idioms and stuffed waterfowl

The boys at Discovery Gateway






















3 kids and a perhistoric croc skullat BYU "bone barn"
Mom with us at Monte L. Bean Museum--waterfowl exhibit



The kids and Rus were both off for Spring Break this week, it was good to relax a bit and we did several fun Spring Break like things. Wednesday Rus needed to go up to the zoo to complete some of his animal handling training, so the kids and I hung out in the zoo for a while, and then after Rus was done we all went to Discovery Gateway for a while. Thursday we went to the dollar theater to see the Spiderwick Chronicles, I saw only about half of it since Gwen just doesn’t watch movies yet (not entirely a bad thing), but at one point the kid in the movie screamed at his mom that he hated her. Xander immediately looked up at me and said, “I would never say that to you”, and hugged me. It’s good to know I’m loved.
Here’s another bit of Xander wisdom. We were at the dinner table and Xander puts his chin in his hand, sort of slumped down a bit and says, “Sometimes righteous people struggle through life.”
Last night we went over to Julie and Justin’s house for dinner. The kids had hotdogs and roasted marshmallows over the fire in their backyard, and the grownups had sushi. It was really good to hang out and visit, and our kids get along really well.



Friday morning we finally finished filming the movie we’ve making with the kids of Snow White. We started this project back in February as a birthday present for my mom, but being us, it’s just now getting finished. So…at least we’ll have it for when we go out to California. Maybe we’ll figure out how to post it to the blog when it’s all done.



Laurelin played Snow White, and did a great job if I do say so. She put in all kinds of funny touches, her facial expressions and hand gestures etc. When we filmed the poison apple scene her fall to the floor was great, she just crumpled, I think we may have an actress on our hands.





Overheard in the car yesterday:


Isaac: “I want to be a knight, a chemist, a paleontologist…”


Xander: “You’re biting off more than you can chew!”


We visited the BYU Dinosaur Museum, and the Bean Museum with Mom this week. It was fun, though a bit rushed. Gwen was evidently impressed with the ducks, as she asked to take a picture with one, and experimented with combinations of the words “duckie” and “pretty,” to finish off as we left with “bye-bye pretty duckie!” This is not the only semi-sentential utterance she has produced this week. She stacked a toy bottle on top of her real one and declared, “baby ba-ba on my ba-ba MAMA!” (The word “mama,” when produced with a special tone, emphasis, and hand motion, means, “big.” )

Gwen and Isaac at Discovery Gateway