The Professor and Mary Ann

On Dec. 8th I made the bouquets, corsages, and boutonnieres for a wedding in our ward. I was terribly nervous about it because I hadn't done anything like it for 10 years since the bridesmaids' bouquets in my own wedding. So I called my Aunt Rosemary who gave me lots of good tips, and then got Mindy Clary to come over and show me how to do the corsages and boutonnieres on the 8th. Mindy was invaluable not only for her knowhow (she worked in a floral shop for 4 years) but also as floral psychologist (she just stayed calm and told me how to fix fiascos). Here is one of the bridal bouqets. And examples of the corsages and boutonnieres. As you can see, it snowed all day Saturday, which I used to my advantage. I opened the windows and kept the basement like a refrigerator to keep everything fresh. It was nasty for driving, but we found out that Rob's truck has 4-wheel drive and works wonderfully in the snow. It was all a good learning experience, but I am SO glad that it's

Here is this year's vintage of gingerbread house. We did one at my house every year growing up with this recipe and this pattern. I've given myself years off when we used a kit, but I managed to bake the real stuff this time around. We did the decorating for FHE, not least because Rob is a patient artist with the frosting. I hate royal icing because of the taste of it from childhood and the impossible consistency of it from adulthood. Rob and I agreed that it would probably hold one of our 15 lb bathroom tiles in place unless it got wet. I like this year's version a lot. Maddie make the buttermint chimney almost all by herself. Will made the pretzel and lifesaver fence with Rob, and Sebastian was responsible for the mint chips on the ice cream cone trees. I did the roof with red and green gummy shingles which looked successful, but there are now three missing. Important part of a child's Christmas to filch candy off the gingerbread house, don't you think? We alway

Maddie Lou is a busy woman this year. She's dancing twice a week, learning to step-ball-change and cha, cha, cha for her performance next February. She goes to show choir at 8:00am twice a week, and often has 8- or 9-hour days by the time she gets home. She's doing her homework almost entirely on her own (yay!) and gets stellar reports back from her teacher. And she's still a reader. On Thursday she received Elizabeth, one of the American Girl dolls, as a prize for having passed off her multiplication tables. When I walked past her room 5 minutes later, Maddie was reading the book on Elizabeth and the doll was on the bed. I love it. You can see the reader in Maddie's vocabulary. She uses words we didn't teach her, and uses them correctly in a sentence. But she's not always sure of the pronunciation since she's never heard them. During the storm on Thursday night, Maddie wrote a poem we wanted to share: Hail and Snow First there was hail, falling in cubes. &q

Here was the basement bathroom as it stood at Christmas. I got my dad that Black and Decker housekeeping tool with the rotating parts, and each day he'd go down and scrub a section of the shower. By the end of their stay, grandpa pronounced it merely "really dirty" which was a vast improvement. But the cabinet was peeling apart in one corner, the linoleum was coming up, the sink was a strange shallow contraption made mostly for shooting water all over the room inadvertently, and the toilet scared small children. So in spite of dad's heroic cleaning efforts, we decided to try our hand at remodeling. On St. Patrick's Day we tore it apart with some help from Rob's brother Rick, who is far more competent at these things. Then we poisoned Rick with carbon dioxide when he graciously came to help us cut a hole in the foundation to convert from a shower to a tub. It was the literal and figurative low point of the ordeal. Rick spent four hours in the ER breathing pure

So after San Diego, Rob traveled to Pordenone, Italy (about 45 minutes north of Venice) for a silent film festival which sounds better as the Festival of Cinema Muto. It's held annually, and if you want to know why silent films need a film festival, I can't help you. Rob says its to reintroduce films which have been newly digitized or re-released. They had two theatres going 18 hours a day with live music for every show. He said it was also an odd and eclectic crowd: many people who talked loudly on their cell phones throughout movies (thinking, I guess that they weren't interfering with the dialogue?). He saw some great movies and some weird ones (particularly the Weimar-era movies that he came to see) and bought a few. Rob was there with two of his friends, I mean colleagues, from BYU, who do film in the French and Scandinavian departments. As a favor to an Italian colleague, they took a day trip to see this rotunda by Palladio from the 16th century. Rob now has a thing

This year I went with Rob to the German Studies Association conference in San Diego. We stayed at a strange 60's hotel that was humungous, with four pools and five restaurants and lots of elderly types who wore visors and sunglasses and sweatshirts encrusted with carbuncles and other precious stones. We rented a wee little car. We ate seafood, mexican, thai, and room service. We visited Old Town, the Hillcrest neighborhood, the Gaslamp District, Balboa Park, and Coronado Island. Rob presented his paper and saw lots of people from his program in Berkeley, other conferences, and People in German. It is the place to be if you do German. I got to go as a consolation prize, because Rob took off strait from San Diego to go to Italy.

Maddie taught us a lesson on putting on the armor of God. As she read the scriptures, we put the armor on Sebi. He was so entranced by all the attention that he wanted to wear the tin foil every day for the next week. Then he decided that he wanted to be a knight for Halloween. Who knew that aluminum foil would make the evening for the kids?

So I know that I'm almost in November, but I still need to celebrate the first day of school. It was a long, hard summer, and I'd looked forward to this day for the whole of it. Maddie entered fourth grade, Will started second, and Sebi goes to a preschool in the neighborhood. It's a good year so far. I feel like Maddie's teacher really understands her strengths and is good at giving feedback. With projects and field trips, it also feels like 'real' school to me (as opposed to the last two years where there has been NOTHING). Will's teacher is a tough cookie and she assigns a lot of homework. It is hard on Will, but he's risen to the occasion. He's one of the best readers, and he has honed his spelling skills beautifully (he was crushed this week because he missed one word; Rob said "That's great, Will!" but there is no convincing a perfectionist). He still loathes writing, and I need to put him on some math facts circuit training -- I

This summer the kids also started taking violin from a neighbor around the corner. I had never really thought about putting them on strings, but we have no piano, the neighbor told me she wanted to get back into lessons, and my kids were excited. This is a picture of their first performance at an assisted care center near our home. It has been a really good experience. Margaret is wonderful with the kids. They've learned a ton. My ability to withstand ugly noises has increased threefold. And after watching many painful soccer games at the park near our house, it is so lovely to see them start something which goes with the grain of their talents instead of against it. They've just finished their Book One in a program called Rainbow Tones. I love to watch them play. Maddie looks like a violin player. And Will is so expressive about the music. He really emotes into the instrument. And he looks like a wizened old wood gnome when he plays.

Will had such a good time at rock climbing camp that Maddie wanted to try it too -- they both got to return after her birthday, and with friends Ethan and Abigail. The instructors were very authentic rock climbing types, which meant that they were not into pushing the kids much. After watching both kids climb up about 12 feet and then peter out and come down, I put Abigail in charge of counting how many times they reached the top of a course. I bribed them with a dollar each time they hit the top, and that was enough encouragement to get them to work at it a little harder. After four hours, they came home wiped out. I wish that they were still sleeping that well!

In August, Maddie spent three days at a sewing shop downtown with three friends, and they made quilt tops in this design. It was a great project with no pinning or patterns, just lots of sewing. Or as Maddie learned, lots of seam ripping. Nevertheless, she got the quilt top done in three days (and don't ask us if it's done yet -- we'll tell you if it ever gets done . . .)!

Take the Quiz here!

This week Will took a rock climbing camp four afternoons down at the Quarry in Provo. There were nine six and seven year old boys from our ward who all went together. They had two instructors, Buzz and Pierre, who helped them learn the basics, after they got their rock climbing shoes and harnesses on and adjusted. Then they had four hours each afternoon of climbing, obstacle courses, rope bridges, and the "king swing" which hung about twelve feet off the ground. Will made it up to the top of the blue, pink and green training courses. The last day they had a water fight and a pizza party. I had thought it would terrify Will, but it was a great thing for him and for several other boys who hadn't had much chance to participate in anything except team sports. They were great at taking turns and helping each other out by belaying for each other.

Here is Charlie, in his Abercrombie July Fourth pose. It's an unfair shot, because he is such a happy chap, but he didn't appreciate the sparklers very much. Or maybe he wasn't keen on putting his clothes back on after playing naked in the hose. Maddie, practicing for her first rock concert, and Will, unleashing his inner pyromaniac. Maddie was a great big sister and cousin, playing in the water fight and jumping on the trampoline. Jeff is armed with the super soaker for the great water fight in the backyard. It was all fun and good for the lawn (which was dead after our ten day trip to California, second year in a row) until Rob tried to douse Jeff, who dodged the water, and ended up getting Hazel instead. She let out the Mighty Hazel Roar which was well justified, if you ask me. Here is that petite flower Hazel before she got wet. She was charming, and then she got a fever (presumably not because Uncle Rob dumped water on her, though I'm sure it didn't help),

We were prepared to stay longer in California, especially because it was Piedmont's centennial Fourth of July and great weather that week, but the kids insisted that we go right home to see their cousins Hazel and Charlie Shumway, out from Boston. So we piled into the car and flew screaming back across the desert. In their defense, the kids made it both ways in only one very long day. I go to the dollar store before we leave and pass out periodic treats, and we watch videos during the strait patches. And it was all easier than the trip to Sea Ranch which we tried two different ways and both of which scared me half to death. I was certain I was going to drive us all off the edge of a cliff in to the ocean, thousands of feet below. My palms are sweating now, just thinking about it! No one got carsick at any point on the trip, which is another great success to celebrate. By Elko everyone was tired of the driving, so we used a suggestion from one of Kath Newman's friends: we stop

We got to stop by Jen and Eric Vuillermets' before we drove back through Utah. They have redone all of the public rooms since we last saw it, and they had a baby boy while we were out of the country last year. We had a lovely dinner, and brought them gelato from Berkeley, where we had bought gelato from the wrong place (oh, that we had two gelato places to choose from in Provo . . . ). Anyway, Clarissa had recommended Icci's on College Ave. which is supposed to be stellar, with ginger snap ice cream sandwiches filled with lemon verbena ice cream, and we didn't find that, and went to Lula Rae's instead, where we got mango, lemon basil, orange cardamom, and blackberry cabernet gelato, and none of them were bad! This is Zoe, who is two months older than Sebastian, but she acts about two years older. Here is Jennifer in their new kitchen. It was done in eight weeks (and the end of that was while they were in France -- so lovely to come back to). Unfortunately they haven&

Here is Maddie showing off the starfish that she and Rob were tossing back into the ocean. We have another picture of her with a purple starfish when she was one and we were camping with the Christensons at Big Sur. I can't believe what a tall bookworm she's become! She's also an avid tidepooler, scampering up the rocks and poking the anemones with sticks. Here are Will and Maddie at one of the pools. We went a couple of times, but it got cool quickly in the evenings, so Rob and the kids tried out the family sauna. And here is Sebastian, doing what he did the entire time we were at the beach. He ran up and down and back and forth into the waves. He was still very diligent about throwing sand back into the water (?).

Our house was shaped like a "C" around this center deck, and we loved the views out of almost every room. Here Sebastian is showing off the flowers that he and Rob picked from around the yard. One afternoon I taught Maddie and Will to play Monopoly. Will loved the fact that he got money. Maddie liked building the houses. Neither one of them was much into organizing their cash as you can see! We played for a few hours and they both did well. This is the Sea Ranch chapel. It has about a dozen and a half seats inside, and was both designed and crafted by a man from San Diego named Hubbel. Really beautiful and reminiscent of a Gaudi or Hundertwasser creation. Sea Ranch also has three recreation centers, a golf course, an airport, a stable, and horsebackriding trails.