Battle of the Books

Sydney is on a team at school that participated in the battle of the books. This semester all the participants read the same 12 books, and they had competitions to see who remembered the most. Sydney's team represented our school today in the district semi-finals. The girls did great and will be competing in the finals on Monday night.

What's on your Camera?

It looks like the kids were using my camera again. They are getting to be pretty good photographers!

Drummer

Here is one of the pieces from Christian and Truman's last Symphony concert, last night. This is Christian's debut on Drum set. I think he did great. I also heard the Tuba's quite well a couple of times...



We have been a bit creative about our babysitting lately. The little kids are pretty tired of attending concerts. So what we did for this concert was that we left Sydney in charge of the other girls and (Christian and Truman were in the concert) and we brought Nate to see the concert. The group of fiddlers played some prelude music which Nate enjoyed. He wiggled and squirmed for half of the first piece of the lowest division group and fell asleep. He woke up and needed the bathroom while the groups were switching on stage, went right back to sleep. He slept through the rest of the concert, walked to the car, went back to sleep and slept through the drive, the stop at the ice-cream parlor, and the drive home.

It's all in the perspective

Yesterday I was a Costco and had a conversation, with a nice woman on the cheese isle, that has caused some reflection on my part. As we were having the conversation I felt surreal and attributed it to the swarm of children buzzing about my cart that I could do nothing to contain in a very busy store. As I have now slept and can think more clearly I realize that there were many things that were strange about the conversation. Here is the conversation as clearly as I can remember it:
Tasting Lady: Hi girls! Would you like to try some cheese?
Swarming Children: Oh Mom, more tasting.
Me: go ahead, only one. Nate take the one you touched. turn here I need to find some cheese.
Nice lady: (also looking for cheese) What kind of cheese?
Nate: (pointing and spinning) Here's some cheese
Hazel: (bringing me a wheel of Bree) I want this kind
Me: I'm looking for a chunk of smoked Gouda
NL: That is hard to find
Me: Well, I saw some at Safeway but I was hoping to find it cheaper than $10/pound.
Sydney and Abby: Here, here is this Gouda? Is it smoked if it has the red stuff on it?
Nate: I found some cheese. How about this one.
NL: Well you know who has it is Trader Joe's I like to go there
Me: Is it a good price.
NL: Yes I can buy half that size of cheese for about the same price.
Me: Hmmm, thanks
NL: You really should go there because It is great for smaller quantities of things.
Me: (choosing a piece of unsmoked Gouda) Sure Nate you can have another taste
Nate: don't forget to buy me a giant package of gluesticks.

So this morning I realize that

1. It is Costco, people go there to buy large quantities of everything
2. Nice Lady must have wrongly assumed that Hazel was unfamiliar with cheese and chose Bree on accident
3. Nice Lady must have mistaken my children for the neighbor kids out for a ride, and that I could not find anyone in my home to help me eat such a "large" chunk of cheese
4. Half as much cheese for the same price is not a good deal
5. I must still look young enough (which is a flattering thought) that I need help with my shopping

(In case you are wondering I decided that the smoke flavor wasn't worth the extra $5/pound.)

The boys are away... the girls get to play

Who says boys have all the fun? Kenneth, Christian, and Truman are away tonight at a boyscout camporee, so we girls and Nate had a cook out. We roasted hot dogs and Peeps. I don't remember who told me that peeps are good roasted but I owe them a lot of calories! Not only do you get the gooey fluffy melty marshmallow but you also get a caramelized sugar coating, oh so delicious. The down side is that the kids roasting them chant "die, Peeps, die" (which was not it's german usage meaning The peep The) . It is a little unnerving.

Hazel's preschool program

Hazel (see the little black cat with the blue and white ruffle hanging out of the costume) on the front left) was in a cute little spring production at the preschool. They acted out Noah's ark, super cute!

Here is her class (the busy bee class) singing Busy Bees won't you come out to play. (look for the bright blue dress)

If you can't beat 'em... join 'em.

Dejay was tired of being wrapped in a blanket and tortured by three year old love so he crawled in the kennel. He found no relief!

Nick Jr. games

Hazel sometimes gets tired of playing Polly Pockets with her mom. (can you believe it) So today she was on a campaign to play Nick Jr. games on the computer. It was almost naptime and I was trying to do some dishes up, so I finally relented. I finished and called her to pick a book. No answer, I figured she was ignoring me. So I came out to carry her off to bed only to find her sound asleep.

Easter Egg Hunting in the Rain

Here is the excerpt from Kenneth's weekly letter to his family explaining the wettness!

We ran our Easter activities on Saturday. The initial plan was for some stealthy disbursement of multihued oblong objects to take place during a morning workout excursion with dad. However, Saturday morning Megan woke up early for unspecified reasons, and decided since she was already up that she would just take care of the mechanics of the day. I took the kids out anyway, and we had a great time – we punctuated brief spurts of running or jogging with a set of pushups, chin ups, or situps. By the time we finished, it was starting to sprinkle. Yes, we are still in Arizona – I checked twice. As we started to jog back, it started to full out rain. So, we sprinted. I felt sorry for the Truman and for the Rebekah who have no body fat. We got home and started to change when someone realized that if the Easter bunny had come that there would be eggs getting wet in the back yard. So we grabbed mom, monkey wrenched the schedule she had envisioned, and did the Easter egg hunt. Not often we have rain as a guest at any events or activities, and I think that it was welcomed for its novelty if nothing else. The only mishap was dumping the wet, dyed eggs on the carpet; but, even that was easily remedied with a little Simple Green and a rag.

Easter Dresses

Just like old times, My mom and I had a fun week sewing Easter dresses for my girls.

Grandma

I was looking for photos of my kids with their grandma and I had a hard time finding them. So here are some now...

Egg Decorating

Happy Birthday to Grandma

Truman (with a bit of help from Christian and Rebekah) baked an ice-dream filled chocolate cake, and then the girls frosted and decorated it. My mom is here celebrating her 60th birthday. She is going around visiting all her children in honor of the blessed event, and taing us all out to dinner. We went to the our favorite chinese food restraunt. Sydney got the best fortune I have ever seen. It said "Fortune not found. Retry abort or ignore?"

Nature of Glass

Friday we went to the Desert Botanical Garden and they have a great art installation of glass by an artist named Dale Chihuly.

Yuma

Wednesday my mom and I (and Nate and Hazel) went to Yuma Arizona. Which is I was told 15 minutes from Mexico and 15 minutes from the California border. The purpose of the visit was to visit my mom's cousin Connie. We had a great time talking and listening to Hazel talk!

Grandma's visit begins

My come arrived for a birthday (hers) visit. She brought Nate a belated birthday gift. This fine looking red cowboy hat. He did some fine whooping and hollering to try it out. As you can see, it worked great!

Sydney and Abby had their hair in lots of braids last week and they left them in so that Grandma could see the braid hairdo as well as the puffy post-braid hairdo!

From glass

Oat Recipes

I have a new calling at church. I am the "Canning and Family Preparedness Specialist". So I am trying to encourage people to store and use more long term food storage. I am looking for recipes using oats this month and white rice next month. If you have any you want to share you can email them to me. If you want to see my canning blog it is http://dobsonwardcanning.blogspot.com/

Why am driving around?

For this!
Tuesday was the District Honor Band Concert. Last week I had to drive Syd and Truman 20 minutes each way to rehearsals. It was an extremely complicated week. Thursday was the worst day when I had to pick the kids up from school and drive fast to get them to their rehearsal and then took the other kids to a park to keep them occupied, all the elementary schools in that area are caged in and you can't play on their playgrounds. We finally found a park, played for half an hour, picked the kids up and drove to another park, where we had a picnic dinner. Then we drove Truman to his Metropolitan Youth Symphony rehearsal (Christian was in Disneyland) . Then we drove to Scottsdale to pick Kenneth up at work. Went home and put the kids to bed then drove back out to pick Truman up.
The moral of the story is that sitting in the auditorium, I thought to myself "this concert better be good".
It was!

Here is the band playing a piece called Gettysburg.



And here is part (my camera battery died) of a piece called African Marching Song.