I can't remember enough of the past month to attempt much of a catch-up, but I do have a few pictures I haven't posted yet. I've barely even taken out my camera, that's how busy I've been.
The boys have enjoyed the new playroom. It gets a lot of use. I still usually can't get to most of the room, do to toys and blocks on the floor, but that's OK. It means they are playing!
Brigham will never be too old for Kapla blocks. :-)
A couple of weeks ago Brigham's orchestra played at the Long Center before an Austin Symphony concert. They played on the Mezzanine Balcony on a beautiful Friday evening after a morning of rain. We got free and discounted tickets to the concert afterward, and it was a really nice family outing. It was Brigham's first concert as concert master, and he did a great job! In these pictures he is looking at his music, but he had his eyes on the conductor about half the time, which is exactly right. Afterward, his conductor gave him some very nice compliments on his playing and leading the orchestra. This has been a great thing for Brigham.
A little more of the orchestra. There were people sitting in front of me, blocking my view of the whole orchestra. They played for about 30 minutes, which I thought was pretty amazing for only about 6 weeks of rehearsals.
In May AYO holds advancement auditions, and Brigham is hoping he'll move up to the next level. He and I went to the pops concert for the upper level orchestras about 3 weeks ago, and they were really fantastic. I love that Austin has so many kids involved in classical music that it can support 6 youth orchestras! This is a great place for musically-inclined kids.
Mosey also got his Wolf and has moved up to be a Bear in Cub Scouts. This was the only picture I managed to get of him the whole Blue and Gold Banquet. :-) It had an Angry Birds theme and was very fun. Each family brought a cake which they decorated while there in some sort of Angry Birds fashion. Ben and I have never even played Angry Birds, so this was new to us.
Other notable events of the past few weeks?
We celebrated Pi day last week with blueberry cream pie that we made in our art group. The kids did most of it themselves, including homemade pie crust. We made enough for them to roll out pie crust cookies, too.
Joseph fell while playing tag with his brothers after the Blue and Gold banquet, jamming his 4th and 5th fingers of his left hand pretty badly. It got him out of piano practicing for a week. :-) I was worried he had a broken finger, but the black and blue swelling went down after a few days, and it is right as rain now. Good thing, since his spring piano recital is coming up. I know he was losing sleep about that. :-)
Ben got a new couch for his office. He taught seminary on Wednesday morning while I went to an inservice meeting at the Stake Center. Afterwards, he had 3 of the boys help him move one of the pieces into the office. When I got home (I had the other piece in my van), he and Brigham and Joseph attempted to move it into the office. It had the exact dimensions as the other piece, but I thought there was not a chance in the world that they could make it through the door. I think Ben had his doubts, as well, because it took about 40 minutes of brute force and complicated engineering to get it into the room. We couldn't figure out how they got the first piece in so easily! It's a nice couch, though, which is a good thing because that thing is NEVER coming out of the room. :-)
I got a cell phone for the boys. We have no house phone, and I have always been a little nervous leaving them home with no way to contact me, nor me them. Sometimes they go on long hikes and bike rides, and now I will feel much better knowing they have a way to stay in contact. It is a no-frills phone with no internet access or games or anything, but it has still been a source of thrilling discovery for my boys, especially my tech-loving Mosey. He learned how to text right off and sent me a series of cute little texts and picture texts until I broke the news to him that each text costs twenty cents...
The weather has been so amazingly gorgeous here the past few weeks. March is my most favorite month here in Austin. All the leaves are coming out on the trees, the lawns are waking up, the days are warm, cool nights, no mosquitoes, lots of sunshine, the spring rain showers are just beginning. I love it. So we've been outside doing lots of yard work! I love this house and yard so much, especially the fact that I can get around in the yard so well. A friend of mine is a great gardener and she came over to help me identify a lot of the trees and shrubs and other plants in our yard so I could figure out how to cut them back, prune them, etc. Ben has great plans to make our yard produce for us-- he has planted banana trees, fig trees, pomegranate trees, cumquat trees, loquat trees, and peach trees! They are all Central-Texas-friendly varieties, so in a few years we should have some bountiful harvests. Last Saturday was awesome. All the boys spent several hours out in the yard weeding and raking and planting. It was one of those idyllic days that I have dreamed about with my children all working together, everyone happy and getting along (well, mostly...). :-)
As part of our yard clean-up efforts, Ben dragged our old Christmas tree, which we failed to drag out to the curb in time for pickup, into the backyard, and then chopped it in pieces and burned it in our backyard fire pit. Well, that bone-dry Christmas tree made the most enormous flames you have ever seen! Ben looked up the fire laws in our city before we did this, and we thought we were in compliance (and he still believes he technically was), but just as we were finishing up the last of the pine boughs, we heard a fire siren coming nearer and nearer, until it turned onto the street just adjacent to ours. It drove around and around, finally winding around and coming from Anderson Mill into the church complex out beyond our back fence. We figured they were looking for us... But by then the fire was mostly out, so they couldn't see the smoke. Well, eventually they did figure out where we were, and a couple of them came with flashlights out to our back fence. They were super-nice and told Ben what the fire guidelines are, but it was really embarrassing. After that, they made their way back to our street (our street really is sort of tucked away and hard to find), and parked in front of our house while the firemen got out and walked through the forest next to our house, I guess just to make sure no stray spark had started anything. There was no way it had, since the fire wasn't THAT big!! But apparently that forest area is one place the firemen are especially watchful of in our area because it is so full of trees and dense brush. And of course all the neighbors came out to see what the firetruck was doing, so it really was very embarrassing. We hate being "those" neighbors... Anyway, all's well that ends well, I guess. We got rid of our Christmas tree, and we didn't get in trouble! (Why are firemen so much nicer than police men?) :-) I don't love the male fixation on fire, and Ben and I have had disagreements on what constitutes appropriate use of fire. He frequently wants to burn lots of things and I frequently don't. :-) But this time I made a conscious decision not to make a fuss about it, and I really did think it would be all right. So the silver lining is definitely that now I won't have to argue with Ben about burning things anymore! The firemen did the job for me, and I didn't have to be the bad guy. :-) I wish I would have gotten a picture of those flames, though!
OK, that catches me up about as much as I've got patience fore right now.
