Down with Elf on the Shelf

John-Thomas has been traumatized by his classroom's Elf on the Shelf. He is afraid of elves. We've had a couple tearful conversations about what will happen if Santa puts him on the naughty list.

Joy and I have never been the kind of parents to threaten children with no presents, so I was all comforting. I told him about how I caught Santa in my house when I was 4-5 years old (true story!) and that I have Santa's email and would have a conversation with the jolly man about how good JT is and about all the progress he has made this year. He was temporarily reassured.

So Monday I had a conversation with my father, a man well-accustomed to donning the red suit, a job he takes most seriously. I told him the whole story, reported my youngest's good behavior, and requested he be put on the nice list. Pop agreed.

Today JT was in tears again, afraid of some elf decorations we had up. I explained about elves' other jobs - like making toys and feeding and cleaning up after reindeer. That helped a little. Then I told him I had talked to Santa, reported his good behavior, and that Santa had agreed he deserved to be on the nice list.

My youngest shed a few tears of relieved joy and held his daddy tenderly and gratefully. I hope that's done it. He says he's not scared of elves anymore. If not, I may need to print out a certificate of some kind for him....

Smiles from Apr-May

Random pictures of the kids and life from mid-April to the end of May. In one of his last soccer games of the season, Superstar managed to kick in three goals - all his team scored. This was the third of them. HOORAY for SUPERSTAR!

I am a Jedi, like my father before me.
(JT hits HARD)

April zoo pictures

In April we invested in some Dallas Zoo tickets, hoping we would regularly attend over the summer. Turns out "regularly" meant twice. We're going to go again this coming Saturday, though, so that will make three. The Dallas Zoo is really nice - looks nice, good collection of animals, fun dinosaur statues all over the place, great kids' area. Here are some animal pictures and videos we liked:

Smiles inspired by nature from Mar-Apr

In writing an introduction to herself, my daughter wrote that she wants to be an economist when she grows up. *cue warm fuzzies*

Sunrises after seminary

 Looky looky who I caught a picture of!

She happened to be building a fort out of gym squares
when Elder Rasband spoke about building a fortress of faith.

Between sessions of General Conference,
we go walking along the Bosque River Trail

We got tickets for the Dallas Zoo this year. We didn't end up going as often during the summer as we expected, but we've had fun the few times we did manage to go. Here are pictures of children and statues and a little video of our three monkeys. (This is my circus!)

Superstar's Celebrities

Superstar and I were playing a game Saturday, and the word we had to find was "celebrity." So I asked him what people he recognized as celebrities. We broke it into categories to help him. Here is who my 11 year old recognizes as famous people:

Actors or Actresses: zero

Singers:
Michael Jackson - "They talk about him a lot at school"
Elvis
The Beach Boys
Justin Beaver [Bieber]

(A whole lot of Book of Mormon and modern prophets and apostles)

Football (Soccer) players:
Pele - great
John Cruyff of the Netherlands
Banks of Germany? great goalie    [I google it... Gordon Banks of England]
Akers on the USA women's World Cup team
Carly Lloyd who did so well at the 2015 World Cup
Maradona for Argentina - "Hand of God would also have been a good Google search, Dad"
Joe Gaetjens - "He scored the only goal in a game against England - biggest upset in soccer history!"
Jules Rimet - "The guy who started the World Cup"

History:
George Washington
Columbus
John Adams
Alexander the Great
John F. Kennedy

He wanted a bit more time to think and Monday morning came up with:
Someone named something like Griknna, but Google can't find them so our spelling is off.
Does famous always mean "good"? Okay then, Hitler.

Top 100 on the Watson billboards

Our first song hit 100 plays around here, so I thought I'd record the songs that we have listened to the most around here the last couple years. (With a 25ish way tie for 90th place, okay, it's more than 100). For anyone wondering, the kids and wife tend to like listening to the same songs many many times at one time, while I prefer to to spread things out, so the first songs here mostly reflect their preferences and the later songs tend to reflect my consistent favorites.

TOP 10
1. Monody by TheFatRat - 105
2. I am a Gummy Bear - 81
3. Super Mario by BYU Vocal Point - 46
4. Happy Working Song from Enchanted - 36
4. Yoda by Weird Al Yankovic - 36
4. It might be hope by Mercy River - 36
7. Inspiration by Terra Mia - 34
7. Happy by Pharrell Williams - 34
9. I am Moana - 30
9. Real Gone (Cars I) - 30
9. Super Mario Galaxy: Gusty Garden Galaxy by London Philharmonic Orchestra - 30

Plan vs. Reality: Bedroom Edition

It really is amazing how many different stressors can all come together in one three-week period. I'm not going to share the stressors here, but we decided that one part of the solution was to debunk the bunk beds. Superstar and JT would share a bedroom with very little floor space. Yes, sounds like a great idea.

Separating the bunk beds was remarkably easy. The fun part for me was contemplating the advice "Never lift with your back." We had Joy, Superstar, and Princess on the three outside corners ready to lift. I crawled into JT's bed, then crouched up so that I lifted the upper bunk ... with/on my back! Tortoise-like, I walked that corner to its new home, got out from under the bed, and we got everything repositioned. Lovely! Painless! Never lift with your back...

Sadly, it did not take long for Reality to inform us that our plans were insufficient. The "bouncy room" is no more and all the children have their own, separate rooms. I was pleased to note that moving one bunk to the other room was a lot easier than setting it up the first time. I had it taken down and reassembled in under 15 minutes. It's also necessitated moving a bunch of furniture around in the house - a constant theme this semester, it seems.

The end of the communal play room has given Princess the opportunity she has always wanted to seize most of the bouncy room toys for her room. Her usual MO was sneaking toys into her room one or two at a time until we come in with a box to repatriate them.

The boys are sad to be apart - they draw such comfort from sleeping in the same room with someone else. On the other hand, they are also excited to have Their Own Room. We'll see how the night goes.

(Update: Superstar says, "We've really transformed this into a great house!" On hearing me type this, he wants to walk that statement back a little - it was always a great house. It's just a new level of greatness. "Thank you! That's what I was looking for!")

Pratt's Voice of Warning

I just finished Parley P. Pratt's missionary book, "A Voice of Warning: An introduction to the faith and doctrine of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints." It's a 130 pager he wrote back in 1837 when there was still a whole lot of doctrine to come forth (currently free on Amazon). Even today it's an excellent read and I would encourage particularly prospective missionaries to add it to their "missionary libraries" of things to read before they go out so they will be more effective witnesses for Jesus by understanding better how the prophecies of the Bible have testified of the modern Restoration of the gospel.

Here is my 4 page summary. If that's tl;dr, try this: Biblical prophecies should be understood literally. That includes prophecies of a restitution of all things in the latter days, including ongoing revelation and all the spiritual gifts.

John-Thomas turns 5

 Happy 5th Birthday, John-Thomas! This year Princess will get baptized and your brother will get the priesthood in January, but you will get to start kindergarten. In the meantime, have some presents!

He got some board games, some books, a couple more teddy bears, his very own whack-a-mole, and a few other treasures.

"Of course! Why not?" has become our family's new triumphal, open-armed, all-purpose exclamation.

He loves our door now that it's been
conquered by Bowser's family

Teddy bear birthday cake!

His friend from preschool came (in chaps!)

One of his favorite Christmas presents was a punching bag ... that bit the dust in under a month. So this year my parents got him an upgrade.

Dinner at Cici's with air hockey.
Because the table is larger than he can reach, I give him a
"Bullet Bill" boost, shooting the puck at Superstar's side
with my fingers unfairly.

I want to praise big brother Superstar too. For JT's birthday, he was the kindest, most thoughtful, caring brother anyone ever had. It set such a good tone, and I've noticed he's been following up with more of the same since. What a wonderful birthday present for us all!

Hey, I even got this post done in the same month it happened!

Cutie pi

Digging his brother's first soccer game of the year

He loves teddy bears, so this was a dream come true.
He keeps asking to go back to this friend,
where they played some Very Noisy tag.

For pi day, we tried to calculate pi by drawing a circle on some cardboard, then measuring how many little blocks it took to trace out the circumference. We were off by about 2%, which isn't too bad, I guess. We also enjoyed chocolate pecan pi (rounded up).

Watching some friends roping, he stole my hat

We start our family scripture study with a hymn.
This Sunday was particularly calm, with everyone dressed and
ready before breakfast; everyone sang along. I wanted to
remember the morning. So ordinary, yet so special.

Some flour had been contaminated, so the
Littles asked if they could play in the "snow"

Some friends brought us a beautifully decorated cake

Princess, building her own Minecraft tower
with blocks made from gym floor foam pads.

Athlete, Mathlete, Creeper, Hi!

Superstar recently read a book about a pair of dissimilar twins, Athlete vs. Mathlete. I thought he might be interested in it because he is both. And more.

He took first place at UIL for Number Sense -
meaning he did a lot of math problems faster than any other
5th grader in several counties

During his first soccer game with the Rampages for this season
They won 10-2.

He got a speaking part in the school play.
He also danced front and center for everyone.

He turned 11, celebrating with Harry Potter,
Minecraft, and Mario

We got to Skype with my parents and my brother's family.
Here is Pop leading everyone in Happy Birthday

Accio Hogwarts letter!

Whaddya know? There it is!

Superstar was sorted into Hufflepuff, where he learned his patronus is a rattlesnake.

A Creeper! Aaaah!

Fun with the kids in Jan 2019

Starting in January 2019, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encouraged families to take a greater responsibility for teaching the gospel in their homes. The new Come, Follow Me manual included several suggestions for how families could get more out of their study together. We discussed them as a family and decided we wanted to add a lot of variety to our family study. One of them included coming up with our own object lessons or drawings of what we were studying. So here is Princess with her gingerbread Captain Moroni and a Title of Liberty reflecting her recent reading.

Our family's favorite game since Christmas has definitely been Sagrada. A large group of dice are rolled and you take turns trying to place one die in your stained glass window. There is a delightful mix of strategy and luck. The only catch is that we have to take pictures of our game boards every few moves because some of us seem particularly prone to knocking over the dice....

Princess and I made some snow and a snowman
out of shampoo and baking soda. It was so ...
fragrant we had to triple bag it and hide it in a
drawer and it was still too potent to keep in the house.

I've also been teaching Princess woodworking.

I made gingerbread houses with each of the kids.
I build em, they decorate.

Nothing is so eagerly enjoyed than wrestling with Daddy

7 Happy Watsons at Christmas 2018

We were greatly blessed this Christmas to have my parents come to our house, instead of us driving to them. Between one thing and another, it was a good arrangement for everyone, though hopefully next year we will also be able to gather with my brother's family.

Pop and Grandma got to sleep in late at the hotel every day, then come to us and be pampered. We had a lot of fun together and are really looking forward to when they come here again for Princess' baptism this summer!