Weekend report

We had a great weekend.  Friday was our last official day of school.  We crossed the finish line sort of gasping and staggering, but we crossed it.  :-)  It was also the last day of the boys' lego camp.  They ended up having a fun time-- their battle bot won!  I spent the rest of my kid-free hours over those days cleaning the house, going grocery shopping, and giving my friend a Photoshop tutoring session.  It was fun!  On Friday afternoon we went swimming with Natasha and Desiree to celebrate the last day of school, and then after taking them home, Joseph and I swung by Little Caesars to get pizza for the boys, and I drove as fast as I could down to the movie theater to see "Gatsby" with Ben.  We liked it!  I had serendipitously just finished listening to The Great Gatsby on audible, and that made the movie that much  more enjoyable to me.  The movie followed the plotline of the book very closely (except for the whole premise of Nick Carraway writing his memories as part of a psychological treatment regimen-- but it was an effective way to establish the narrative voice of the character, so I can forgive).  It was well cast and had a really interesting soundtrack that added a lot to the movie.
Saturday was a beautiful day.  We all did yardwork, Ben and I went to Red Barn and bought some plants to hopefully finish out the half-circle flower bed at the very front of our house.  Ben took a huge load of junk to the dump, since our area hasn't had any bulk pickup for 9 months-- what is going on??  And we got the rest of our moving boxes out of the carport, broken down, loaded into the van, and taken down to the recycling center downtown.
Around 6:00, Brigham and Mosey and I drove down to San Marcos to Texas State University where we had tickets to a live taping of "From the Top," one of my favorite NPR shows.  It was really fantastic.  The show will air on September 2.  There was a wonderful trio-- 13 year old pianist, 11 year old violinist, and 11 year old cellist, and I could almost see my boys up there!  :-)  There was also another piano duo, a 16 year old piano soloist-- such an impressive piece!! (Which I can't remember the name of now...), a 13 year old composer who wrote 3 vocal pieces with piano accompaniment-- also just so impressive, and great fun for Brigham, my budding composer, to hear, and a finale of 5 pianists playing an arrangement of John Philip Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever."  The program was heavy on the pianists since it was taking place during the international piano festival happening that week at the university.
Ben took Joseph to the Elders Quorum video game party, so my boys all got a good dose of "culture" that evening.  :-)
On Sunday we had the missionaries over for dinner.  We're getting sister missionaries in our ward this week, and the elders will be working only in the Cypress Creek ward, so that is a little sad-- I like my boys to see and know the elders in the area.  I was once again astonished at how much teenage/early adult boys/men can eat.  The two of them ate as much as the five of us put together.  But it won't be long before my boys will be there!  Mosey impressed them by giving the dinner prayer in German.  We had a good discussion about the Book of Mormon musical that is coming to Austin.  They will probably be going down to hand out Book of Mormons (Books of Mormon?) to people as they come out of the theater.  :-)
So, that was the weekend!