever they want to.  It works out.

With Sarah, our piano teacher, right before being judged.

This is one of our very favorite videos because of what happens in the last 10 seconds.
I was filming them and motioning for them to scoot over because Eliza was in such bright
sunlight from the window, and we love how they both look at me and take a step over
at the exact same time.  It cracks us up every time.

The silliness was the biggest challenge of getting them to practice together.

Once they focused and practiced, they did pretty well, but getting them to

that point was tough most days.

And on a related note, Cat started organ lessons with a friend in our ward this weekend.  She LOVED it and is so excited to get started!  We're going to go at a much slower pace with organ, as our time is getting pretty maxed out, but I'm glad she has the opportunity to eat least learn some technique and that she's enjoying it.  We'll see where it goes.

NOTICE

I'm taking some time off from blogging to try to get some other things taken care of.

Wish me luck and I'll see you in a week or so.

Just for Fun

Snowflake really liked these kicks.

The Bunk Bed Hammock
Also, do you see all three big kids in this picture?

After bringing a pizza party to Daddy's office for lunch one day during Fall Break,
the kids had fun playing in the park just outside the office.

Having fun on the giant frog statue at the new play area at the mall.

Cat's offering for Crazy Hat & Sock Day

Jack and Eliza's Crazy Hats & Socks

Eliza was the only one who participated in Crazy Hair Day.
As the day progressed, she decided to add more craziness to her look.

Referring to the paper clip: "I'm going to call it Servel
and put it in my sock so I'll have a Servel in my sock."

Then he removed the sock and began filling it with toy trucks.

This is Jack's most recent obsession.  Since reading this book,
he's been doing a lot more sit-ups.

Cat was honored as Noble Knight at school yesterday.  In the email giving me
advance notice, her teacher said, "She is so respectful, helpful, and responsible!"

Eliza got paid yesterday, so she had to buy something ASAP.
These press-on nails were just the thing.
Luke said they look like claws.

There's been a new student at the kids' school.  Poor kid looks bored to death.
Do you see Cat in this picture?

When Luke saw this Cosmo, the BYU Mascot at a
grocery store he said, "It's Costco!"

Find Eliza in the 1st Grade's recitation of "Weather Ways" by Vivian Couled.
Hint: She has on a white shirt and a purple backpack.

Weather Ways by Vivian Couled
Whatever the weather
we have it each day.
It's hot,
or it's cold,
or it's sunny,
or gray.

It's blowy,

or snowy,
or rainy,
or clear.
There's SOME kind of weather
each day of the year.

Trick-or-Treating

It was good vs. evil in our family this year.  The justice-and-balance-seeking galactic rebels took on the The Girls.  Cat wore her devilish scowl very well for the pictures, while Eliza was pretty quick to break character.  I think the boys just mostly enjoyed having an excuse to play with light sabers all evening.

 

Ben and I decided to join in the good/evil theme (the night of our ward party), but didn't adhere to the established gender roles.  Do you think Cat inherited her scowling skills from her dad?

"Don't you wanna be evil like me?"

Cat had fun being a devil and loved trick-or-treating with her friend,

who was dressed up as an angel.  She also particularly enjoyed getting

to wear eye makeup and having the ends of her hair sprayed red.

Jack was a great Obiwan Kenobi.

Cutest little witch.  And like her devilish counterpart, she really loved getting made

up - with purple sparkles and purple wash-out spray on the ends of her hair.

I have a feeling this might not be the only

Luke Skywalker costume Luke ever wears.

As I mentioned, Cat went trick-or-treating with a friend of hers, so Ben and I just walked around our neighborhood with the other three (leaving a bowl of candy for trick-or-treaters on our front porch, as is our custom).  Jack and Eliza practically ran from house to house, but did wait for Luke each time.  Luke kept an above-average-Luke pace, considering the slothlike movements he thinks qualify as "hiking."  It was fun to see and chat with so many of our neighbors (some of whom were dressed up), stop for pictures here and there, and even get invited in to play a round of Shoot The Ghoul With The Nerf Gun.  Very cool.

The younger three brought home enough candy, but not an overwhelming amount.  We don't have a very big neighborhood and Luke didn't even make it to all of the houses before he decided to stay home with Ben and give out more candy.  Jack and Eliza did make all the rounds but Jack was tired enough to be ready to quit when we were only about 85% done.  But they were happy enough with their little collections.

Cat, on the other hand, particularly likes trick-or-treating with this friend of hers because they go to the friend's grandparents' neighborhood, which is known as one of Those neighborhoods.  Cat's cut of the winnings weighed over 6 pounds.  Granted, that included a couple of cans of soda, but still.  It was a lot of candy.  Probably as much as the other three kids' candy combined.

Don't worry, though.  As of this writing, we have made significant progress in our efforts to rid the house of candy.  I'd say over half of it is gone now.  The kids have done most of the work, but Mom and Dad have helped too.  We all have to do our bit, that's what I say.