A broken bowl

The good news is my kitchen floor is (now) freshly mopped.

The bad news is that I only mopped it because Benjamin dropped a hot bowl of potato soup while he was getting it out of the microwave.

The explosion was loud and scary. 

Shards of glass went flying from one side of the kitchen clear to the other (and skittered into the dining room...and even made it onto the counter and the tops of the dishes drying in the top rack of the dishwasher, which we thought was particularly impressive). The soup splattered a bit, but its spray radius was nothing compared to how the glass scattered.

Jack-o-Lantern Carving

Halloween morning got a little rough at our house, with me losing my temper because I have so much to do, so many balls to juggle, and some of us (who shall remain anonymous) have been difficult to motivate to complete their schoolwork. It was...a frustrating morning...and Halloween, too, so I'm sure that contributed to the general chaos of the day. 

Also, a neighbour was having some trees removed in their yard so we were hearing chainsaws all day and...I should have been aware of how that was affecting me so I could have put earplugs in or something (too much ambient noise tends to make me really tense), but I didn't. Instead I just lost my temper in a huge way.

See this pumpkin? That's a little bit how our morning felt.

Happy Halloween 2024!

Phoebe had her heart set on being a puppy for Halloween. Kind of. She went through a lot of other ideas before settling on a puppy but knowing what I know about Phoebe I eventually decided to start putting together a puppy costume for her since no matter what other idea sprang into her mind...she kept coming back to "puppy."

And not just any puppy. Luna Puppy.

So I thought I'd just crochet a little hat for her with puppy dog ears. I pulled her onto my lap and we searched for a pattern for a crochet puppy hat. Many adorable options popped up.

"I want that one!" Phoebe said, pointing at the screen. 

"Which one?" I asked. "That doesn't tell me very much."

"That one!"

"Which one? This one with the cute little face on it?"

"No. That one."

"The one with its tongue sticking out?"

"No."

Phoebe wanted the design by Kristen Holloway—the plain one with flopped-over ears (the middle picture on the top row).

And she wanted it in black, just like Luna Puppy.

A Musical Number for Carter

Grandpa flew out to Utah for our cousin Carter's baptism this weekend and suggested that we perform a special musical number, specifically a special organ arrangement (Ryan Murphy) of "I Know that My Savior Loves Me" (Bell and Creamer). 

Grandpa gave us a copy of the music in September and I taught it to my kids by singing it for their lullaby every night for the next six weeks! We recorded it for family night a couple of weeks ago and...it went alright. 

There were a few complications. For instance, we couldn't sing in the chapel because the organ drowned out our voices. So we sang in the hallway, but then we had trouble hearing the organ...so Andrew stood in the doorway between the hallway and the chapel trying to conduct both our little choir and Miriam at the organ so that we could kind of be together. It's not the best recording ever made—we have some loose cannons in our troupe (*cough*Phoebe*cough*) but it'll do.

The kids sang their little hearts out. Grandpa played it at the baptism this afternoon. It's like we were there...but also not...

Perhaps we'll brush it off for a musical number sometime.

I suppose another complication is that although it's an organ and SATB (soprano, alto, tenor, bass) piece, we only had the organ music, so we kind of made up where our voices were supposed to come in and sang in unison rather than in parts. We could learn parts if we were invested enough...

For now, though, it's time to turn our attention to Christmas music.

 

You are a triceratops

Last night I was telling Andrew about a comment a peer made to me about the other night after reading some of my writing: "You sure don't toot your own horn much!"

And—despite my devoted, decades-long presence on this public weblog, which could be considered a form of tooting one's own horn, albeit a rather antiquated form in this day and age of rapidly transforming digital platforms—I don't really think I do toot my horn all that much. 

I rather enjoy being in the background. 

Oh, I like to be appreciated as much as anyone else, but I prefer passive accolades. 

Anyway, Andrew said that I would probably do well—at least in the academic world—to toot my own horn a little more, but even if I didn't, I should "remember that you have a horn, even if you don't toot it."

"Like a unicorn," I said. "Has horn. Does not toot it."

"You are not like a unicorn. You," he said, "are a triceratops!"