May 2013

I think I mentioned that in April we started going to the library a lot.  Henry was reading the Magic Treehouse books, and could not get enough.  As he put it, “Mom, I am just diggin’ in to these books!”  He says that about anything that he is loving or mildly obsessed with, whether it’s food (Wow, I am really just diggin’ in to these chips and salsa) or not (Mom, have you noticed how much I am just digging in to these Star Wars legos?)

And of course, anything Henry is diggin’ in to, Cynthia is diggin’ in to it, too:

Here he is with all the Treehouse books he finished in just a couple of weeks:

One of my favorite sights:

Flying.  The older kids used to get a steady dose of this when we lived in our apartment in Utah, because the big bean bag was in our front (and only) living room.  Now we keep it up in the playroom, where it doesn’t get used as much.  Once in awhile Daniel goes up there to play and the little kids learn what it means to be a Mott child. 


Rachel and Lizza didn’t even wait for school to be out to create their own pretend classroom at home.  Lizza was the teacher, and they even had their own ticket system for good behavior:
And pockets hung up on the wall for the students to store their tickets:
And their classroom had a resting area:
And best of all, a small play area with a bucket full of reptiles and insects:

And speaking of school (and reptiles and insects), Oliver still managed to bring home some sort of creature on a regular basis during his walk home.  When we moved here I didn’t realize how much wildlife we were giving him access to, and it makes me happy for him.


It seems like the kids are always going in and out of fort-building stages. Or maybe they are always in a fort-building stage, and it’s just me who goes in and out of letting them do it. Here are Henry and Cynthia, in what might be the most uncomfortable fort ever built. 


Seriously.  They were so proud of it, and had all these grand plans for playing games inside and doing lots of activities in there.  You can tell at the end of the video when Henry actually tried it out and crawled inside he was like, “oh, shoot – this fort is the worst.  There’s no way this game of dominos is going to work out.”

After we went to the Killers concert in Vegas over Christmas, we knew we’d jump at the chance to see them again anytime, and it turns out that in May they came to Texas.  We were pretty happy about that.  This time just Daniel and I went.
It was awesome.  They put on such a good show.

I can’t remember why we did this (maybe it just seemed like it would be fun?), but we let the kids all sleep down in the family room in a “blanket fort” while we were gone at the concert.  I’m not sure why they like this better than sleeping in their comfortable beds, but they do.


The next day we headed to Houston to visit with Daniel’s brother and his family who live there, and also Daniel’s mom, who had flown in from Utah for Mother’s Day weekend.

While we waited for them to meet up with us, we hung out at Hermann Park.  Here is Tristan in front of the reflecting pool that he almost drowned in (twice) when we were in Texas for Daniel’s internship 8 years ago.  He was four, and wading around with a few other kids.  We didn’t know that the ground was sloped and so the pool got deeper, and neither did he, and he started walking out toward the middle.  Pretty soon he had walked out till it was over his head.  Daniel jumped in to get him, with his cellphone and wallet still in his pocket.  Then while we were emptying out his pockets and trying to dry everything out, Tristan went right back in and did it again.  We kept everyone out of the water this time around.


Instead they played catch:                                                            

And fed squirrels:              

And ducks:


Then we walked over the the Houston Museum of Natural Science, where we met Anthony and his wife and their little boy, Maximus, who got lots of kisses from Cindy. 


Grandma Nini also got lots of kisses.                  


Henry got to ride this robotic T-rex (we weren’t going to do it, because it cost $5 per ride, but all the kids decided they didn’t care if any of them went on it, as long as we just let Henry do it, because it would be so fun to watch him do it).  And it was.  It might have been the highlight of his little life so far.  He said it felt like he was riding on a real dinosaur, but he wasn’t scared at all.


All the kids with their cousin and grandma:

After the museum we went back to Anthony and Amber’s apartment for swimming and a barbeque:

This was Henry’s first experience with steak.  I don’t cook meat very often, so even though my kids eat it at restaurants, they’re pretty clueless about it sometimes.  He kept calling the steak “brisk”, as in, “Mom, I just ate a huge whole square of brisk.”  I think it’s because he’s had brisket before? 


We stayed overnight in Houston, and then went to church on Mother’s Day at Anthony and Amber’s ward. After church we did some pictures near their apartment. Here I am with my kiddos:                                           


There was also some lizard catching:                                       


And baby loving:                                                                 


And just general cuteness.  That morning at our hotel before we left for church, Cynthia managed to spill a cup of hot chocolate all down the front of her white dress.  Luckily, I had packed a slip for her (I don’t even know why – she never wears a slip) and for some reason I hadn’t put the slip on, so it was still clean.  We improvised, and she wore a slip with a sweater and boots to church.  Hopefully nobody in Houston was looking too closely.


Back in Austin.  Oliver’s baseball team won the championship game, and he got a sweet new shirt.

And here’s Rachel with a chameleon diorama she made for school:

And the girls hard at work copying some Fancy Nancy illustrations:

And last of all, the kids playing Chopped.  We love watching Chopped together (it’s a competition cooking show, where 4 contestants are given a basket of mystery ingredients and they have a short amount of time to cook an appetizer using all the ingredients.  The worst contestant is “chopped”, and leaves the show, and the remaining three get a new basket and cook an entrée, where someone gets chopped again. Then the last two get a final basket to make a dessert with, and the winner gets $10,000.  It’s pretty fun to see the crazy things they have to cook with, and the awesome dishes they come up with).

Anyway, my kids love to play Chopped.  With toy plastic food.  They usually pick one person to be the judge, and she sets up similar “baskets” of food for the contestants.  Then they just move the food around a little and pretend to chop and stir things, and then the judge will ask them what they created.  At this point, they can pretend the food was real and say what they would have done.


There are so many things that make me laugh when they do this.  First of all, the dishes they create!  They have no idea what they’re doing.  For example, in this particular “episode”, Henry made some fruit soup with cheese powder, and Rachel, who actually does help me in the kitchen a lot, got an egg with some “other stuff” and somehow made whipped cream.  I guess, if anything, watching Chopped is teaching them that you don’t always need a recipe – you can just throw crazy stuff together and sometimes it works out.  Unless you are making whipped cream with raw eggs.   

But I think my favorite part is listening to the judges.  They take it pretty seriously.  When Oliver judges, he says things like, “I enjoyed the flavor, but your creativity just isn’t wowing me on this dish.”  Ha. 

They also love to offer helpful little comments, like Lizza in this video.  I love when she says, “Oh, I love it.  Butt there’s one thing. Um, with the lemon – there’s a little too much lemon sauce.” Also love how she studies the dishes so carefully at the end, trying to decide which one to chop.

I guess someday I should let them play it with real food.  That would probably be their favorite thing ever.