Austin Gem and Mineral show

Today was a good Saturday.
Brigham and Joseph had their Halloween recital at their teacher's house.  This is a students-only recital, and all the kids came dressed up and brought food for a potluck lunch.  I made mini cupcakes decorated with spiders and spider webs and bats and skull and crossbones and eyeballs and "BOO!"  They turned out cute, although I probably spent too long on them last night.  I'll make more next week and take a picture.
Joseph is an alien this year.  He's recycling a grim reaper robe from a couple of weeks ago and added some silver accents and some nifty alien face paint.  Brigham is a zombie.  Yesterday we spent a couple of hours going from Goodwill to Goodwill to find the elements of his costume.  We went to 3 different Goodwills and a Salvation army in order to find one pair of dark pants and a suit-jacket type thing.  I couldn't believe the poor selection of boys clothes!  The pants he finally found were size 7.  Good thing we shredded the bottoms anyway, because they were too short.  We never could find a white button-down shirt, so we used a blue button down shirt the boys used as painting smocks.  We also couldn't find a boy's suit jacket or blazer.  Brigham found a women's size 2 suit jacket which fit reasonably well once we cut the sleeves a bit.  I guess little boys just use their clothes up, not leaving much worthwhile giving to Goodwill.  I only made it through the first Goodwill and the Salvation Army right next door before my legs gave out.  I sent the 3 boys into their other stores by themselves to browse around and buy what they needed.  I have independent boys!
Anyway, these are my favorite kinds of Halloween costume-- not store-bought, but also not requiring hours and hours of my time and labor.  The boys used their imaginations and came up with their own costumes.  I love it!  I'll take pictures next week.  Mosey's going to be a pirate, which also could be a pretty easy costume, but I told him I'd sew him a fancy ruffled pirate shirt, so it's turning out to be a little more work. 

Mosey had a soccer game this morning which Ben took him to.  They tied, 0-0!  This is a good thing for this little team.  :-)  Every week their loss margin has shrunk, and today they tied, so maybe, just maybe, they'll win next week?  I hope so.  Mosey doesn't care as much as Brigham and Joseph did, but he does care a little.  The YMCA didn't do a super good job in dividing the teams equally by age.  This is a 6-8 year league, and Mosey's team has mostly 6 year olds with a few 7 year olds.  No 8 year olds at all.  There is a huge gap between the soccer abilities of most 6 year olds versus most 8 year olds, so this little team doesn't have much of a chance against teams with even a few more older kids.  A couple of weeks ago when I went to his game, the other team was HUGE compared to Mosey's.  One of the girls was the tallest, biggest 8 year old I have ever seen.  She was nearly my height! 

Mosey after his game a couple of weeks ago.  He didn't want to high-five the other team, and he stalked back to the sidelines very clearly unhappy.

Now that is a scowl!  Luckily, he bounced back pretty quickly.

But Mosey is still enjoying soccer, and that's what I care about.  And he came home thrilled because Ben took him to Red Barn (local nursery) and bought him a pumpkin.  I admit I am not a good soccer mom.  I don't like watching my boys' games!  I just get too nervous for them.  They're probably not even nervous, but I am!  I hate to see them lose, not because I care if they're superstars, but just because I hate to see them disappointed and hurt.  And yet, I know these experiences are one of the most valuable thing about playing team sports!  Intellectually, I don't want to deprive them of these experiences, but in practice it is awfully hard for me.  I'd much rather Ben take them, and then afterwards I can either be consoling or celebrating.  I know Mosey likes it when I come, but the soccer field is about a million miles away from the parking lot, and I can't walk there by myself.  The path is not the slightest bit wheelchair accessible. So I don't feel too guilty about not going to all his games.  And today I had to take Brigham and Joseph to their recital, anyway.
On the way home from the recital I asked Joseph to go into the pet supply store to get crickets for Spots.  Joseph was horrified because he was still in his costume and face makeup.  But I didn't want to go all the way home and then all the way back, since the store was right on our way home.  So I made him go in anyway.  I hope I'm not traumatizing him for life.  I know Joseph is acutely self-conscious, and he hates feeling like people are looking at him and thinking he's weird, or laughing at him.  I told him no one on earth would think he was weird or laugh at him.  It's the week before Halloween, and he's obviously coming from a party.  Anyway, he did go in and get the crickets.  I hope I'm not exacerbating the problem. 
When we got home, I told the boys we were going to go to the Austin Gem and Mineral Society's gem and mineral show at the Palmer Events Center downtown.  Oh, my, how the moaning and groaning did commence!  You would have thought I just told them we were all going to get fillings at the dentist!!!  They wanted to stay home.  Brigham wanted to draw.  Joseph wanted to read.  All of them tried to tell me that Saturdays are supposed to be their free days.  I have no idea where they got this notion, but I need to root it out of them, and quick!  Saturdays we don't have school lessons.  But that's it.  Saturdays are NOT free!  I told them we could stay home and do chores all afternoon if they wanted, and Mosey actually just about took me up on the offer until I told him about the gem hunt they had at the show.  Finally they all very reluctantly got into the van and we headed downtown.  Well, the gem and mineral show ended up being fantastic!  We stayed all the way until closing time, and the boys loved it.  We saw all the gems and minerals you could hope to see.  The boys got pieces of petrified wood and a fossil as free gifts.  There was a "gem hunt" where the kids had 2 minutes to dig through big tubs of gravel to find the hidden polished rocks-- then they got to keep what they found.  Mosey was especially thrilled with this, and did it twice ($0.50 each time).  There was a place where you could buy geodes and crack them open.  We didn't buy any (expensive!), but watched them being cracked open.  I gave each boy $4 to buy something.  Mosey got a moonstone, and Joseph and Brigham got these cool glass diamonds-- about 3 inches in diameter.  Brigham's is green, Joseph's is blue.  We just finished our section on minerals, and are starting on rocks in science, so the timing of this event was perfect.  The boys knew a decent amount about minerals, and they were all able to find real specimens of the specific gems that they did their reports on.  Everywhere there were experts on the things we were looking at-- rare gems, geodes, fossils, petrified wood, etc.  We got to watch minerals being cut and polished.  Anyway, this was a really awesome way to spend Saturday afternoon.  It would have been easier to stay home, but I told the boys that if they just stayed home and built with blocks or drew pictures, they would never remember any of it a year from now, but if we went to the gem show, they would probably remember it their whole lives.  And all three of them enthusiastically told me that I was right and that they were glad they came.  I didn't even have to say "I told you so!" 
The only thing that could have made it better was if Ben had been able to come.  He's been swamped at work and worked from about noon until 7:45 tonight.  Poor guy! 
I didn't take any pictures there because when I got there and took out my camera, I realized my memory card was still in my computer at home...  Oh, well.
When we got home, Brigham and Joseph immediately began trading their stones they got at the gem hunt.  I was making dinner, listening to the negotiations in the background.  Joseph is a hard bargainer, and knows just how to play Brigham to get what he wants.  It was fun to listen to them, but I started to get worried.  Finally, negotiations were complete, and the boys were putting away their final selections.  Brigham looks at what he's got left, and started crying.  He had this pitiful pile of rocks left, and Joseph had a huge sackful.  Brigham had voluntarily traded all his rocks away, but he's just not as sophisticated a bargainer as Joseph, and I don't think he quite realized what was happening until it was too late.  I went over and got out my kitchen scales to see how much each boy had.  Joseph ended up with over 3 times the weight of rocks than Brigham had!  I complemented Joseph on his negotiating skills, but told him that he was honing his talent at the expense of his brother, non-malicious though it may have been.  So we entered into another round of mom-mediated negotiations, and I think both boys walked away satisfied.  After it was over, Brigham told me, "I learned a lesson tonight, and that lesson is to be happy with what I have!"  I told him if he learns this lesson, he will be way beyond most human beings on this planet.
That was it!  A great Saturday.