Magic Flute

I'm trying to get some friends to go see The Magic Flute with me. The Metropolitan Opera recorded it a couple of years ago, and it is showing at movie theaters around the country on August 5th. I thought some of you, dear readers, might enjoy it as well. Here's the info on it:

http://www.fandango.com/metsummerencore:themagicflute_125634/movieoverview

Let me know if you see it!

Summer 2009

With 4 kids and a dog home all summer, you are probably wondering if the house is still standing.  So far so good.  The kids have accepted the chore chart, and are somewhat accepting the TV policy, with sneakiness on the side, which I pretend I don't know about. We have forgotten swimming lessons for the last two days, but we celebrated Bob's birthday and I made a trellis over the front door durring those days. You win some, you lose some, I guess.  Here are pictures of the winners:

The Birthday Boy and his entourage.

Behold, the Trellis!

Some of you have been asking how we like having my dad live with us. Well, it's going pretty well, if we could only get him keep his rock music a little quieter.  And the phonecalls from his fiends like that Chuck Schwab are a bit much . . .  

Dad enjoying his pad.

Naw, we're having a fun time visiting with Grandpa.  We have introduced him to Lost, and so most weeknights are now Lost nights.  Hopefully we'll get through all the seasons before January!

Awesome as a Possum

Remember when Matthew turned 16 and he got a Fedora for his birthday, and he and his friends played Rock Band 2 before going to the Stake dance?

Remember when the Stovalls visited and we drove up to Mount St. Helens and the visitor's center closed 20 minutes after we arrived, but the views were amazing?

Remember Nicki's 6th birthday, where she
invited 5 girls and one boy and they loved playing Mother May I, and Nicki wanted chocolate cake with sugar cookies on top, and we actually sent out Thank You notes?

Remember the time when we went to the Oregon coast with Grandma and Grandpa Stovall, and we stayed at a beach house and explored tide pools, and met a

beagle named Bowzer, and found a great restaurant for the adults, and made caramel brownies, and we forgot to take pictures until it was time to go and the kids were grumpy, and then we drove north to Astoria to see where the Columbia meets the sea?

Remember the last week of school when Kristy and Mom helped out at Helen Baller Field Day?

Remember the last day of school when the neighbors came over for ice cream, and the first thing the kids did after getting their food was sit down to play video games?

Remember Emily's 10th birthday when we let her have a sleepover, and she and her friends had a pillow fight, and they sang "Eye of the Tiger" and "We got the beat" until they were memorized, and for some crazy reason the girls all added "naked pickle!" to the end of each line of the birthday song?

Remember the time Kristy and Donna took Emily, Nicki, Mia, Sam, and Nate to California, and the kids were great on the way there, but they were totally grumpy and over-tired on the way back, and we met a dog, and we picked wishies, and we played "Red Light Green Light" at a rest stop?

Remember when we were in California, and we went bowling with all our California Cousins, including Anna, Sarah, Peter, Jacob, Ryan, and Allison ?

That was awesome!

We've Seen One Too Many Design-in-a-day Shows

Warning: Emily thinks this post is boring, and she wanted to make sure I mentioned that.

Donna and I took Nicki, Emily, Mia, Sam, and Nate to California to help Grandma and Grandpa fix up the ol' homestead, and we thought some of you might enjoy the pictures. In 4 work days we:

Packed at least 35 boxes.
Hung curtain rods and curtains in the yellow room and the hall.
Painted the trim on the stairs, the walls going up the stairs, and touched up the hall.
Replaced the light fixture and mirror in the downstairs bathroom, and re-stained the cabinet.
Painted the upstairs bathroom and cabinet, replaced the light fixture, added a shelf, a shower curtain, and new towels.
Removed 3 bookcases and their contents from Katy's room and rearranged the furniture.
Hung new curtain rods and curtains in mom and dad's room, bought them a headboard, and moved out one dresser.
Removed one bookcase and many boxes of stuff from the living room and family room.
Cleared off both of mom's china hutches.
Removed many items from the kitchen counters.

Here are the photos:

Look how spacious the built-in is! Who knew? We also like mom's patriotic tableau, which you can now, you know, SEE.

We also put a new curtain up in the kitchen, and (gasp) put the dish-drainer under the sink every morning after putting away the washed dishes from the night before.


Somehow Donna got all the pictures off the glass. And look! The china hutch is actually displaying tablewares! Ok, it's not china, but vases and silver platers are close enough.

Also, note the wicker In-Box that the family will now get to learn to use!






Before





















After. Did I mention that we came to kick butt and take names?










Donna not only packed away many boxes of things from the living room, she also found wedding photos of nearly all of us and displayed them nicely in the bookcases.


The upstairs bathroom. Gee, what I would have given for that shower curtain when I was growing up!

We painted the walls blue again, painted the cabinets white again, added a shelf, changed the light fixture, put up a shower curtain, and centered the mirror above the towel racks. Then Donna worked her magic with towels, shells, and soaps. Now the tub is hidden and you hardly notice the yellow sink.



Note the white trimwork and the lovely new tan color. (Thanks Suzy and Katie, for keeping the kids away while the paint dried!)

To paint the last inch near the ceiling involved a death-defying stunt performed by Kristy on the Russamano's ladder that was laid flat from the top of the stair to the floor in front of the bathroom, so that it formed an 18 inch wide platform. On this we placed a square board that was almost but not quite as large as the footprint of the stepladder, which we placed on the board that rested on the Russamano's ladder. Then I climbed up the stepladder while Donna commented "Yeah, that looks safe" and Katy provided moral support and stood ready to call an abulance.


Ah, the hallway. Coming soon: carpet and a new railing. Sorry kids, carpet will probably slow down your roller-coaster rides down the stairs. Bummer.

A big thanks to mom and dad for letting us have fun playing at being decorators, to Sally, Suzy, and Katy for watching the kids, and to Arnold and Denise for their enthusiastic appreciation of the shiny new downstairs bathroom.

"I won 8 Gold Medals at the Whining Olympics!"

This is Matthew's response to a whine of Emily's today. My response was "I like to whine too!" Emily is still laughing, so . . . whining managed!

Bob and Kristy's Blog- Mother's Day Edition

For Mother's Day today, my goal is to not do any work. More accurately, my goal is to get others to do all the work that I want done today. We had a nice breakfast of waffles and bananas in bed this morning; BBQ Salmon, french bread, and corn on the cob for lunch; and now the kids are cooking bacon and eggs for "breakfast for dinner".

Meanwhile, I spent two hours reading the book I got for Mother's Day. I had to go to Deseret Book this week to pick up a book for someone else, and the first table in front of the door had about 20 books for Mother's Day. There were a lot of pastels and a lot of flowers on the covers of those books. Many had sentimental titles, others had self-depricating titles; I couldn't bring myself to pick up any of them. Perhaps it was the sheer number of choices that put me off, I don't know. But I decided to peruse the other shelves to see what else struck my fancy.

I walked past the fiction, the teen fiction, the books for teenagers, the books on how to deal with teenagers, the books on how to deal with kids, and the personal finance section. Then, I saw it, the book that I kept going back to and didn't want to leave without. Sergeant Nibley, PhD: Memories of an Unlikely Screaming Eagle. My guess is that not many moms wanted that book for Mother's Day; I really am happy with it, though.

In other news, Bob taught Nicki to ride a bike two weeks ago, and now she is a little daredevil. I'm going to attempt to subliminally claim so credit by posting this on Mother's Day, but really it was all Bob's doing.

In Matthew news, Matthew will be taking the AP Biology exam tomorrow. He is also now a member of the National Honors Society. Congratulations Matthew!

Big Pharma 7, our family 0

Here at our little abode, we've long been a dream family for pharmaceutical companies, since several of us take daily prescription meds. But last week we were laid low by 3 cases of strep throat, and the amount of medicine I dispense daily is just ridiculous. I thought it was time for a scorecard:

Daily meds as of 4/20/2009
Mom- 1
Matthew-1
James- 2
Emily-1
Nicki-1
Bowzer-1
Total: 7, given once, twice, and three times a day.

I did not count Bowzer's monthly heart and flea meds, nor the ibuprofin, nyquil, and benadryl the kids have taken this week. Serriously, we went through two bottles of liquid ibuprofin, a box of children's tylenol, and many pills of ibuprofin, Nyquil, Dayquil, and Benadryl. Almost every hour I was walking up to some child with a glass of water and a pill or tablespoon.

The good news? Everyone is now back in school!

Also- Dad is the winner of our award for never giving up on our blog! He was the first to notice we had begun posting again! Yay Dad!

One Mean Machine

Here is our mascot in the thick of the action. Matthew spent the better part of a day in this costume.

Matthew and Team Mean Machine's robot

OK, I've never posted on "our" family blog, because I didn't know how- so it's really been Bob's family blog. But today I decided to see if I could figure out how to post, and what do you know, it's super easy! Who knew?

So, we went up to Seattle for the Revenge of the Nerds Robotics competition. OK, that's not the real name- it's a competition for high school math and science kids, sponsored by all sorts of high-tech companies, and the kids are assisted in building their team's robot by mentors. So it's essentially a chance for the science guy mentors and sponsors to turn their interests into the competition they wished they could have had when they were in school, and it was totally wonderful for Matthew. He had a ball, and even caught up with a girl from Spokane that he had met at a previous competition.

Matthew's team is "Team Mean Machine", and they made it to the semi-finals, and lost to the alliance that ultimately won the competition.

Something fun for Matthew's team- most teams bring their school mascot to the competition, and most of them are an animal of some type. Which usually works for a mascot. Well, our high school is "the Papermakers". Yes, really. Not the cougars, or the bears, or the lions, but the papermakers, and our mascot is a foam paper-making machine, black, red, and white, with large foam rollers. I know, lamest school mascot EVER. Except at the robotics competition, where we are the only school with a mascot that is essentially a robot. So our mascot goes down to the "mosh pit"-type area and leads the congo line, and becomes the adopted mascot of the whole group.

Donna and Mark were very kind to host us at their home overnight while we were in Seattle, so Mia and Nicki were able to stay up until 11 enjoying each other's company, and Donna and I were able to talk politics till the cows came home. Thanks Donna and Mark!