Wedding!

This will be a post mainly of pictures with comments.
The wedding day dawned bright and early.  Very early!  Seattle is so much further north than Austin, and it was really surprising how early the sun rose.  It was another gorgeous day.  I had been so worried about the weather because the day before we left, the Seattle forecast was for rain all day on Saturday.  We needn't have worried.  The weather was perfect, and the Seattle Temple grounds were exquisite.
The sealing was one of the sweetest I have witnessed.  My sweet brother had tears running down his cheeks as he looked into the eyes of his beloved as he made those sacred covenants.  I cherish my sisters and sisters-in-law so much, and so it is a really wonderful thing for me to get a new sister.

Anyway, on to the pictures!  I was not the wedding photographer (thank goodness), but I tried to sneak a few of the bride and groom when I could.
Here they are just coming out of the doors of the Temple, husband and wife!
Shayla had a gorgeous dress that she (almost unbelievably) found at a consignment store.  It fit like it was made for her, and was so elegant and unique.  And her bouquet was made of fabric flowers in her colors that she made herself!  She is really amazing.

They indulged in the obligatory (but tasteful) PDA expected of all newlyweds on their wedding day.  :-)

During the wedding Eva was in charge of both babies and my 3 boys.  Brave girl!  As it turned out, CiCi slept strapped in the sling the whole time, and my boys did a pretty good job of entertaining Rosalia with their menagerie of Webkinz.  I love the way Rosalia is looking at Brigham in this picture.

Eva and the sleeping baby CiCi in the sling (and CiCi's mother Naomi).  Eva will be a natural mother in a few years!
And speaking of Eva, I snapped a couple of pictures of her as we were waiting for Benjamin and Shayla to emerge from the temple.  Eva is 17 years old and pretty much drop-dead gorgeous.  She almost makes me want to be 17 again.  Except I wasn't nearly as pretty as she is when I was 17, so maybe not.  :-)

My three boys were extremely good during all the waiting, picture taking, waiting, and more picture taking that went on for much of the day.  Here's Joseph squinting in the bright, and I think somewhat rare Seattle sun!

And Brigham!

Mosey entertained himself in various ways (he's good at entertaining himself).

 Stealing mom's wheelchair!  What fun to leave her stranded!  :-)

 Posing with the 1970's era bronze statues on the Temple grounds.  My dad is not a huge fan of these, but they make fun climbing structures for 7 year olds.

And here is another gorgeous sister of mine, Naomi.  The married sisters of Benjamin all wore matching outfits (Eva was a bridesmaid so she had a different dress).  Rosalynde made the flowers for the cardigans.  I didn't get a single picture of Rosalynde the whole weekend, and I'm mad at myself for it.  :-(
By the way, Naomi is only 2 months post-partum and she looks about 5000 times better than I ever did that soon after giving birth. 

This is my dad's twin sister Rita, and my Grandma and Grandpa Frandsen, 90 and 91 years old respectively.  I hope I'm as half as sharp at 70 as my grandma is at 90.  Both of them are truly remarkable people.

Here is patient Rosalia hanging out with one of Joseph's Webkinz.  I never saw this child cry once the whole weekend.  She gave a lot of worried looks, especially when some other adult besides her parents dared to come too close into her personal space (she's smack dab in major stranger-anxiety mode), but she never cried.

Here are all my sisters.  My legs were really weak that day for some reason, and in the family pictures my sisters are basically holding me up.  And oh, yeah, I got fancy new RED ergonomic crutches a few weeks ago.  There's one of them.  They're so much snazzier than my old hospital-issue aluminum ones.

 Left to right: Eva, Naomi, me, Rachel, and Rosalynde.  Rosalynde is not the tallest, actually Naomi is, with Eva not far behind, I think, but we were standing on a slope so it worked out.  :-)

And all my sisters and my mom!  When I heard the wedding colors were to be sour apple green, peach, and mustard yellow, I have to admit I couldn't quite envision it.  But when everything came together, it looked great.  Shayla's got a way better eye for that sort of thing than I do.

After the wedding and pictures, I headed back to the hotel with my sisters.  Ben and the boys went with my brothers Brigham and Abraham to the Snoqualmie Falls.  Mosey didn't want to go.  He wanted to go back to the hotel and listen to an audio book on my iPod.  I finally managed to convince him to go by sending him with the iPod and the car charger so he could sit in the car and listen in case he got bored.  I also told him to take pictures of the waterfall so that I could see it!  Well, he didn't get bored and he didn't listen to the iPod.  And he took some great pictures and video of the falls.  He did however manage to somehow lose the (kind of expensive) FM transmitter/car charger for my iPod...  Oh well, life goes on.

Here are the Snoqualmie Falls.  The perspective of these pictures does not show how tall the falls are, and how far DOWN that water is rushing!

They came back a couple hours later and messed around in the hotel room until it was time to go to the reception.  This is the kind of horseplay my boys (and their dad) get into.  It's also the reason I'd NEVER want to be booked into a hotel room adjacent to the Turners.  :-)  (Although to be fair, it was probably only 4:00 PM and I am actually the Quiet Nazi any time past 8:00, as my kids will attest.)



Then it was time for the reception.  Seattle showed its true colors, finally, and rain started to fall right around the time the reception started.  I don't think it stopped anyone from coming, though.
The reception was AMAZING.  It was in the cultural hall (basketball gym) of the Stake Center, but you'd never guess it.  Shayla's decorating and style genius really came through.  She had a vintage theme, and her attention to detail was really astonishing.  I took pictures of every single one of the 25 or so completely unique and individualized table centerpieces so that someday I can copy it for my boys' weddings.  :-)

The entire cultural hall was canopied with this beautiful shimmering, sheer white material.  What was it?  Painter's plastic of all things, pennies per yard, and the absolute perfect weight and texture to create an utterly magical ambiance for the room.

Shayla made a chandelier for the center using a wreath and white Christmas lights.

 

The food was also amazing.  Everything was handmade and unique and delicious.  I took pictures, but I won't post them here because I do believe I ate one of EVERYTHING, and it would just be too embarrassing to reveal to the whole internet exactly how MUCH that was.  :-)

There was the traditional cake-cutting, for which my brother and his new wife were sufficiently civilized not to smash cake all over each other's faces, thank you very much.

And THEN, there was DANCING!!  The Frandsens are really good at many of things, but dancing is not generally at the top of that list (Christian excluded of course!).  However, I think we did ourselves justice that night!  I myself didn't do too much dancing (although Ben volunteered to carry me out to the dance floor and I know he would have except I was too self-conscious), but I sure enjoyed watching it all.

 Did they do more dancing or more kissing?  :-)

 

 Abraham (my brother) cutting the rug with Hannah, Shayla's younger sister.

This was one of my favorite moments of the evening-- Brigham and Abraham doing Russian kicks all the way down the length of the basketball court.  During one of the songs ("We are Family" I think?) everyone got in two rows, and then pairs of people would go down the center between the rows doing their own awesome dance moves before getting in line at the end of the rows in time for the two people at the beginning of the rows to make their fancy moves down the dance floor.  Anyway, when Brigham and Abe went out there with this totally athletic display, the cheering was so loud it must have been heard outside!

This was another favorite moment of the night.  When it was their turn, Naomi and Eva kicked off their shoes and did Can-Can style kicks all the way down the floor.  However, the initial shoe-kicking was a bit more enthusiastic than they intended, I think, and Naomi's right shoe went flying about 20 feet in the air and landed (safely, thank heavens) on the other side of the room!  It was really funny (especially since no one got their eye put out by a flying heel!).

 

Rachel and my dad dancing away (moments like this make me sure wish my legs worked.  I would have loved to have danced with my dad that night).

And mama and daddy of course.  

Finally it was time for the obligatory bouquet-throw (no, Eva did not catch it THANK GOODNESS SINCE SHE IS ONLY 17!).

Then it was time for the send-off!  Benjamin and Shayla ran out into the rain through a tunnel of bubbles and were off on their honeymoon.  They went to the Florida keys and enjoyed a week of sun and sand before coming back to real life as a married couple.

Thanks for getting married, you two, it was a really fun day!!

Family Dinner

On Friday the 13th (we had all the bad luck the day before, luckily, ha ha), we got up around noon after a short 6 hours of sleep, and headed out to the ward building in Snohomich where the family dinner preparations were underway.  It was a gorgeous day in Seattle with blue skies and warm(ish) temperatures.
My mom had the decorations well in hand, and we pretty much just followed her instructions and before long the primary room had been transformed.  Ben and my brother Abe and I went to Taco Bell and picked up tacos for everyone, especially my mom who would work through the day without eating a thing if left to her own devices.  :-)
By 4:00 all the decorations were finished and my sisters and brothers and mom and I practiced the musical numbers for the program that night.  I really love singing with my family.  I wish I could get my boys to sing so we could be a singing family, too, but so far that's not exactly happening...  :-)
After that I went outside with my sister Rachel and her husband and baby girl and took a few family pictures for them.  Snohomish (and the Seattle area in general) is so beautiful, all we had to do was walk out the doors of the church and there was the perfect place to shoot pictures.

(looking at these pictures together, I see my white balance was way off on this one-- better fix that...)

This is my sister who was a Rose Princess for the Tournament of Roses back in 2002.  She is so pretty. 

And she has clearly passed her looks on to her gorgeous almost-one-year-old Rosalia (with a little help from her also-very-handsome daddy, Jonathan).

Then, it was time for the dinner!  My grandparents and several aunts and uncles came up, mostly from Utah, but also from Portland and Sacramento, as well as a lot of Shayla's friends and family.  The primary room was full-up!  My mom arranged for Chinese food in honor of Shayla's mission to Taiwan, and then apple strudel for dessert, in honor of Benjamin's mission to Germany. 

Mosey was wielding the camera that night and caught a couple of candids of Brigham and me.

 (That's my genius brother Brigham, namesake of my Brigham, looking suave in the background.  Brigham and the twins also share the same birthday!)

The food was great, but the program was better.  The musical numbers went well, and then my parents and Naomi, Brigham, Rachel, and Abe stood to give tributes to Benjamin and Shayla.  Benjamin is such an awesome kid (sorry Benjamin, you'll always be a kid to me!), and it was so fun to remember him as a little child and teenager.  Shayla's brother put together a video with music and pictures of Shayla and Benjamin growing up.  Her parents stood to give tributes to Shayla, and then her sister Hannah and their friend stood up and sang one of Shayla's favorite Beatles songs.  Shayla and her family love the Beatles-- they have good taste!

Like I said, Mosey was the camera-man for the night, and he shot some video of the musical numbers.  Thanks, Mosey!


This was a fun song that we sang mostly for Benjamin, since it pretty much sums up how he feels about Shayla.  :-)  Rachel's husband Jonathan is our accompanist.

 This is a traditional song that we sing at all of my siblings' weddings.  At Rachel's wedding, I cried most of the way through it.  It was 5 days before my bone marrow transplant and I was more than a little emotional.  I managed to keep hold of myself this time, though.  My Ben is the accompanist on this one.


And this was a genius song that Rachel and Jonathan came up with.  I need to get the lyrics from them, it was sooo funny.  You have to know Shayla and Benjamin, but trust me, it is fuuuunnnnyyy!!

After the festivities, I took Naomi and her baby and the boys back to the hotel and Ben stayed behind to help clean up.  The boys were asleep almost before their heads hit the pillows!
It was a really fun evening and a great first day of our trip!

4 minutes left for the world to end

At least, here in Texas.  Darn it, I guess I'll have to finish the laundry after all.  :-)

We're baaaack!!

Well, we're back!
I can't believe I last wrote on May 8.  Shame on me!  I guess in my defense I was busy getting ready for our trip to Seattle for my brother Benjamin's wedding.  It was so great!  We were in Seattle for  2 1/2 days for the wedding, and then we went up to Olympic National Park for a day, then up to Victoria, B.C. for a day and a half, and then back to Seattle and home again. 
The trip involved a few too many harrowing airplane adventures for my taste, but all's well that ends well, right?
The excitement started last Wednesday and Thursday when a series of thunderstorms blew through Austin (yay, rain!!).  The last of the thunderstorms blew through Thursday morning, so I thought we'd be fine for our afternoon flight out of Austin.  We were not.  A whole bunch of flights had been delayed out of Austin from the morning storms, pushing all the other flights off schedule.  Our flight to Houston ended up being delayed 4 hours, well past the time our connecting flight was supposed to leave Houston.  The storm had moved over to Houston, causing additional delays for the flights leaving from there.  The airline people told us our connecting flight was also delayed, but even so it was going to be tight making the connection.  Finally, they were able to squeeze us onto a different flight leaving for Houston at 5:00 (delayed for about 9 hours-- it was supposed to have left at 8:30 that morning!), which was in about 15 minutes.  So we dashed through security, and managed to get to the gate in time to board the plane.  The flight attendants were hurrying everyone to their seats to try to make the small window of time that we could take off.  We all got on, buckled in, and the plane taxied to the runway.  Just as the plane's engines were revving up, the captain was informed that the Houston airport had closed due to wind shear from the thunderstorms in the area.  So we sat there in the plane on the tarmac for THREE HOURS.  There was free TV for about 15 minutes before it went to pay-only, and after that everyone just sat there.  Finally Ben piped up and asked if they could at least turn the TV's back on, which they did.  They also passed out snacks and drinks, and the flight attendants were about as happy and peppy as they could be, trying to keep everyone calm.  FINALLY we got word the airport was open again, and we took off. 
We got in to Houston around 9:00, and sat there for 2 1/2 hours until our flight to Seattle finally left.  Ben went and picked up some food JUST as the food court was closing.  It was lucky we got food, otherwise we would have been tired and starving.  As it was, another family next to us didn't make it to the food court on time, and they had a little boy, probably 3 years old, who was hungry.  Brigham went over and gave him 3 fruit snack packs from his stash in his backpack, which was very sweet (it is our tradition to buy fruit snacks as a special treat for the boys to take on the plane in case of emergencies exactly like this:-)).
Our flight from Houston to Seattle was 4 1/2 hours long, so we didn't get in to Seattle until after 2 AM Seattle time, 4 AM Austin time.  The boys slept a little on the plane, but not a whole lot.  They were tired boys.  Finally, though, we were in Seattle.  Ben left me with the boys and the baggage by the baggage claim while he went to get our rental car.  Soon he called me, telling me that they had our reservation, but the person at the desk didn't know anything about the hand controls I had requested.  Not again!!  After a bunch of talking back and forth to the Alamo people, and checking what rentals were available from other companies, I finally called the Alamo people on the 1-800 number, and they chewed out the guy at the desk, telling him they had sent the request for hand controls over 3 days before.  The guy eventually called his manager at home, waking him up, only to be told that they DID have the van with the hand controls after all.  The trouble was that we had been scheduled to pick it up at 10 PM when our flight was originally scheduled.  Since then, a different shift of people came on duty, and the new person at the front desk wasn't told about the hand controls.  So eventually we DID get the van with hand controls, although it took about 45 minutes to work it all out. 
Finally we were on the road heading to our hotel in Everett, about 30 minutes north of Seattle.  Our GPS decided to take us on the "scenic route," sending us on some obscure highway, before spitting us out onto surface streets THROUGH downtown, and finally sending us back onto I-5, which had connected on to the airport in the first place.  Huh???  So a 1/2 hour drive turned into 45 minutes and my patience was definitely worn thin.  THEN, when we finally got to the hotel, the person didn't know about our reservation.  My mom had reserved rooms for Friday and Saturday night, but I had called in to reserve our room one night early.  Finally, after some more delay, they figured out that they counted our early reservation as a no-show, since we didn't arrive until 5:00 AM.  They were going to charge us a no-show fee!  Anyway, it all worked out, and finally we were in our room, and tucked into bed by around 5:30 AM, 7:30 AM Austin time.  It was a very, very long night.  :-)
I'm going to end there, or else tonight will also end up a very long night, but here is a picture of my poor boys after we finally landed at the Seattle airport.  They were soooo tired, but such troopers putting up with everything.

Happy Mother's Day

I love this day. That's because I have the greatest Mother in the world, and I get to be the Mother to the greatest kids in the world.

I really do have the greatest mom in the world.  I love her so, so much.  This is my mom with me, 30-uh-something years ago.  :-)

Me and my goofy guys.

pictures from the week

 Here are Mosey and Joseph drawing during our science lesson.  We are studying weather right now, and we were reading about thunderstorms.  So they drew a tremendous, epic thunderstorm complete with gigantic explosions and tornadoes and raining cars and all sorts of things.  It's so fun to see the way boys draw.  It is so different from girls.  Boys are extremely interactive in their drawing.  They basically draw as an ongoing illustration of a story they are telling.  So they were telling the story of this terrible storm while drawing it.  You can see Mosey making sound effects as he's drawing here.

Here's the finished product.  Awesome!

Here's handsome Brigham with his scooter after our walk tonight.  This kid is so great.  I'm so lucky to be his mom.  I love how he has a soundtrack to his life.  We were walking to our violin lessons yesterday and he was softly singing to himself.  I got closer and listened for a while.  It was a very interesting song about the "green grasshopper."  Oh, to spend a few minutes inside this boy's head!

I sliced up some cucumbers tonight for dinner, and Joseph took a couple to refresh his tired eyes.  Such a silly boy!  By the way, this is the lizard shirt he got at the wildflower festival a few weeks back.  He does love this shirt.

 Mosey saved up for a "Mazin' Hamster" in the Webkinz family.  Since Friday afternoon, he's been kind of glued to the computer, playing the Mazin' Hamster games that go with "Willowbranch" (the name of his hamster).  I've had a few "conversations" with him this weekend about computer time.  As in, way, way too much of it. 

Here is our naughty, tired old dog.  For such a tired, old dog, he sure likes to run away a lot!  We can't figure out how he's getting out right now, which is frustrating, because we can't trust him whenever he goes outside...

Weekly letter

Here's my weekly letter to my family chronicling the week.
Happy Mother's Day to Mama and Rosalynde and Naomi and Christine and Rachel!  I hope you all had wonderful days.
First of all, I'm sorry for dropping out of the phone call without any warning last night.  Ben's phone ran out of power.  My phone beeps when it's getting low, so I know to recharge it, but Ben's does not, and also does not work after you plug it in until it has recharged for a while.  So I'm sorry!  Christian, I didn't get to say good bye or I love you.  Just know that I love you!! 
My Mother's Day was great.  Last night Ben took the boys to HEB and they all chose some beautiful flowers to give me which are now sitting happily on our kitchen table.  Ben got up with the boys this morning and I slept in.  Then I had to go pick up my phone which I had left at the violin teacher's house, so Ben got the boys bathed and dressed and to church on time!  Our Sacrament Meeting was wonderful.  The first talk was by one of our graduating senior boys, and he started it off with a really funny fake "scripture" about mothers-- all written in King James English, but full of funny real-life things about mothers.  I tried to find it online, but no luck.  Our second speaker was a woman who has not been able to have children, despite trying everything over the past 6 years.  I thought our Bishop was brave and awesome for choosing her to speak.  She talked a lot about her heartbreak, and how everything she has gone through has changed her view of motherhood and how sacred a calling it is.  It brought back so many memories and feelings from those sad Mother's Days when I was wishing so much that I could be a mother.   The primary children went up to sing, as usual, and all three of my boys went up willingly and SANG (or at least moved their mouths).  I looked at Ben with my mouth open when they all just went up there with no fuss.  The past few years have seen Joseph refuse utterly to go up at all, Joseph going up there, but hiding behind all the kids and refusing to sing, Mosey refusing to go up, and then under dire threat, going up there and hiding behind the Sacrament table.  So it was a very sweet Sunday for me to sit there and watch my boys singing for me.  Joseph still complained mightily about it at home, but I'm happy for these baby steps!  Ben got called during Sunday School by someone who had almost run over Mister who apparently escaped while we were at church.  Aarrghh.  So he left to get the dog.  As a result, he had dinner cooking when we got home, and I was able to relax and hang out and help Brigham make a cake, and steam some artichokes I bought at Joseph's request.  After dinner we went on a family walk, and then came home and ate Brigham's cake.  Then the boys cleared off the table, and went to bed!  The perfect day. 
The rest of the week was pretty good, too. 
We had a freak cold-front come through on Sunday afternoon and Monday.  It was downright cold on Monday, and drizzled off and on all day.  Not enough rain to make much of a difference in our drought, but surely a welcome change from our 90+ weather recently.  Monday afternoon Joseph had flute lessons.  We got to his teacher's apartment early (it was at his apartment instead of at UT this week), but then couldn't get into the building, because I forgot my cell phone at home, and all the doors are card-access only.  So we had to wait until someone finally came by and let Joseph in.  He ended up being 15 minutes late!  Ugh.  But he had a good lesson.  And he's been telling me this week that he wants to play a third instrument!  I'm not up for that, yet, but wow, what a change from a boy who has shed many tears practicing at the piano.  He's come a long way.
On Tuesday Mosey helped me take Mister to the vet while Joseph and Brigham were at Scouts.  Mister's lost a lot of weight recently and has had some digestive issues and generally not been acting himself.  He's 12 years old, so it might just be old age.  Mosey was so cute in explaining to the vet exactly what was wrong with Mister, including a very accurate description of some of the bodily functions Mister has been experiencing.  :-)  Mosey is so self-confident.  The vet ended up taking blood from him and giving him an antibiotic to help with the digestive stuff.  His blood work came back mostly normal, so the next step is an ultrasound to see if there is anything going on internally.  He has a slightly enlarged liver which could indicate cancer.  We won't be able to schedule that until next week, so we'll see.  We won't pursue any aggressive treatment if there is anything seriously wrong with him-- he is an old dog-- but it would be good to know what is wrong so we know what to expect.
Wednesday.  We had our homeschool group here in the afternoon to go swimming, but it was a little cold for them.  The high was only 83 (residual coolness from the cold front), so they mostly ran around in the backyard, fighting with swords and light-sabers and guns, all while dressed up in old Halloween costumes.  They were cute.  After that we hopped in the car and went down to our favorite sheet music store, only to be so sad when we found out it had closed, and was now one of those tax-preparation places!  It was such a great sheet-music store, and there's no where else even close to as good anywhere in Austin.  I talked to the boys' piano teacher about it the next day, and she said it was because the rent on the building had gone up, and the city taxes had increased a whole bunch, and the guy just couldn't stay open, after being in business for 30 years!  So sad.  Go taxes.  We then stopped by the violin shop to get something for Mosey's violin.  I didn't notice until we walked in that Mosey was still dressed up as a pirate.  :-)
Thursday.  Thursday was Ben's big day!  He took another actuary exam, the first in several years.  He only has 2 more in order to get his Fellowship in the Casualty Actuarial Society.  He currently has his Associates, which is adequate for everything he needs to do as Chief Actuary, and the Fellowship is really just to be an extra-special, over-achieving actuary.  :-)  He's been studying really, really, really hard.  He thinks it went pretty well, but he's not sure he passed.  He knew how to do every problem, but didn't have time to fully complete all of them, which is very typical of actuary exams.  Frustrating, but typical.  So, we'll see.  In the afternoon we had piano lessons, in which both boys were disappointed to learn that they could NOT learn Fur Elise yet.  They heard that piece during the recital and both of them really want to learn it.  But their teacher has the ridiculous notion that they should wait until their hands have grown enough to actually be able to reach all the chords, or some other such nonsense.  :-)  (I don't think it's ridiculous, by the way, I'm just teasing.)  They are pretty philosophical about it, though, and have chosen some different summer pieces to work on.  Joseph's going to learn Clementi's Sonatina, a piece I remember playing as a kid, so that will be fun.  After piano we went home to drop Joseph off, and for Brigham to do a quick practice session before violin lessons.  We drove all the way to violin (25 minutes in the late-afternoon traffic), and when we got there I told the boys to get their violins and get out of the car.  Mosey didn't move.  I turned around and said, "Mosey, did you bring your violin?"  Silence.  Then, "Oh, I must have forgotten it at home."  Oh, really??  Mosey's forgotten his violin before, so Brigham starts chastising him as well.  I say, "Well, Brigham will just have to have an extra-long lesson today."  We got out of the car and start heading for the violin teacher's apartment.  I notice Brigham is not carrying his violin.  I say, "Brigham, go get your violin!"  "Oh, yeah," he replies, and runs back to the car.  I keep heading to the teacher's apartment.  Brigham comes back, walking behind me for a while.  I look behind, and see he is still empty-handed.  "Brigham, where is your violin?"  "Ummm..."  "Oh, no, you didn't forget your violin too, did you??"  Sure enough, BOTH my boys forgot their violins.  So, we got back in the car and went home.  :-)  We rescheduled for Saturday morning, and I think both boys were adequately humbled.  Since we had time, we stopped by Rudy's for barbecue on the way home, as a celebration dinner for Ben finishing his exam.  I had a Relief Society presidency meeting that night. 
Friday.  We had a nice relaxing morning with only a few lessons since the boys have been so good about finishing their lessons during the week.  In the afternoon we went back to the violin store to bring Mosey's violin in for repairs.  It's a cheap violin, and wasn't made particularly well, but it's not worth buying a new one since Mosey will be growing out of it soon anyway.  But the repairs aren't too expensive and it will make a huge difference in the quality of his playing.  He has struggled with really bad squeaking-- the most painful part of beginning violin.  But when I went in to the shop on Wednesday and looked at the rentals (we thought we'd try a rental to see if it had the same problem), I noticed that the bridge on Mosey's violin is badly carved, and in totally the wrong place.  So that's what we're getting fixed, and it will make a big difference.  We borrowed a violin while Mosey's is in the shop and already he sounds like a different player.  After that we went to horseback riding.  Mosey was not cooperative, and didn't want to do his part in getting the horse ready to ride, and so lost the privilege of riding.  And earned the privilege of sitting next to his mom for an hour while she lectured him.  He doesn't really like riding, and I really don't have a problem with him quitting-- I don't care a bit if he rides or not.  But I do care that he shows respect to his teacher, and he hasn't really learned that well, yet.  I told him if he was a nice, polite, respectful boy to his teacher, and then told me he didn't want to ride anymore, that would be totally fine.  But when he's disrespectful and acts like a brat and *then* wants to quit, I don't want to let him!  Because that means he has something even more important than horseback riding to learn-- and that is respect.  And I don't want to let him quit until he learns that.  So, I'm not sure what to do.  Mosey did very nicely approach his teacher, look her in the eye, and said, "I'm sorry for being disrespectful."  We won't be going next week, of course, since we'll be in Seattle, so I'll have a couple of weeks to think about what to do.  Ben and I went to a fireside that evening at the church on strengthening relationships. 
Saturday was pretty busy.  Brigham and Mosey and I went to our rescheduled violin lesson in the morning, then to HEB, then to get donuts at Crown Donuts.  The afternoon was taken up with laundry, and trying to get the boys to do some chores.  They ended up cleaning out and washing both cars, which was good, but they did NOT get to cleaning up the backyard which I was really hoping they would do...  The night ended up great, though, getting to talk to Christian on the phone.  It was so great hearing his voice, but boy did it make me miss him.  Christmas seems like a long time away.

And that brings me current again.  Thanks for putting up with my long, long emails.  I keep thinking I should get back to writing my daily write-ups like I used to do a few years ago, but I just don't seem to be able to find the time every night.
I love all of you and can't wait to see you in a few days!!

Love,
Gabrielle

P.S. Here are the pictures for the week

A snake, a gecko, and an upside-down flute

Last Friday we drove down to Ben's work to pick him up and go to dinner. While we were waiting for him to come downstairs, the boys got out of the car and started exploring over by some rocks. After a minute, Joseph came running over clutching something in his hand. "It's a Texas blind snake, mom!" He held his cupped hand up to me and I saw the tiniest little snake I've ever seen. It looks almost exactly like an earthworm, but if you look close you can see it has scales and eyes, and it slithers and wriggles like a snake. Joseph found a container in the car and we kept it for a day before letting it go. It really was a Texas Blind Snake. When we got home, Joseph looked it up in his Smithsonian reptile book which he has practically memorized.

Not to be outdone, on Sunday afternoon Mosey caught a Mediterranean gecko outside.  He kept it in a container with some dirt and leaves, and we attempted to feed it crickets.  I'm not sure if it ever successfully caught one, and after a couple of days Mosey let it go.

Finally, here's a shot of Joseph practicing his flute tonight.  I don't think upside-down is the best way to maximize lung capacity, but it was fun!

spring piano recital 2011

The boys' piano recital was on Saturday.  They've been working on their pieces since January, although they've had them down cold for a month or so.
I taped the boys on my 8mm video camera at the recital, and I can't find the cord to transfer the video to my computer, so these videos of them practicing at home will have to do. 
They both did great!  Joseph's flute teacher came to hear him which was really thoughtful.  Joseph played Oriental Intermezzo by Concone.  It is a very fun, flashy piece that he can play about 100 miles per hour (although he kept it at a more reasonable pace).  Boy, can that kid's fingers fly!  His teacher wants Joseph and Brigham to play at flute-piano duet at the recital next year which I think will be great.  They can play a violin-piano duet, too.  How fun to have a twin accompanist!
Brigham's piece, Valse Melancholique by Rebikoff, is more subtle but has some really tricky parts where his right hand is playing two melody lines at the same time, with different dynamic markings!  He played note-perfectly at the recital and I was really proud of him.  He is so cute when he performs-- you can tell he is aware of his audience, and he'll sneak peeks every so often as he's playing (you'll see him do that with me in his practice video).  During his recital, he did this a couple of times, peeking out at the audience while his fingers are busy at the keyboard.  It was really cute.
It's so fun to go back and watch the video's from last year's recital and see how far they've come.
Congratulations, boys!!

Here's Brigham's piece:


And Joseph's:

May 2, 2011

May 2 will always be a tender day to me.  It is the day I lost my little brother.  Even though it has been more than 20 years, I still love him and think about him and miss him all the time.  I can't wait until I can give this little guy a great big giant hug again.  My arms will always ache for him.

Pool's open!!

Over the weekend, Ben and the boys worked hard to get the pool ready for the summer.  The pump for our filter broke during the freeze we had over the winter, and repairing that as well as combating the algae that's been accumulating over the last few weeks of hot weather, took pretty much all day.
But, the results were well worth-it!  The past couple of days have been packed full of a lot of this:

Yay for summer!