I see a future creating pop-up books

Brynn LOVES to create things from paper. If she wants something for a story she's creating while she plays with her toys, she just makes it out of paper. I think she'd be happy for hours with some paper, scissors, scotch tape and crayons/markers. For example, she made this stage out of a cardboard thing that came with one of Callie's Christmas presents.

She has made lots of crowns like this for her various toys to wear:

Here's a cage for Diego to keep the dangerous animals:

She makes books quite often. Once she was working on a whole bookstore!

A bookmark commemorating the day she got one of her stuffed pandas. Note the tassel she made on the top:

One of her dolls got stepped on and the legs broke off. No problem! Brynn made him a wheelchair!

Dora got married and needed a wedding cake:

There was a contest of some sort among the toys, and the winner got this trophy:

We needed a mailbox for valentines for her family night lesson on love:

This is a basket of fruit. Can't remember the reason behind it:

Sometimes art imitates life. Dora won the science fair with this project:

I don't think any of it is around any more, but Dora once went on vacation to an imaginary country and Brynn made an entire souvenir store in a shoebox. Little keychains, magnets, hats, t-shirts, etc.
And the Oscar for creative use of paper goes to

BRYNN!

Brynn's poem

Tonight Brynn wrote a poem. Enjoy.
Obama has a llama
and the llama has a mama
and the llama mama does lots of drama
Oh in this sentence I forgot a comma
Oops! I am in a trauma
And now it is time to get in my pajama
Good night!

Opening Night!

So Kyra's play "The Mousetrap" opened tonight. She did a GREAT job! I took a few pictures. (Well, OK a lot of pictures!) Here are some of the best. Backstage before the performance:




And a few from during the performance:





If you want to see it, there are still performances Friday, Saturday and Monday nights! Call me for details.

Friday the 13th

Turns out Friday the 13th is lucky for Callie!
Last night was the Jordan School District Science Fair. Nearly 300 entries, 120 of them advance and compete at the BYU Science and Engineering Fair next month. Callie was so nervous about the interview! We practiced and practiced and it paid off, as one of the questions we'd practiced so much was the one the judges asked her!
She won a big blue ribbon and gets to go to BYU on March 25 for the next round of competition.
The waiting was very intense. She and her friend Taylor both huddled in front of the stage, holding hands and crossing every body part they could.

But fortunately, both made it!


Callie is over the moon with happiness and hopes to win some of the $50,000 in prizes and scholarships that will be awarded at BYU.
And that's not all, folks! The 5th grade has a big contest every year for the best decorated box for collecting Valentines. Callie was hoping to win the "High Tech" category for her class with her jukebox valentines box. She used her snap circuits to set it up so that when you push a button at the top, it plays a recording of "Thank you, and Happy Valentine's Day!". She won not only her class competition, but the competition for the whole grade in the High Tech category. I wish I'd gotten a picture before it got taken apart!
(The grand prize winner was - no kidding - a LIFE SIZE wedding cake made out of cardboard, complete with paper "frosting" roses and a bride and groom. Took 2 people to carry it into the classroom!)
No bad luck for Callie on Friday the 13th!
And just so they get some blog time, here's Kyra in her stage makeup for the Mousetrap, which opens in only 5 days!

And Brynn just being cute on the 100th day of school:

And I got some pretty yellow TULIPS for Valentine's Day - it's making me so excited for Spring. I love tulips and daffodils because they mean winter is OVER!



Happy Valentine's Day everyone!

Draper Temple

Discovered tonight we can see the new Draper Temple from our back deck. It's only visible through a narrow gap which doesn't line up with any of our windows, which must be why we never noticed before.
At maximum zoom, on a tripod standing on a table in the wind, 30 second exposure, this is what I got:

We took the kids on a tour last month, and yesterday I spent 5 hours helping with the open house. People were coming through at about 700 an hour!
Two weeks from tonight is opening night for Kyra's play. Send me an e-mail if you want to come.
Otherwise life is pleasantly boring.