Theo's baptism

The purpose of our trip to Utah in May was for my nephew Theo's baptism. 

(There is a smudge toward the middle in every single one of these photos, I'm so irritated! There was a smidge of something stuck on the lens of the camera (thank you sticky boy fingers!) which I didn't notice of course! Grrr!!! Jenny, if you want any of these despite the smudge just say so & I'll send it to you.)

The baptism was lovely and we were so glad we could be there for it.

Afterward, there was a feast of yumminess back at the house...totally threw me off track on my Lose It efforts, but it was worth it.

My baby boys LOVE Vovo's canes and walkers. (I even know the word for cane in Portuguese because of them...bengala! My Portuguese vocabulary is so scattered and random.)

 Look at this little cutie... The rest of the boys were off with the cousins all afternoon but this guy was my adorable shadow. Every time we make eye contact, he flashes that sweet smile that melts my heart!

George's brother Stelios was on a business trip of sorts in China but he was able to Skype with everyone...he was so happy that I took his photo.

I made a quick visit over to my Aunt Kaye & Uncle Dennis's house which is just 5 minutes from all of George's family. I took Benno & Zac with me over there and they played happily in Dennis & Kaye's fabulous play area while I visited. (Really it's the coolest...their whole house is fantastic. And it just keeps getting better. I wish I had pictures to show it off, but I don't.)

When I returned from Dennis & Kaye's the boys were all out back roasting giant marshmallows. Aaron brought in this giant stick & said they were for me...how sweet. (On closer inspection, the stick had obviously fallen on the ground--the marshmallows had bits of grass and dirt stuck in spots... I had him just lay the stick on a plate, not wanting to hurt his feelings, when he noticed his arm was covered in ants...the ants were coming from the stick!!! Ewww! So we threw out the stick AND the marshmallows. Oh well, it's the sweet thought that counts!)

The boys had thoroughly worn themselves out that night and when we went to check on them at bedtime, we found them sleeping like this after their movie ended, HAHAHAHA!!!

I think Christopher's sleeping position is the best...how funny.

Next day, we celebrated all the birthdays (well of those present anyway...there are more family birthdays than these in just the few weeks between them all!)

 Mmmm, cheesecake. Again, there goes my Lose It efforts, but my self-discipline is not strong enough to deny a proper celebration. (I did get down to 6-1/2 pounds down at one point...this week has not been good to me either but I'm still working at it.)

We always have such a great time in UT! This was way too quick of a trip and we didn't get to see so many of our good friends and family out there (sorry to Steven in particular!) So until next time...

BYU's Museum of Art

We drove to UT at the beginning of May. I'd been hearing about this exhibit at the BYU Museum of Art and was so excited to see that we would be in town to catch the tail end of the exhibit!

My wonderful sister-in-law Jenny went and got us all tickets.

No photography of any kind was allowed in the exhibit...but I found a few lot of the pieces I really loved online (see below). George & I rented iPads which gave us an in-depth look at the exhibit. (And now more than ever, I want an iPad.)

This is a beautiful painting, but in person it was exquisite...you can see tears in Christ's eyes.

This one is the Doubting Thomas--most artists depict this scene so differently...here Thomas is ashamed by his earlier doubts and turns away.

This depicts people from all walks of life--Christ is a Savior to all:

If I had to pick a favorite, this would be it below of Christ in Gethsemane being comforted by an angel. The colors are brilliant and set such a reverent yet vibrant tone. Simply beautiful...only thing I would change is to remove those wings on the angel, which is probably why this one doesn't appear in LDS publications unlike so many other Carl Bloch paintings.

The Daughter of Jairus was one I loved as well.

This one is a little morbid and another one I hadn't seen before but it was very beautiful to see in person--the apostles are taking Christ's body from the cross to lay in the tomb. So beautifully painted--I love the lantern's glow and the expression of the man handling the body.

Carl Bloch didn't just paint religious subjects--I thought this one of the Street Barber was cute. The barber is distracted by a woman poking her head from a window (top right corner) while the man being shaved gets impatiently annoyed...and the boy flashes a knowing smile at us.

And I loved this one of the woman feeding the birds...makes me want to start singing "Feed the birds... Tuppence a bag!"

 We had some time after we finished the Carl Bloch exhibit to explore the rest of the museum. This was a pretty fun exhibit by Adam Bateman. He built this massive structure all from old books, magazines, textbooks, etc, etc. You can see a how massive this is next to that woman!

Then we walked downstairs and saw the Wide-Open Spaces. These are a couple of Maynard Dixon's paintings (I thought of you David when I saw these!) He captures the feeling of the Southwest so perfectly!

And I loved this War Posters exhibit--all the greatest of the Golden Age Illustrators were represented, including N.C. Wyeth, Howard Chandler Christy, Charles Dana Gibson, Norman Rockwell, and one of my personal favorites J.C. Leyendecker. Also, do you see the one here by Theodor Giesel (aka Dr. Seuss)?!

Here's a little closer-up of one of the Leyendecker posters...I love his style:

We had most of these basement exhibits all to ourselves--George & I brought his sister Ellen & sister-in-law Ashley with us. They're all standing below...and there are Norman Rockwell's Four Freedoms posters.

 We left the Museum and made a pit-stop at the old/newly-renovated BYU Creamery up next to what used to be DT...but DT is no more and something else is being built there... 

Mmm, this Marionberry ice cream was every bit as tasty as it looks:

(We spotted the ad in the window for milk...our milk is SO much more expensive in OR! We're lucky now if we can find milk 2/$5!)

 I am so grateful we were able to see that Carl Bloch exhibit! I've been reading Jesus the Christ and I understood what I was seeing in those paintings so much more because of it--of course I know all the Bible stories but there were details in Carl Bloch's paintings which would have completely escaped my notice without having studied these scripture stories in depth. 

 Thank you again Jenny for picking up those tickets for us!

Art Lit

Last week I taught my last Art Lit lesson for the year!!!  Woohoo! As much as I love having the opportunity to volunteer doing art with my kids at school, it's still a little stressful for me...so I celebrate the end every year. I think it'll be easier when I no longer have little guys at home because the source of the greatest stress is lining up a sitter every time I have to teach (3 classes plus trainings for 6 different artists!) Asking people to watch my kids always stresses me...I don't know why since I personally have no problem watching other people's kids when they ask.

These last 2 projects of the year were my favorites (and I came up with the projects too! Best part of being a coordinator is having control or at least having a say in what we do. I don't like complicated, messy projects so I do what I can to veer away from those. If we had our own classroom to keep all that stuff in, it wouldn't be so bad...but we have to push the cart & that gets to be a problem.)

Here's Christopher & his class doing Pablo Picasso. We did self-portraits in the Cubist style with oil pastel on sheets of transparency which we then stapled to a black sheet of paper:

And their finished products:

Aaron's 3rd grade class finished products:

And Anthony's 5th grade Picasso pieces (the 5th grade class had more trouble with this than the younger grades, which surprised me!)

Our last artist for the year was Louise Nevelson. The project suggestion that came with the box was this awful project which involved collecting massive amounts of junk, box lids, and spray-painting the finished projects after kids glued the junk into the lids, which gave me the biggest headache just thinking about it...  Anyway, I thought long & hard and the answer came which was perfect & to me even is a better representation of Nevelson: using craft foam, we cut random abstract shapes and glued those together to create a monochromatic 3D abstract sculpture. This is my example (with wet glue oozing in spots):

 So much easier than gluing junk & spray-painting it! All I needed was craft foam, scissors & glue! Then when we display the finished projects, we tile them together in a Nevelson-style arrangement. Each class was supposed to use a separate color (but we've had some disobedient volunteers who mixed the colors up. Oh well, I tried.)

This is Aaron's class (with my 2 little helpers that morning.)

And Anthony's...somehow I forgot to get a pic of Christopher's...but you get the idea anyway.

I don't think I ever posted the Oceania stuff...so I'll have to dig that up. That was another project I was in charge of this year....that one turned out to be a fun one.

A blessed weekend

We were treated to a visit by my Dad & stepmom Darlene & my Grandma the first weekend in May for the occasion of my niece Betsy's baby blessing.

We ate dinner with them at Red Robin, as we usually do. We tried to choose something different for a change but somehow we ended up right back at Red Robin...good thing it's yummy! It's so kid-friendly too, and kid-friendly is good with this crowd of boys.

Afterward we tried to entertain them by going for a walk at the Nature Park nearby...I hadn't been before but had heard about it. They've all visited us so often that we wanted to show them something different...wasn't quite what I expected and my poor Grandma was freezing cold (it wasn't that cold out...but she lives in AZ, so to her it was.) We walked in far enough to get to the boardwalk where we spotted 3 deer & then turned around and left.

(They're looking at those deer...you've seen one deer, you've seen 'em all, those rascally critters!)

Next day was the blessing at Katie & Scott's beautiful chapel...really, that's my new favorite chapel--not a block of cinder to be seen and so much more! I wish I could've taken a photo. Scott gave a lovely little blessing, and afterward bore such a sweet testimony.

4 generation shot:

Following the blessing, we changed clothes & ate at the Russell St BBQ in Portland--SO good! We will definitely go back there.

After lunch, there was time to kill before my Dad, Darlene & Grandma had to catch their flight, so we visited the Nike Campus. A bonus for all of us was finally getting to see George's workspace! Ever since he moved into this new group, I haven't been able to go and see. I took pics in there but sadly, I am not allowed to post them. So if you'd like to see inside Nike, come visit me here.

I did get these 2 from the main lobby/upper hallway of the Jordan building...so there you go.

Then we walked around the campus grounds...always lovely. Nike is gorgeous...come visit & I'll give you the outside tour. : )

I made the boys pose with this statue mainly because I thought it kinda resembled Christopher & then Benno jumped in too.

Flowers blooming everywhere...beauty!

I love this walk by the cherry blossoms...unfortunately the geese like it too, so be careful where you step!

So pretty! Yes, this is on the campus grounds! Wouldn't you love to work here too?

(2 of my boys are hiding in the lower left hand side of this pic...can you see them?)

There are many lifelike statues scattered around the campus--I've been startled a number of times thinking it's a real person!

 We bid our guests Adieu from there...always a true treat to have family visit! And friends too, for that matter...come visit!

Gym fun

Gymnastics is about to make my life that much crazier... Starting this summer, I will have 3 boys in 3 different team levels with 3 different practice schedules of varying length, and 3 different meet schedules come next Jan-Apr. Oy!

I can't complain of course--we chose this & can always choose not to...but the boys love this sport, and we love what it's teaching our kids beyond the physical benefits...so the craziness and (enormous) expense are worth it.

I picked up the boys from practice a couple weeks ago & they were jumping from the rafters. Literally.

And Benno was recently moved up into a new pre-developmental class called Orbiters. Only problem is he's the only one in his class...which is not great for Benno--he does much better with other kids in class...plus I am not thrilled with the class time either as it means one additional trip to the gym on an already busy back & forth day. We can survive it until the end of the school year though when I hope to be able to move the schedule around a bit.

Morning

Almost every day I walk (or run, as necessary) with Christopher to school. The kindergarten bus brings him home. Some mornings I wish I could just stay home and send him off on his way...but always, the moment I get out the door & on my way, I am so thankful for the chance to get a great walk outside to start my day. I'll genuinely miss it next year when he starts riding his bike with the big kids.

I walked by this same tree this morning and sadly all those pretty blossoms are now gone.

If you look closely, you can see Benno's helmet there in that little fence nook.

This has always been our little tradition--the boys pretend this fire hydrant is a soft-serve ice cream machine, so we always stop and order the latest tasty flavor.

Such pretty blossoms!

Benno started riding his bike about a month ago or so...I forget. He wasn't even 4 yet--I am a full believer in the Strider bikes. My friends' kids have started riding 2 wheels even younger after starting on Striders too! He's still mastering the use of the brakes but otherwise is riding so well. Zac is almost big enough to start trying the Strider out too.

This pic is a couple weeks old now...my front yard is so full of blooming flowers now, I love it!

This spring has been on the chilly, wet side but we've had enough sun & warm days here and there to keep me happy. I am so looking forward to summer!