Flame

Eliza's drawings are improving. It's getting easy to tell when she's just scribbling, and when she's actually drawing something. So when I saw this drawing today, I had to ask her about it.

She told me excitedly, "It's that fire thing!"
"Fire thing...?"
"Yeah! From that art museum!"
We had gone to the art museum for the first time earlier in the week and seen this Dale Chihuly piece in the lobby:

Pretty great.

Statue

Eliza's new game is pretending to be a statue. She stands on her stepstool and holds perfectly still, and then suddenly runs away giggling.

Flower Girl

Eliza's Deal

Tonight we were gathering books for bedtime. I told Eliza we could read three, and she wanted four. So I said we could read three in the chair, and fourth after she got in her bed. She agreed, so I shook her hand and said it was a good deal.
She nodded, and then said, "I have a good deal for you."
"What's that?"
"How about you only shake hands when you meet people, and not other times. That's a good deal."
That's good comedy.

Growing Boys

So at long last, I'm sitting down and putting up some more pictures of the boys! Hopefully the cuteness and adorable factors they bring offsets the tardiness of Daddy's posting them...

No without further ado:

Our boys love the kitchen, the microwave, and anything about food...

Fun at Hillsborough Hog Days (yes, it's a real event, with yummy BBQ!)


Guess who takes after his Daddy in enjoying playing in the cupboards? Peekaboo, Hyrum!
(even if he's not trying to imitate the great Oscar...)

Sometimes Daddy pretends to be a pirate...

We couldn't have a better Mama!

Joshua figured out how to play with dining room chairs.

Fun in front of the N.C. Museum of Art!

Not to be left out...

And much fun was had by all...

Here's a video with Hyrum doing a little dance! (Sorry for the weird camera orientation and finger in front and all... that's especially for you, Davey!)

Joshua dancing a little jig...

So yeah, basically we have pretty awesome little boys!

"The Best of New Play Project"

Me and Bianca's show opened last night, and, with the exception of our light board being possessed by a demon, the show went better than I ever would have imagined. The show is a set of five ten-minute and one-act religious plays, all of which are included in our recent anthology Out of the Mount: 19 From New Play Project. I wrote one of them ("Adam and Eve"), Bianca acts in one of them ("Gaia"), we sorta kinda co-directed one of them after the director dropped out ("Prodigal Son"), and we produced the whole set (producing a play is a lot of work--producing five plays is even more). It was a great performance, and the audience was very responsive, getting very much involved, laughing, and offering some terrific questions and insights in our post-show talkback session. It was a great night. It's been awhile since I've felt as excited, proud, humbled, and fulfilled creatively. Hopefully the rest of the shows will be as good as last night (and the lights won't freak out anymore), and hopefully lots of people will come see the show.

Eliza's Inferno

Eliza just told me an amazing story on the way home from school today.

She said she dreamed about a girl and boy who each had four arms and used them to catch Mean Guys and put them in jail. There are many different kinds of jails, one for each Mean Guy.
Here are the jails we could remember when we got home. I call it "Eliza's Inferno," because it sounds an awful lot like Dante--especially the first three:

Arm Jail:
"Lots of arms with hands that catch mean guys."

Head Jail:
"There's a head with a big mouth that eats the mean guys up."

Poky Jail:
"They get poked with sharp knives."

Blue Jail:
"Blue Jail is a swimming pool jail. They dive in the pool and pretend to be a mermaid, and they drown."
(originally, Blue Jail was filled with blue jays who chased the Mean Guys around)

There were many more, but they are lost now. I seem to recall Truck Jail, Gate Jail (where the key was hidden), White Jail, and Green Jail (environmentally friendly, I hope).