GRAY: August 2009

Sunday, August 30, 2009

Back to School!!

Jonah is in 3rd grade, Jonathan is in 1st. All I can say is, aaaaauuuugggghhhh, what a relief! I guess I fall in to the category of a parent that relishes the day the kids go back to school. That still leaves Spencer at home, and he is the worst of our 3 so far in needing constant attention. I don't ever remember the other two requiring such vigilance. Anyhow the boys greatly enjoyed their first week back. Of course, Jonah started on Wednesday, and Jonathan on Thursday, so it wasn't really a week.

Yes, they comb their own hair.

The week before, Diedre planned her annual back to school party which was a total blast as usual! The boys all had fun with their different activities.

They wrote introductory letters to each of their teachers...As you can see, the following is Jon's:

Green Beans? Really? What does "Centers" mean? Naughty kids? From what we are told, he is their ringleader! "Wanna play house?" That's our Jon-Jon!

Back to the party...They made their very own t-shirts!

And had a sleepover!

At least they waited until AFTER Diedre left before gambling with glowsticks...

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention Joe and Jon received new Superman pjs--complete with cape! (attached with velcro.) Both boys ran around the house the first day the put them on--running with their heads turned back looking over their shoulders--to see if the capes were billowing...Of course Dacia and I were sutably impressed, even if Joe became very frustrated that he couldn't see and billowing from his cape. Jon was just happy his flapped at the edges a bit...

Ummm, superkid on the right, aren't you a little short for a superhero? I don't remember Superman rolling up his tights.

We went to Dacia's concert tonight. Her choir, Deseret Chamber Singers sang at the Springville Art Museum. It was their end of summer concert, and it was very nice. Below are a couple very brief videos of some of their pieces. (Each song clip is less than 30 seconds long--and three clips, taken with my super high-tech, ultra sophisticated film and studio equipment....a $100 point a click camera...No seriously, the choir was great and my recording not.)

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Yes, I was sitting in the audience. I felt guilty the whole time, like I was bootlegging a movie or something...I added one more song, several clips. I told you my camera was rinky-dink! It only records sound for video in one minute intervals. It will keep recording video after one minute--without sound, so I have to keep stopping and restarting my recording. I tried to look for pauses, or rests, but wasn't always successful. This clip is 5m30s long--all one song.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Uh, yeah, the video is of the floor. I told you I felt guilty!! Mainly of filming the back of heads...

Wait, is the taller superkid (I couldn't really say bigger) beating up the shorter superkid? Or trying to protect him?

Sunday, August 23, 2009

Binky envy

We took Spencer's binky away-permanently-about two weeks ago. We tried trimming it, by cutting off a small piece off every few days, but it didn't phase him. We ended up having to just throw it out. He was fine until today.

Aaaaahhhhhhh, Spencer! So I'm laying on the living room couch, enjoying a hard-earned Sunday afternoon nap. Then I hear a strangled screech coming from somewhere in the house. "Spen-ceeeeeerrrrrrrrr! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooooo........!!!" He had opened a drawer halfway up a row of drawers, and used it to boost himself up onto the kitchen counter. Then he got into the spice cabinet, and had a grand old time opening spice bottles and dumping them all over himself, the toaster, counter, stove, open drawer and kitchen floor. In all he emptied about 30 spice bottles-including a bottle of Kitchen Bouquet, Browning and Seasoning sauce. That stuff stains. Bad. You know how spices smell really good? Yeah. Not all mixed together, all at once.

Later we were perusing one our family picture albums when Spencer starting yelling and trying to pluck the binky in one of the pictures-out of the picture. Seriously. He reached out his little hand and tried to pinch the binky to get it out of the picture, which incidentally was his own binky in his own mouth--in the picture. And boy was he upset when he couldn't get it!

Following are pics from our vacation in July. These were taken in Solvang, CA, a Dutch-settled town over 2 hours north of L.A.