Artistic Beauty

Remember in "Toy Story 2" when mint-in-the-box Stinky Pete is plopped into a little girl's backpack and Barbie with graffiti all over her face turns to Stinky Pete and says, "You'll like Julie--she's an ARTIST!" Well, at our house we say, "You'll like Lilly--she's an ARTIST!"

Firstly, she's a make-up artist:

And lately she's been showing off her flower-arranging skills by leaving bouquets on my bedside table:



And boy oh boy! Has she been sharpening her eye-hand coordination lately! She started with paper....







...but plain old paper got boring so she took her scissors to my new geranium, creating a new artsy look to my bathroom:








And since I just don't have the creative eye to create proper decoration in my bedroom, she spruced it up with bright red crayon all over my bed and bedspread (pictures couldn't do it justice) and even in the entry on the tile, down the hall, on the glass and on the doors.



Look, she chose smiley faces to cheer us all up!




And lastly, she drew a pencil mural for her favorite brothers just outside their bedroom door and she even made it life-size, just for them. She sure loves them!

"Through all the world there goes one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me leave to do my utmost." -Isak Dineson

Comfort Food

Anne loves to cook. And to bake. And to eat cooking and baking. And to leave nice big messes for Mom to clean up afterwards. She loves macaroni and cheese. She loves homemade macaroni and cheese. Usually when she asks if I will make macaroni and cheese I answer, "If you'll help me make it!" I thought about letting Anne make a batch all by herself. I only thought for a minute about the cake she recently made that she forgot to put flour in. And I only thought for 2 or 3 minutes about the microwavable macaroni and cheese that Anne left the water out of.



Yummy. Smelled that one for over a week.

Needless to say, I helped Anne with her homemade macaroni and cheese. I let her start the sauce of butter and flour and spices while I worked on the noodles and cheese. When it was time to add Anne's sauce to my noodles and cheese, I was having a hard time combining everything. It was just seperating so much. I thought it was because we were in a hurry and didn't cook the sauce long enough to get it thick. Oh, well, gotta hurry. Popped the really soggy dish in the oven, only to pull it out and grab the paper towels to swab up all the grease off the top. I mean, I know this is a comfort food dish but sheesh, I should feel a little more guilty about enjoying this one, it's just so greasy! After blotting and blotting and blotting and blotting with only more grease flowing up to the top, I started getting suspicious and asked Anne about the butter. She replied she put in a cup just like the recipe said. So I looked at the recipe. Yep, half a cup is called for.

My solution: let it stand for about an hour, stir like crazy and keep heaping it on my 37-pound 3rd-grader's plate. Hmmmmm, commmmmfort.

I love Anne.

(Go ahead, click on the picture to get the FULL effect):

Excuses, excuses...

I'm late posting--it's been more than a month. I was too busy with Spring Break:

Are you saying I'm...?

The other day I was sitting with Oliver on the porch (in the sun!) when the kids (big kids) came home from school. Our neighbor Shaun Pace pulled up in his little white car and kids started piling out of it. This was unusual as normally it is Shaun's wife pulling up in her big minivan. (Like that oxymoron?) Anne ran up to me on the porch and panted, "Wow! The Bishop drove his car today and me and Isaac and Emily and Kaitlin barely FAT!!!!"

We'll Sure Miss Him...

Memorial Day 2002

We were up very late as we were out playing for the holiday and it was 11:30 PM(!) by the time I was getting Anne in bed. After she was in bed, she yelled from her room, "Mom, we forgot to read the scriptures!" My response from the other room was, "Well, we'll have to read two tomorrow--it's too late now."

Anne's next inquiry was strange: "What if the President gets mad?"
"What President?" I asked.
Anne (very annoyed) responded, "You KNOW--the one who talks on TV!"
Mom: "What president? President Hinckley?" (made most sense to me)
Anne's response was now not annoyed by rather unsure: "No, the one who talks in wars..."
"President Bush?"
"Yah."
"He won't get mad. Good night."

Go Mike!

Surprise! It hasn't even been a month!

So Lilly is a singer. Dave noticed this too and commented recently, "She's got music in her!" Indeed she does. The other day she was singing Angels We Have Heard on High while she was coloring: "Come little saw door him!" But my favorite was when she was singing Michael Row the Boat Ashore -- I liked her version better: "Michael row the whore ashore!"

I'm sure the picture in your mind is the same as mine, just admit it.

Maxwell Calvin Waddell

Isaac very often wears his wolf suit. And makes mischief of one kind and other. But he's never been sent to bed without his supper. Yet.

Anne gave Max I mean Isaac a Calvin and Hobbes book for Christmas. He loves it. I started finding it beside his bed in the morning. I would move the book to see where it would be the next morning. It was always back by his bed the next morning. Soon a flashlight started showing up with the book. Isaac started being less and less cooperative during the day and the dark circles under his eyes became very apparent.

One morning the book and the flashlight weren't there. I was nice enough to straighten up his bed. Aaahhh, there they were: under the pillow.

I needed to take things into my own terrible claws. So one night about half an hour after putting Isaac to bed, I snuck back into Isaac's room. He was rolled up into a cocoon snoring loudly. I was almost convinced...until I found the Calvin and Hobbes book under his cocoon and, searching a little harder, I found the flashlight waiting for me...


...and it was still hot.