On Change

A little over a week ago, when TV went exclusively digital, we lost the ability to watch television. No more Arthur and Cyber Chase on PBS, no more news at ten, no more Sunday baseball on Fox or Friends reruns or...what exactly did we used to watch? That's right, for over a week we've been devoid of the great American pastime of lounging on the couch and watching advertisements for cars made by failing companies, prescription drugs for illnesses I'm not always sure exist, and online services that promise to find you a compatible mate/reliable vehicle/dream home, interrupted occasionally by shows with inane, obscene, irrelevant, or nonsensical plot lines. And I feel fine.

I find that we're reading more books, playing more family games, listening to more baseball on the radio (infinitely better than on TV, by the way), and getting to bed at a decent hour more often. I'm also watching my Red Green Show DVD set and a bunch of movies that have gathered dust. We get to our Netflix movies sooner and just seem happier. I don't believe we'll live TV-free forever, but, for the foreseeable future, it's a nice way to live.

But surely that's not all the change we can muster? Okay, here's this. For a few days now we've been measuring beds, walls, and dressers to consider ways we might rearrange the kids' bedrooms to address some concerns we've had of late. While discussing our options yesterday, we came upon a solution we hadn't considered.

Within minutes the plan in motion. We would move to Allyson's room, Allyson would move to our room with Isaac and Ryan, leaving Evan with his own room, which would double as a playroom when he's not napping. It became a messy business (the bunk beds had to be disassembled, and Allyson had a lot more stuff than we expected), and we had to move some of the living room around to accommodate the computer, but in the end we got it done.

Here's what we like. Evan can take a decent nap and get to sleep at a decent hour without the boys going nuts. Allyson and her brothers are playing together well. Summer and I have had to downscale the contents of our closet and find ourselves in a cozy little room.

We still need to finish off the closet situation--the boys' clothes are still in Evan's closet, and we need to move a bunch of our stuff there. The bathrooms need to be swapped out. The door on our room is a bit picky, and the windows all need to be recaulked. And this clearly won't be a long-term situation, but for a few weeks/months/years, this seems a good arrangement. A nice change, as it were.

Growers Market

We just got back from our new Saturday morning ritual--the Downtown Growers Market at Robinson Park. We went last week and got a few veggies, decided that we should go regularly (next week's out due to the ward camping trip) to get breakfast and do some shopping.

Today we got some pastries to eat (Allyson and Evan each had a cinnamon roll, Isaac got a croissant, and Ryan ate a loaf of french bread), some veggies for the next few days (zucchini, squash, carrots, garlic, and broccoli), a jar of raspberry jam, and a new handmade bag for Allyson to take to school.

It was a bit chilly this morning, but very pleasant to sit on the grass and let the kids run around while we ate and enjoyed day. Summer and I reflected on how much we like this sort of thing--downtown, lazy morning, good food, quality time together. If anybody's interested, we'll be there two weeks from today at about 7:30 am...

Boys Will Be

It rained last night and through much of this morning, a slow drizzle that turned our backyard into a big mud puddle. The boys, of course, loved this. So here we have a picture of Evan getting dirty:But the best part of the story is this: Ryan, digging in the hole seen above, saw a lizard (one of the little innocuous types we get here in ABQ) and grabbed for it. And the crazy part is he caught it:
No small feat, seeing how fast those little guys move (the lizards, not the boys, although them too, I suppose). Summer said Ryan was shaking he was so surprised and excited. The lizard was released and ran like nobody's business to escape this boy who can catch a reptile.

Stuff White People Like...

Dressing like you're in a Gap ad.

Family Photo Shoot

As I tweeted yesterday, a week ago we had family pictures taken again, this time at the National Hispanic Cultural center in Albuquerque's Barelas neighborhood. Once again, Michelle did a great job of composing various shots and keeping the kids focused and happy, and the results are great. Here are some of my favorite group pictures.

Here's the whole group in a creative outdoor shot: Summer and Evan outside near the fountain space:
Summer and me inside on the comfy chairs:
Outside by the edge of the fountain:
Inside at the door to the theater:
I'll post a few more over the next few days.

Tweets Away

Last year I remember first hearing about Twitter and thinking it a silly thing. But after listening to some podcasts about the use of Twitter in business and education, I decided to set up an account, which I did in December.

I couldn't get into it, so the account sat dormant for some months. But recently I've gotten on the bandwagon, and I'm loving it. (Here's a link to the feed I use for work--pretty boring, but useful for sending quick mini-blog posts to students.)

And now I've set up a personal Twitter account, which feeds to this blog as well. If anybody else is tweeting, let me kn ow, or follow me. I don't expect to do a lot of replying, but I hope the short posts will encourage me to be more frequent in writing here...