January 2012

I don’t know why I have put off posting about January for so long.  It just never feels like a very exciting month.

I guess I should give January at least a little bit of respect, because (you are going to be jealous of this if you live somewhere cold) at least in Texas we get some January days that are warm enough to go to the park. 

Tristan was doing a science project involving throwing lots of different kinds of balls and then measuring how far they went, so he and Daniel used the field near our neighborhood pool, and the rest of us played at the playground.  We rode bikes, just for fun.

Here is Henry trying to pose as a super sweet and tender older brother, and Cindy is like, “yeah, right – this kid is going to poke me in the eye as soon as you put away the camera, Mom!”

Mountain climbers:                                 

Swingers.  Henry hates swings – I try to get him to swing a little bit each time we go to give him a chance to realize how fun they are, but so far it isn’t working.  He says they stretch out his stomach too much.  Even the next day he kept sighing and then talking about how stretched out he was feeling from all that swinging.

Ollie and Ollie Junior:                            

Tristan working on his science project.  Is it just me, or did he grow up all of a sudden?

Rachel crossing the monkey bars away into the sunset:

On the cold days in January, the kids did a good job of entertaining themselves inside.  This is a very typical scene of Henry and LIzza – they get out stacks and stacks of puzzles, and then go to work. I’m not sure why Lizza’s making that face.

Lizza is also a fort builder.  She builds multiple forts every day, all around the house.  This fort was for coloring in.

Tristan taught the kids how to make houses and buildings out of folded paper.  Then they would knock them down by driving toy cars into them. 

I bought these fun color tiles, and they love setting up big elaborate lines and then tipping them over like dominoes. 

It turns out the tiles are also good for making blue-haired people:

Tristan and Oliver played on the same basketball team this year, which was fun.

Tristan has decided that basketball is his new favorite sport.

Three little chefs:                                   

Some pictures of Cynthia being cute:

Pushing some tiny little dinosaurs around in her stroller.  While wearing Henry’s pajamas.  If it weren’t for that fancy necklace, I would think she was a little boy.

Also, that picture reminds me of myself when I was little:                                          

Back to her girly fanciness in her Sunday dress:

Her very favorite thing to do these days is read.  She carries books around with her everywhere.

She is lucky to have so many older siblings to read to her:

And speaking of books, here is something funny that Henry and Lizza did in January.  Henry loves the Dr. Seuss book “There’s a Wocket in My Pocket.”  He and Lizza decided to copy the book and set up random little toys all around our house, posing as the things in the book.

(If you haven’t read the book, this will make no sense).

Sometimes we have a feeling there’s a Zlock behind the clock.                   

And that Zelf on the shelf, we have talked to him ourselves.                             

Here is Darth Vader, doing his best impersonation of a Nink in the sink.              

Henry thought this little toy salt shaker would make a good Zillow on the pillow.

And even though this looks like a dinosaur, it is really a Findow in our window.                 

We also had a Zamp in our lamp:                                                                                  

A Nook Gase in our book case:                                                                                     

(I couldn’t figure out why the little frog in the book case was holding a toy banana, but then I looked in the book and saw this picture, and it all made sense. Haha!):                                                                         

Here’s a Zower in the shower:                                                                                               

A Wasket (Henry’s blanket) in our basket:                                                       

And a Zall scooting down the hall:                                                                  

And here’s Henry, showing you that the only one he’s really scared of is the Vug under the rug.

So I guess we did have a little bit of excitement in January.

Henry Brandon Flowers Mott

In case you didn’t know, we are big fans of Brandon Flowers and The Killers around here.  For example, the kids turn on Brandon’s solo album, Flamingo, on the ipod in the kitchen upwards of 30 times per day, and the crazy thing is I don’t even mind (because I love it, too).

The bottom line is that Henry has basically decided he wants to be Brandon Flowers when he grows up.  Either that, or he already thinks he is Brandon Flowers – it’s hard to tell. 

He was especially inspired by Brandon’s dancing in the Only the Young music video.  Now whenever he hears that song he has to run stand up on a stool or chair and try his best to copy Brandon’s sweet moves. 

I have a video from the beginning of February of Henry singing the whole song.  My favorite things about this are when he points out his favorite part of the song, and tells me to keep listening.  Also, when he leads the music – the leading kills me.  Also, you know how when you’ve listened to a CD enough times, you always know what the next song is going to be? As soon as the first song is over, Henry says “now the oh’s”, because the next song starts with lots of “oh-oh, oh-oh’s.”  Henry jumps right in singing those oh’s with as much feeling as a 3-year old can. 

And my other favorite thing (non-Henry related) is around the one minute mark when Rachel and Lizza come downstairs in the middle of the video and try to show me that they are dressed like twins.

Here he is just a few days ago rocking out to some more Brandon Flowers, but this time it’s with “his band.” 

A few things:

1.  They performed 3 songs together, but in the interest of time, I edited out a lot of it, just keeping in some of the best moves. 

2.  They don’t really know the words to the first song (Daniel had just downloaded it), but I kept it in because Henry’s dancing is still pretty entertaining. Rachel and Lizza have no idea what they’re doing.

3.  Henry’s furrowed brow and super serious looks!

4.  Oliver.  He joins the band for the second and third songs. Half of him is trying to act like he is too cool for the band, but the other half really thinks he is Brandon Flowers also, and maybe even a better Brandon Flowers than Henry.  That half turns him into the backup singer secretly hoping to replace the lead singer. 

Henry, we love you.

After Christmas Dallas Trip–BYU Bowl Game

A few days after Christmas last year we did a short little trip up to Dallas (about 3 hours away).  Daniel and the older boys had tickets to see BYU play Tulsa in the Armed Forces Bowl, and we thought it would be fun to make a family trip out of it.

We drove up the day before the game, and got there late in the afternoon.  We wanted to find a fun place to hang out and spend some time in downtown Dallas before we drove to our hotel, so we went to the Nasher Sculpture Center.  It was different and neat and fun. 

The kids each picked a cool sculpture to get their picture taken in front of:

This red one was one of my favorites.  I didn’t realize it had faces in it until I was looking at the picture on my computer, and now I like it even more.  I want one for my house. 

Henry loved this “creepy guy” sculpture, but was a little nervous about standing close enough to get a picture.  There was no way he was turning his back on that thing.

Sometimes we tease Oliver (nicely) about having a big head (he doesn’t mind – he knows he gets it from me), so when we saw these tiny headed sculptures, we knew he would love them.  He thought they were so funny.

After admiring all the sculptures inside, we headed to the outdoor sculpture garden in the back.

Cynthia loved being free to roam around.                            

She found this tunnel sculpture that she really wanted to go into, but she wasn’t sure how to get in, exactly.  There was maybe a 1/2 inch drop, and the ground changed from dirt to gravel, and I guess that was enough to make her feel unsure about it.  She kept approaching it from different angles, and then she’d look around to see if anyone was watching her (we all were).                           

She finally decided to go in on hands and feet, like a bear crawl.  I guess that felt safe.

Once she made it in, she never wanted to come out, and neither did the older kids.  I wonder if I put a sculpture like this in my backyard if my kids would just stay in there all the time.

Rachel was cute because when we were about to leave, she came and got me and said she had found a really great spot for me to take a picture of her.  I agreed with her that it was pretty great.                             

After the sculpture garden, we went to a little BBQ place for dinner (our Man vs. Food restaurant for the trip).  They had funny little benches with school desk tops to put your food on.  Here is a picture of the kids waiting for their dinner with lots of sun in their eyes:

After dinner we checked into our hotel and got ready for some swimming.  Is there anything cuter than Cynthia in a swimsuit?  I just can’t believe how grown-up she is getting.

Tristan and Oliver doing some late-night reading.  We loved our hotel room – it had two separate bedrooms (each with a king bed and a bathroom), and then a pull-out sofa in a family room in the middle.  And a kitchen.  Seriously, Homewood Suites are the best.  Anytime we stay anywhere, we check to see if they have one. 

The next day Daniel and the older boys headed out early to go to the football game.  The other kids and I settled in for an afternoon of fun in the hotel room.  Henry was super excited when I surprised him by pulling out some puzzles that I had brought from home. 

And all of them were excited about our gourmet lunch that we got to eat in the hotel room.  I had run to the Walmart near the hotel the night before, and gotten some fancy rolls, applesauce, oranges, and string cheese.  You can tell by the way Rachel and Henry are posing with their string cheese that it was the highlight of the meal (how long will they be this easy to please?) 

Then it was nap time for Cynthia and Henry and movie time for Lizza and Rachel, and I got to watch the football game.

Pictures of the boys at the game:

They got lots of autographs after the game, which was very exciting.  Plus, BYU won the game, so everybody was happy about that.

That night after the game we drove over to the Fort Worth Stockyards.  Our original plan had been to go to a rodeo (they have one every Friday and Saturday night), but it ended up that the night we were there they were doing a special bull-riding competition instead of the rodeo.  It was a lot more expensive and wasn’t going to be quite as fun for the younger kids, so we decided instead to just walk around the Stockyards and explore, and then go out to dinner.

Since we had saved all that money by not going to the rodeo, everyone agreed that it was worth it to pay the $5 to let Henry and Lizza “ride” on this bull.  Henry thinks for sure he is a real cowboy now. 

Exploring:                                                                      

More cowboy action:

Picking out saltwater taffies from the barrels:

Posing with the Christmas cowboy.  I understand Lizza’s pose – that’s kind of her go-to classic – but I have no idea what Oliver is doing.  Is he scared of the cowboy, or what?:                                

Trying on lots of cute hats.  I really almost bought this raccoon hat for Henry just because he looked so cute in it.

The last thing we did was let the older three try out this fun maze.  They had to go all around and find different letters in different areas.  It was pretty tricky.  After about 20 minutes Daniel went in to rescue Rachel (partly because she needed rescuing, and partly because he wanted to try out the maze).

It was getting cold and dark, so while they finished up the maze I took Lizza, Henry, and Cynthia back to the car.  Henry entertained us all by telling us a scary story.  He tried his best to follow in Oliver’s footsteps (Ollie is the master of scary stories at our house), but he still has a ways to go (he had no idea what he was doing). 

The funniest is that I know Ollie has been telling the kids stories about a mysterious “black shape”, and Henry totally stole that idea, except he thought the black shape was a literal shape, so his story features “The Black Square” (haha!  I can just see him thinking, “hmm…black triangle?  no….black circle?…no…what’s another great but kind of creepy sounding shape?”).  Anyway, his story is a little hard to follow (he goes from darkness and sticks and wrappers to Black Squares and Balrogs).  You can tell at some points that he realizes his story is a disaster, so he throws in some good stuff like super powers, lemonade and pepperoni pizza to rescue it. 

When the maze was figured out and the scary storytelling was done, we headed off to a Mexican restaurant for a late dinner.  We waited and waited and waited for a table (they kept telling us “just 10 more minutes”), but finally after a really long time we realized that if we kept waiting we weren’t going to be eating before 10:00. 

Everyone waiting (some more cheerfully than others):

We left the Mexican restaurant and went to a nearby Chick-fil-a, where there was minimal waiting involved, plus all the kids got their own kids meal and it was still cheaper, plus there were slides.  And ice-cream cones.  Good decision, us. 

The next morning we drove back down to Austin, but not before Henry enjoyed his last breakfast at the hotel.  Here he is eating out of 3 bowls simultaneously – I think he has some waffles with chocolate chips on the left, oatmeal (also with chocolate chips) in the middle, and some Lucky Charms on the right (no chocolate chips in that one, thank goodness).  This looks to me like the work of a “helpful” older brother getting him his breakfast. 

That night was New Year’s Eve.  We celebrated by letting the kids eat all the leftover trail-mix from the trip (the good kind, with caramel candies and m&m’s) and then opening 3 bottles of drinks (Martinelli’s sparkling cider, Welch’s sparkling grape juice, and also Welch’s sparkling white grape juice).  We poured everyone a little glass of each kind and did toasts and yelled “happy new year!”  Everyone thought it was a wonderful party.

The end.