Halloween season upon us again!

I wrote a few weeks ago about Brigham designing a type of perpetual motion machine. Well, this week I was reading a book (Physics of the Impossible, by Michio Kaku, one of the founders of string theory), and came across a description of one of the first perpetual motion machines designed in Bavaria in the 8th century. Guess what? It's the exact same model that Brigham designed and drew and showed me a few weeks ago. Ha! Isn't that amazing? I couldn't explain to Brigham why it wouldn't work, but now I know. Friction in the inner bearings of the wheel gradually bring it to a stop. Maybe Brigham will follow in the illustrious footsteps of his grandfather and two uncles in his physics interests.
We're doing biology this semester, and human biology to be specific for the next few weeks. It's been very fun teaching the boys. They drew a poster of "undie-Mosey" (because I traced the outline of his head and torso while he was in his undies), highlighting the digestive tract. They each labeled certain parts and wrote a description of what its function is. Mosey labeled the very end of the digestive tract, and underneath "rectum," wrote "stores poop." Funny, huh? They are very matter-of-fact about bodily functions, which makes teaching this stuff to them way easier than it would be (I imagine) in a typical public school classroom.
Joseph and Brigham had their 2nd soccer game this morning. They've had 2 games rained out now. Our stake had a special fast for rain this past September, and 4 days after the fast, central Texas had its first widespread rainfall since August 2007. And since then it has rained, and rained, and rained. My brother Benjamin and Ben's two brothers came to visit us right before then, when Austin was brown and parched. It's so green and beautiful now!
Anyway, their game today did not get rained out (although it rained all afternoon), and they won 5-1. They won their first game 3-1. Their coach used to be a semi-pro soccer player, and is really good. Brigham scored the last goal of the game and both boys were pretty elated when they got home. I didn't go see it because Mosey woke up this morning and promptly threw up all over the kitchen floor. Mosey gets these stomach bugs periodically where he will throw up 3 or 4 times, and be sick for a few hours, and then get completely over it. So he missed his game and I stayed home with him. Mosey's not totally enamored with soccer yet. He doesn't have the competitive spirit in him, although I expect that will come.
Conference was nice today. I edited all of my brother Christian's senior pictures during the talks. Now I only have 2 months of my own photos to edit. :-) (this may not seem like much to you, but you have no idea how many pictures I take).
Wearing the proud maroon and gold of my Alma Mater, La Canada High School (we were the Spartans which I always thought was funny because LCHS was quite an academically-oriented high school, and if the Spartans were known for anything, it was for their intellectual prowess, right?!) :


My sister made him this shirt a couple of years ago, because Christian really is a Renaissance man. He taught himself Greek as an elementary student, went to the junior Olympics in jumproping, sang in the Los Angeles Children's Choir (he has an incredibly amazing voice), and is at BYU on full scholarship (don't you DARE lose that scholarship, Christian!). AND, he's dang good-looking, to boot. I'm just a little bit proud of him. :-)


Mosey has been sooooooo excited for Halloween. He's been begging to put up Halloween decorations, but I told him not until October. So Ben brought in the halloween boxes from the garage and while he was at Priesthood meeting tonight, the boys and I put on the soundtrack to Nightmare Before Christmas and decorated the house for Halloween. I've got 4 ghosts and a jack-o-lantern staring down at me from on top of my desk. It was fun to listen to the boys reminiscing about the decorations we have made and acquired over the years. This is why I bother with decorations, these things are what make up childhood memories.
I'm trying to stick to my guns about the homemade costumes this year. It's hard because Brigham really wants to be Darth Vader, and I'm not going to put together a homemade Darth Vader costume. Mosey wants to be Luke Skywalker, which is fine. I am trying to convince them all to choose a character from the Redwall books (we're on book 5 now, these are such perfect books for my boys' ages and interests). It would be so fun and cute! I think I've got Joseph convinced, but not the other two. Oh well. I am NOT doing Party City costumes this year, though.
Let's see, what else?
The boys have been spending a lot of time building with blocks. They go through cycles with their toys. The blocks had been put away for a while, but now they're out again.
These pictures are unedited point-and-shoot snapshots, don't judge. :-)
Here's a joint-venture creation: (yes, this is the playroom, and yes it really was this messy)


The finished product, shortly before they destroyed it (Joseph isn't wearing makeup, he was eating a strawberry popsicle and decided to paint his face with it):


And another one later that night by Brigham. It's quite a lot taller than himself:


That's it, folks!