Not to brag or nothin'

…but I made this dress.

Julie and Julia

I watched Julie and Julia tonight with my mom as a last hurrah before I go home. This was a horrible idea as its now 1 am and have a 4-hour drive ahead of me tomorrow. But it inspired me to write a blog post about something other than my kids. It doesn't even have pictures! Funnily enough, it's a blog about a movie about a blog about a book. And it's not even some grand spectacular thing like the original blog was. In fact, it's only one little question that is bugging me. (1 am, remember? I don't have time for more than one little question.)

Why did Julia not like Julie's blog?! This seems very un-Julia-like. She likes everyone. It never explains it. (Unless both my mom and I missed it. Which is possible. 1 am. Remember?)

Someone please explain this to me! Please?

Kessa and Abby

Kessa loooooooves being a big sister.  She loves Abby so much.  Here is some picture proof.

Draw Something

One of our new favorite iPhone games is Draw Something. It's basically Pictionary.  You're given a choice of 3 words to draw, worth different amounts of coins based on difficulty, then you draw pictures for friends and they guess them. Then you use that money to buy new colors to draw with or bombs to help you narrow down the letters while guessing.

The very first drawing I guessed was from BJ.  I spent hours trying to figure out what the heck it was.  Any guesses?  Anyone?  Hint, only my family could possibly get it.  (I wasn't given that hint, though.)

Ok, let's see.  A map.  That looks like Africa on the right, so this is probably America.  Red dot on… Boston?  New York?  Ok, moving on.  A boy in a … jersey?  Ok, maybe a baseball team?  But why not draw a baseball or bat?  And why is he holding a blue bag?  Ok, moving on again. Next drawn is a bunch of people on… a dance floor.  The dancer on the left is the sports boy carrying a purse.  Huh?  And lastly we have … Adam giving Eve an apple?  No arrows to this one.  How is it part of the picture?  Where does it fit in?  And why is Eve clearly so old?  Oh, maybe it somehow indicates that the map is the Big Apple.  New York?  Dancing?  Newsies?  But what's with the blue bag?!

Ok, do you give up?  I finally got it, though only after a few hints from BJ.  "Every detail is important.  Every one!"  "Even the number of people and their genders are important."  Uhhh…  Ok, boy, girl, boy, boy, girl.  Wait.  That's the same as my family.  So the boy on the left would be my oldest brother James.  And… maybe that's a name tag.  And maybe the blue bag is actually a Book of Mormon!  (Why he didn't draw Moroni on it is beyond me.)  So back to the map, I've got my countries backwards.  That's Asia.  So that must be Korea!  (Where James served his mission.)  So those people must be my parents.  And he's not giving her an apple.  He's eating it!

Haha.  It's a miracle I kept playing after that one.

Now how about this one?  This one is the first one I got with writing on it.  It wasn't the funniest one, though. Her drawing of a raccoon was the best.  I wish, wish, wish I had taken a picture of that one and all the things she wrote on it.  I was laughing my head off the whole way through.

It's a hippo.

Or how about when someone doesn't draw at all and just tells you what the word is?

BJ has since gotten much better at drawing with his finger on an iPhone screen.  What do you think of some of his favorites?

Nana

From the beginning, Kessa and BJ's grandmother, Nana, have been kindred spirits.  Whenever we'd go to Mama Homer's house, Kessa would walk around saying, "Nana?  Nana?"  When we lived there and Nana fell and fractured her hip, Kessa would sit by her and babble to her.  She would follow Nana around the house, wanting to be wherever Nana was.  It was adorable.  Kessa loves to take a book over to Nana and have her read her story.

Abby's Blessing

Since my parents and Jalin and her family were coming through for one evening, we decided to bless Abigail at our home on a weekday.  Jalin rarely gets to come to events like this since she lives so far away, and since she was here when Abby was born, I wanted her to be here.

In the circle, from left to right:
Travis, James, BJ, John, Jim, Bro. Casper, Brett

Grandma Lovell made the dress.  (She made Kessa's, too.)  Once again, I'm floored by her talent.  Sewing is one craft that I've just struggled getting behind.  Travis hasn't gotten me the pictures he took yet (surprise! ;) ) so you'll have to deal with my iPhone photos.

The blanket was given to us by Instructure, BJ's work.

Mama and Papa Lovell

My sister, Jalin, and Co. flew out to South Carolina, then rented a motor home and squeezed 4 adults and 6 kids in it for a 2-week drive home.  They are a lot more brave than I.  :D  They stayed at our house for the night before they flew out and the night after they got back.  I was impressed that we were able to fit their entire family.  Benefits of having a real house!  Brett and Jalin squeezed into our full sized guest bed.  Then the kids split up between the couches, the crib mattress, the bean bag chair, and blankets on the floor.

Mega Man also decided to sleep on the floor.

I loved how it looked like Spencer was just popping out of the bean bag chair.  This picture does not do it justice.

We spent the next week just having fun with Mama and Papa Lovell.  We did Easter festivities, helped them repack the stuff they were trying to get home, plastered Abby's hand and foot, blessed Abby, and just did other trivial, but fun stuff.  Like taking Papa's laptop to the Apple store.

Awww.  Kessa loves Mama Lovell.

She also loves playing games on the iPad.

I was really glad my mommy and daddy could come play with us for a week.  They had been gone so long at a crucial portion of Kessa's life.  She was just too young when they left for her to remember then and she spent lots and lots of time with Mama and Papa Homer during that time. About a month before they came home, I said something about Mama Lovell and Kessa looked at me, very confused, and said, "No. Not Mama Wovell.  Just Mama!"  The context implied not that she didn't like differentiating the two grandmas, but rather that "Mama Lovell" wasn't the right title for Mama Homer, who we just called Mama.  It broke my little heart.  My little girl didn't remember that she had two grandmas.  Luckily, she warmed right up to the idea and fell in love with Mama (and Papa!) Lovell.  Now she understands that she has two grandmas and she loves them both very, very much.  Hooray!

Punk Snowman

We didn't get a whole lot of snow this winter, but one of our actual snows came while Papa Lovell was here.  It was too cold for Kessa to want to go outside, but Papa wanted to build a snowman for her.  Compromise was struck when Papa built the itty bitty snowman on our deck while Kessa watched through the window.

Once the snowman was rolled, it was time to add features.  I dutifully started gathering carrots and raisins, but apparently the shredded carrots wouldn't stay in well enough.  So he asked for toothpicks instead.  They made the arms, the mouth, the eyes...

… and the mohawk.

Museum of Church History and Art

After my parents came home, they stayed a week with us.  We played a lot.  One of the things we made a priority to do was to go up to the LDS Museum of Church History and Art.  Travis had one of his religious photos from Jerusalem in their show, Walking on Water.  And our friend, Nick, had his first religious painting in there, The Same Yesterday, Today and Forever.  While we enjoyed the art quite a lot, Kessa couldn't have cared less.  She just wanted to play in the kids' area.  (But congrats to Travis and Nick!)

Helping Mormon Abridge the plates

Playing on the touch screen computers

Fishing from Noah's Ark

Ooooh!  She got one!

Helping Nephi build the ship.

And dressing up in traditional Latino clothing.

Valley Fair Train

When my parents first got home, they stayed with us for about a week. We loved spending every minute with them, so when they met some extended family for ice cream, we had to go with.  (It was after the Art Museum (next post) so we were already with them.  It made absolutely no sense to just go home.)  So we met up at the Valley Fair* mall and ate dinner, then got "brown toppers" at Dairy Queen.  Kessa watched as every 15 minutes or so, a train carrying kids drove up and down the mall.  She wanted to ride on the train so much. I didn't want to deal with ice cream on the train, so we told her she could go when her ice cream was gone.  She finished, so we took her down to the train.  Just to find out that the mall was closing and the train had just finished its last ride.

Oops.

The conductor lady was super nice, though, and let Kessa play in the cars while she closed up.  Kessa loved it, and we promised that another day we'll go back and ride in the train.

That was two months ago.  The other day she told me, "I saw a twain at the store.  It went back and forth and kids got on it.  And no twain until I eat my ice cweam!  Daddy said we ride twain another day."  And then she changed topics and babbled about something else.  [blinks]  Holy cow, that girl has a good memory.  I am proud of her that she didn't whine about it at all.  She simply reminded me and moved on with life.  Guess we'll need to make sure we go up there again.

Anyone know of a closer mall that has a train in it?

*Dave D., here is proof that there really is a Valley Fair mall.  BJ said you didn't believe him.