Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center

Yesterday we met some friends at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center.  It seemed a bit early in the season for wildflowers, but maybe the late freezes we had delayed their emergence by a week or two.  There were some bluebonnets out (the first I've seen this season), but there wasn't too much more.
Still, we had fun.
Before we even went in the park, Brigham found a tree to climb.  Ben was there, or else I probably wouldn't have let him climb up that high...

We saw the first emerging turtles of the season, too. 

As well as a really funny sign:

The coolest thing I thought was the exhibit they had on paper sculpture.  This woman, Shou Ping, makes these amazing water color paper sculptures.  I can't describe them, so I took a bunch of pictures.

 (do you see the armadillo hiding behind the bluebonnets?)

We ate lunch at the cafe there, and then ended with a visit to the gift shop (of course).  Ben bought me a bluebonnet shirt, and we also bought Joseph a reptile shirt.  We hesitated on this one-- normally a gift-shop purchase is something we'd require the boys to pay for themselves, and Joseph didn't have the money.  But he wanted it *so* much, and he is pretty much obsessed with reptiles, and he looked at us with those big blue eyes, and we gave in.  :-)

(OK, he had a little more of a puppy-dog look than this, but you get the idea).
He is a good boy, though, and everyone deserves a surprise sometimes.

Once home, I dropped Ben and Brigham off, and Joseph and Mosey went with me to Target and Walmart.  The boys were on the prowl for another dragon, one they've been searching for high and low.  They found it, and it's been nothing but dragons for the past 24 hours.

Ben helped out with a move last night (I think it's so funny that the main job of the Elders Quorum seems to be moving people-- is that right??).  He said it was worth his time though, even though he had to drive all the way out to Elgin.  The missionaries were the ones who called him a few hours earlier to help their investigator move, and Ben things it made a big difference to the woman, seeing the effort a perfect stranger was willing to put in on her behalf.  I hope so, because he had to miss the BYU game, which was a big sacrifice for him.  Ben has taken great joy in watching the BYU games this season, and the tournament games in particular.
Heavenly Father must have taken note of his sacrifice and helped BYU to win, so all the BYU fans out there can really thank Ben.  :-)

This morning I woke up sick.  The past couple of days, I thought I was coming down with allergies, but I think really I have a bad cold or mild case of the flu.  I'm really achy and tired and weak.  Any sickness I get seems to manifest in immediate escalation of MS symptoms which is really annoying.  Anyway, I got all ready for church and then decided I wasn't feeling well enough to go, so I sent Ben off with the boys and then slept for the next 6 hours.  :-)

It is now 9:30, the kitchen is a mess, there are legos all over the floor, but I think I'm going to bed again, anyway.

St. Patrick's Day 2011

My favorite just-for-fun holiday!
I made green smoothies for breakfast (peach smoothie with sugar-free lime jello),

and of course everyone had to wear green.  Even the dog.  :-)

No piano lessons today due to spring break, so we went to the park in the afternoon to finish math, and then for the boys to run around.  It was fun being back at this park-- Trailhead park, which I haven't spent much time in since 2007.  I watched the boys run down to the swing sets and swing higher and higher, remembering the days when they couldn't pump on their own, and I went from one to the next to the next, trying to keep all three of them swinging at the same time. 
I sat at the picnic table bored, and so attempted some self-portraits.  My arm isn't quite long enough to do it quite right.  :-)

 Then it was off to violin.  On the way home we stopped at Rudy's for brisket.  I intended to make corned beef, but there just wasn't time, so we had a Texas-style St. Patrick's dinner.  :-)  I did make Irish soda bread, though.

Last night we went to one of our homeschool group friends' home for the kids' play performance.  They spent the last few weeks learning parts, making costumes, and painting scenery, and they did great.  I was so happy that all 3 of my boys got into the play and enjoyed it.  They performed "The Princess and the Glass Hill," a perfect play for a big group of boys and one intrepid girl.  :-)  Afterward, we stayed way too late eating and talking.  Daylight Savings Time (or is it the lack thereof?  I can't ever remember if we're now IN DST, or if DST just ended...), is very deceptive.  It doesn't feel late until it gets dark, and by then it is TOO late!  :-)

 Brigham was the farmer.

And Joseph was the king!

He made the crown by himself-- spray painting it gold and hot-gluing the jewels.

 Mosey was a knight riding a fearless steed.  :-)

And here's part of the whole crowd (missing 3 that I can see).  See our intrepid girl on the end?  I love that girl.  She spent the next hour and a half after the play sword-fighting with the boys.  :-)

Dragon Day

Happy Dragon Day!
When I got up this morning and came out to the living room, I saw the upstairs balcony draped with a long stretch of sheer white fabric, bunting-style.
"Happy Dragon Day, Mom!" Brigham calls out to me.
The boys have designated March 15-19 as "Dragon Days."  They told me that Dragon Days always start on the Ides of March and go on for 5 days.  You mean, you didn't know about that?  :-) 
They tried to convince me that this important holiday meant that they only had half-lessons.  And THEN they tried to convince me that since the public schools are out on spring break this week, they should only have half-lessons anyway, and so with Dragon Days on top of that, they should have no lessons at all!  Hmmm.  I don't think so.  We're going away for a week in April, but they don't seem to make the connection that *that* is going to be our spring break...
Anyway, in celebration of Dragon Days, the dragons came and sat at the kitchen table while we ate breakfast, had scripture study, and went on with our day.  Brigham fed his dragons little pieces of pepperoni as a special treat.  :-)
When Ben came home this evening we were still trying to finish lessons (it was a long day).  We read a whole bunch of our history book today-- going over World War I and the Bolshevik revolution.  Interesting stuff, and the boys didn't want me to stop reading.  Unfortunately, all of the reading comes with outlines and writing assignments that the boys also have to finish, and they weren't quite as enthusiastic about that...  This is where I have to be careful about not comparing them to how I was as a child.  Sometimes I get so frustrated because they are not motivated by the same things as I was.  There are lots of gender differences, and they are also different people.  But it is internally frustrating to me when I can't figure out how to motivate them to do the quality of work that I expect from them.  I was a perfectionist, and I know I spent too much time trying to make even unimportant assignments perfect.  I don't need *everything* perfect, but I'd like to see them try sometimes at least!  Brigham is also a perfectionist, but, somehow, it doesn't extend to history writing assignments.  :-)  I don't want them to be satisfied doing the bare minimum.  I want them to look back on the work they've done and be proud of it.  But they seem to want to do it as quickly and easily as possible...
I get discouraged and wonder what I am doing wrong.
But then they'll have days like last Friday when the boys, independently and with no prompting from me (spearheaded by Joseph, I believe), worked together to create an edition of the "Global Times" complete with a little article about an earthquake in Calcutta causing destruction "from Madras all the way down to Sri Lanka," with "Hyderabad at the end of the flood line."  Another headline for an article read, "Huge fire at Beijing: City totaled."  The edition ended with an article about terrorists destroying the Great Wall of China, and the CIA discovering a plot to destroy the Kremlin-- apparently targeting the wonders of the world.
This is creative, and showed a knowledge of geography, journalistic writing-style, and even the names of political leaders (President Jintao of China being referenced).
So, I know they have it in them.  Why can't that translate into pride in the work *I* assign them?

Well, here's a picture to close with-- Mosey showing me his "face fingers."  His violin teacher and I are trying to train him to place his fingers more correctly on the fingerboard.  My idea was to draw faces on his fingers and tell him to "smash the faces in" as he plays the notes.  He tends to curl his fingers up and play on the very tips of his fingers.  He seemed to think smashing the faces in was pretty funny, and I think Mosey's pretty cute with his mouth full of skewampus teeth, adult teeth growing in among baby teeth that don't want to fall out.  I'm sensing orthodontist bills in our future.  :-)

See ya!

3.14 Happy Pi Day!!

Since we are pretty big nerds around here, we had to celebrate Pi day.  Joseph recently finished a unit on finding the area and circumference of circles in math, so he helped me make our Pi Day pie.
For dinner we had chicken shepherd's pie.

(Joseph is wearing the "hat of shame" which apparently the boys make each other wear when they do something very, very bad, like knock down someone's kapla block tower. I'm not sure what Joseph's crime was.  :-))

And for dessert we made cherry blueberry Pi pie.

What do you think about that?  Pretty snazzy, huh?

Speaking of Pi, when helping Joseph with his math, I finally realized WHY the area of a circle is 3.14r2.
Wanna know why?  Here's why.
Imagine a square with a circle inscribed in it.  Now, divide the square into quarters, with each side of each quarter being "r" in length.  What is the area of the square?  4r2 right?  Now imagine that you want to find the area of the circle inscribed within that circle.  Obviously it will be less than 4r2.  How much less?  Well, when you subtract out the 4 corners of the square that the circle does not circumscribe, you end up with 3.14r2.  Neat, huh?
Maybe I'm the only one that never made that connection in elementary school math.  :-)

weekly letter

I was too busy/too tired to post anything this week.  So instead, here's the weekly letter I sent to my family and my missionary brother.
Am I the only one who totally didn't know about DST changing over this morning?  I woke up and we spent the morning leisurely getting ready for church, taking baths, washing hair, writing Brigham's primary talk, you know, the usual.  The only unusual thing was that I didn't check my email-- didn't get on the computer at all, in fact, until what I thought was 12:00, about 40 minutes before we needed to leave for church, in order to type up Brigham's talk.  I looked at the computer, and it said 1:04.  What??  I did a quick Google search on Daylight Savings Time and then, more than a little panicked, got everyone ready as fast as possible, and raced to church.  We missed most of Sacrament meeting as it was, but at least Brigham made it to give his talk.
Trying to convince the boys at 8:30 tonight that it really was time to go to bed was another challenge.  I've been hearing noises up there all evening, so I know sleep didn't come easily to at least one of my boys...  We'll see how it is tomorrow morning when we're waking up before dawn again.  Yuck.  Although, I do feel a teensy bit virtuous getting up and getting the day started before the sun.  :-)
The rest of the week was all right.  Pretty average.
Monday was Joseph's 2nd lesson, this time down at the UT campus.  We got there early, thank goodness, because we then spent about 10 minutes driving around trying to figure out the parking situation.  We ended up parking on the street, and I was very glad I had put the wheelchair in the back of the van, because it was a quarter mile or so to get to the music building.  Joseph did fine, and came out of the lesson very happy, so for now we're sticking with the teacher.  We then got the pleasure of driving home during 5:30 PM rush hour traffic out of downtown.  :-)  UT is smack-dab in the middle of downtown Austin, which is a terrible place for a humongous University!  Oh, well.
Tuesday was a bit of a challenging day.  Certain children were not keen on doing schoolwork.  Threats were given.  Consequences ensued.  Happiness was not had by all.  One particular child missed out on going to Scouts.  When Ben got home, the 2 schoolwork-compliant kids went with me to the grocery store, and then to a park for a picnic, and then to Target before going back home, where the child in question had actually finished his schoolwork, AND done his practicing, and was ready for bed.  Thank goodness for dads.
Wednesday was better.  The weather had been beautiful all week long, and we've done several of our lessons outside, which is so nice.  I love March in Austin, it's my favorite month.  The temperatures are perfect, the grass is getting green, the blossoming trees are bursting with color, and I still have at least another couple of months before summer temperatures arrive again.  I dropped the boys off at art in the afternoon, and then went back and did chores for an hour and a half before going to pick them up again.  That night I finished getting ready for my Relief Society activity on Thursday night.  Well, this ended up being a bigger job than I anticipated.  Getting the handouts totally ready and then printed and organized and stapled took me way longer than it should have.  And then I worked on the videos.  I got 2 families to make videos of a family home evening using a lesson from Preach My Gospel.  One of the moms who made the video couldn't make it to our activity, so she dropped off the camera and memory card here so I could play the video Thursday night.  I played the video to decide which parts to show, and then attempted to burn a DVD only to discover that the file was of a type that Windows Movie Maker can't edit, and that DVD players can't play.  So I then spent too long trying to figure out how to convert the file, and ultimately failed.  There goes about 2 hours of wasted time...  Anyway, I didn't get to bed until 5:30 AM, deciding to just ignore my phone alarm that goes off at 6:20.  But as happens all the time when I stay up ridiculously late, my body decided it was morning, and was having none of this "falling asleep" business.  I did manage to doze off a little bit by about 6:45, and slept about an hour and a half.
This was not a good beginning to Thursday which is my busiest day!  Before Ben left for work, he noticed the rear lights of my car were on (a really annoying occasional consequence of the hand-controls installed in my van), and so tried to start it before he left to make sure the battery wasn't dead.  Sure enough, it wouldn't start.  But even with a jump, the engine wouldn't keep going-- it stalled just as soon as the gas was released.  Thank goodness Ben was able to come home for the afternoon and be our chauffeur to piano lessons and then to violin lessons, and then to drop me off at my RS activity in the evening.  He figured out the problem was probably build-up on the fuel injector, picked up some engine cleaning something-or-other, and by the time I got home from Relief Society, he had the van running again.  My hero!  Seriously, what would I do without my van?
The Relief Society activity went pretty well.  I wish we would have had a little bigger attendance-- I think 17 came.  I got a good response from those who were there, and I can only hope that the amount of effort these activities take is worth it for the people who actually show up.  I was not good about always making it to the RS activities before I had this calling, but you better believe I appreciate all the work they take now, and how demoralizing it is to do all this work, and not have many people come.
Friday was pretty laid back.  I slept until 9:00, and basically gave up trying to make the boys do any schoolwork beyond practicing.  I was still tired, and they were so happy playing in the backyard, and I just didn't have the energy to do the whole school thing that day...  So instead I did laundry, and watched heart-breaking videos online of the horrible stuff going on in Japan.  I couldn't believe it.  I saw some of the video footage of the tsunami in Myanmar in 2004, but watching the destruction in urbanized Japan is something else.  According to Wikipedia, 6 of the 10 deadliest natural disasters have been within the last 100 years, and 8 of 10 within the last 200 years.  Interesting, huh?  Anyway, it's been very sobering the past couple of days, thinking about all of that.  In the afternoon I got my hair cut and then took the boys to horseback riding.  What did we do in the evening?  I can't even remember.
Saturday was a busy day for Ben and the boys!  They got up and went to the church to clean the building, and then went directly to help with an Elders Quorum move.  They didn't get home until after 2:00 PM.  I'm so happy when they get the chance to work hard and help other people.  As a consequence, NO chores got done here at all.  But, the service opportunity was probably worth the un-done chores around here.
Then the boys went to a birthday party at Pump It Up (leaving the present they so carefully bought and wrapped sitting on the table at home...).  I hadn't been there for about 4 years.  It's very odd going back places I haven't been to since before I was disabled.  Going back to Florida in November was extremely odd for that reason. 
And that brings me back to today!  I'm up 1 1/2 hours past my bedtime.  Blast you, Daylight Savings Time!!!
Here are a couple of pictures from the week.

Brigham sitting outside of our piano teacher's house, waiting for Ben to come get us.

Mosey eating a Hawaiian sweet roll, one of his favorite foods.  What a silly face!


 
 Here's Brigham at our picnic.  We ate rotisserie chicken, Hawaiian rolls, and yogurt.  Then Brigham went and climbed trees until it got dark.  :-)

Recently

What's new at our house since March 2?
March 2 was... Tuesday?  Let's see then.  Wednesday was our homeschool art day which ended up just being a homeschool play day with the kids running wild in the backyard, jumping on the trampoline, smashing rocks with hammers on the deck, pushing each other into the pool... the usual!
Thursday was our typically long day with school lessons, then piano, then violin.
Friday I took pictures for a friend, and then took the boys to the lake park to go fishing and climb trees.  They actually wanted me to take pictures!  What?!
So, here's Brigham up in the tree:

Mosey swinging like a monkey:

And Joseph looking angelic:

The weekend was pretty typical-- we went to the CROP walk on Saturday morning (a charitable walk-athon sort of thing raising money to end hunger).  It was totally freezing cold!  Ben and Joseph went out early to volunteer along the course at about 8:45 or so, and it was pouring down rain.  By the time the other boys and I came down, it had cleared up, but the wind was absolutely biting cold, at least by our Austin-in-March standards.  We brought extra gloves and jackets for Ben and Joseph, but by the time we got there, the lady in charge told them they could go anyway.
Mosey had a birthday party in the afternoon.  A couple of weeks ago, he bought the present he wanted to give to the little boy with his own money, and completely unprompted by me.  It was so cute.  He wrapped the whole thing and wrote a little birthday card all by himself, too, again, unprompted.  The wrapping job was creative, and I think he used less tape than Ben did at Christmas time!  :-)
We had friends over for dinner with 3 young children (4, 2, and 9 months), and it was so interesting (and distressing) watching Mosey interact with them.  He is not used to younger kids, and does not at all understand that 2 year olds don't respect property: if bags of birthday candy are left out, they will happily partake, and if lego space ships left in the lego box are not put up high somewhere, they will get dismantled and used for parts.  He got really mad and started bossing the other kids around, as if he owned the place.  I had to swoop in and calm Mosey down and make him apologize.  It was sad to me to realize that Mosey has very little experience with kids younger than he is, and the concept of patience is completely lost on him.  I sure wish we could have given Mosey a younger sibling or two or three.  :-(  I guess there is always a youngest, though. 
Sunday was church day.  Joseph stood up and talked during fast and testimony meeting, a short and sweet testimony of prophets and scriptures.  I was so happy and proud of him.  That is very, very much out of Joseph's comfort zone, but he did a perfect job.  Earlier in the meeting he leaned over to me and asked how people know what to say, so I knew he was thinking about it.  I told him that they say things they believe that help them to increase their faith and that might help other people increase their faith.  I was very proud of him.
Today was Monday, my favorite day of the week.  Not.  :-)  Joseph had flute lessons again this afternoon and he came out smiling and saying he liked his teacher and he really liked flute, so I think we'll stick with this teacher for now! 
I'll end with one last picture of Mosey walking around using the "ceiling walker" that Brigham made.  I remember doing this as a kid-- walking around with a mirror facing the ceiling.  When you look into it as you walk around, you start to feel as though you are walking on the ceiling.  It's a very eerie feeling.  Anyway, Brigham rigged up this whole contraption with a mirror and a tin can so when you look down through it, you really don't see anything except the ceiling.  When the boys walked under the balcony up on the 2nd floor, it looked to them as if they were walking off a cliff.  Fun times for the boys, and so funny for me to see them coming up with the exact same idea that I had as a kid.

Dragons!

Mosey had money burning a hole in his pocket a couple of weeks ago, and bought a dragon toy at HEB while we were grocery shopping.  The other boys were immediately entranced and the craze has continued over the past couple of weeks.  Their bank balances have all dropped significantly.  :-)
But, they do love them, and play well together, and it's fun to watch and listen to them.  This morning while I was making breakfast they had a dragon convention at the kitchen table.

And it was a great day!!  I sure wish I knew the magic formula for days like today.  Everyone got along, did lessons well and without complaint, helped when I asked them to help, and generally gave me hope for the survival of the human race.  :-)
Our homeschool group met at our house this afternoon to play.  They're doing a drama unit right now (and do you know what?  The boys really love it!), but Cheri, the mom who's leading this unit, is out of town, so we met just to play.  It was a beautiful, warm, sunny day today (I lay on the deck in the back snoozing while the boys did math-- gotta synthesize some vitamin D!), and the kids all went in the backyard playing dragons and jumping on the trampoline and smashing rocks with hammers and splashing each other with pool water.  Brigham actually got dunked!  He's the first one in the pool for the year. 
The rock smashing is getting a bit out of hand.  The boys got all our hammers out, and have been pulverizing rocks on the back deck, trying to find geodes and crystals and other interesting things.  It's amazing how many hours can be happily occupied with a hammer and a pile of rocks.  Ah, boys.  I love them.  Anyway, the deck is littered with rock fragments right now.  It looks like a glacier ran over it.
Here's hoping for another great day tomorrow!

flute lesson followup

Joseph had his first flute lesson yesterday.  It didn't start out too auspiciously.  It took us forever to figure out how to get into the apartment building, and then once we did and knocked on the door, Francois wasn't there!  He forgot and thought we were meeting him at UT (where he is a PhD student in flute performance) for the lesson.  Instead, our knocking woke up his 3-days-overdue pregnant wife who nicely let us in to wait for him to get home. 
It turns out Francois isn't very experienced in teaching beginners.  Also, he has a French accent, which, while perfectly understandable to me, I think gave Joseph some trouble.  It's not the accent as much as it is his use of unexpected words-- probably normal in French, but not as commonly used in context in English.  There are more commonly-used English words with the same meaning.  I kept wanting to translate for Joseph to make sure he understood, but restrained myself.  Francois also used some flute terms (I think they were flute terms, anyway), like "articulation" that Joseph doesn't know.  I tried to explain as best I could on our drive home. 
The homework he sent home is pretty challenging-- using just the head joint blowing out various rhythms using different articulation and breathing.  The problem is that Joseph doesn't have good breath control yet, and can't sustain a sound for the 4 counts at 60bpm required for the exercises.  I personally think it was too challenging for a first lesson.  Anyway, at the end of the lesson, Francois said he would get some beginner flute books to teach from, and that will probably be a much better way to go.
So, I'm withholding judgment until after we get the books, to see if he changes his teaching technique at all before making my final decision. 
I think Joseph enjoyed himself at the lesson, but he got discouraged practicing today.  I want to let this be Joseph's thing as much as I possibly can.  I'm not going to monitor his practicing unless he asks me to help.  And at the end of his lesson yesterday, Francois said that normally he teaches with only the student, so I won't be there to see what he's teaching him anyway.  Which also worries me a bit, since if Joseph is confused I won't be able to help him.
The problem with Joseph is the same problem it always is.  He doesn't want to do what I tell him to do.  He actually came out of his room today to ask me what he was supposed to do in his practicing.  So I went in and explained the assignment, had him try it, and realized immediately that he doesn't have the breath control to do the exercises as written.  So I told him if I were him I would simply practice blowing long tones-- as long as he can hold them, using as little breath as he can.  Then practice the patterns just blowing air on the back of his hand, to get used to the rhythm and articulation before he tries it on the flute.  But of course, Joseph didn't do that.  He went on trying to do it on the flute, taking little breaths between each note, which defeats the purpose of the exercise.  Sigh...  I didn't say anything, though.  I refuse to be overbearing.  Maybe tomorrow he'll follow some of my suggestions on his own.  If not, then I'll let his teacher decide what to do.
Anyway, I'll give the teacher a couple more weeks, and then I may look elsewhere.  I like the idea of a male teacher, but mostly I just want a good teacher who will help Joseph love the flute. 

I've noticed this blog has been quite Joseph-centric recently.  I do have 2 other boys (and a husband!) who I promise I pay a attention to!  But their challenges are a lot more straightforward, and I have a handle on what I need to do about them.  Joseph is the tricky one.