We went to DisneyWorld in Feburary 2022 - a conversation

<Each paragraph begins with the name or letter of whoever says it. If there is no introductory letter, then it's me, Derrill>

My dad speaks at a regular pension conference in Orlando, Florida each February. That has become a convenient opportunity for him to take some or all of his family with for some Disney World fun. We hoped to go up in 2021, but couldn't for obvious reasons, but made it this year.

To prepare, we went back to the very beginning, Snow White, and watched all the animated Disney movies up to around the 1980s before the trip happened. This was a project we spent many months on because we watch movies so infrequently.

Joy: We also watched Youtube videos about some of the rides. The kids enjoyed that. They made a list of rides they wanted to go on at each park. We also prepared our Disney points

By spending money on our Disney credit card to get Disney dollars back

Joy: So we could spend them at the parks.

Since we had also managed a trip to DisneyLand in the summer of 21 when Aunt Virginia died, that also helped the kids, and JT especially, get ready for the larger park and get some of our favorites done in the same year at least. My brother's family joined us for the trip to Disneyland, but couldn't come for Disney World.

Superstar had been to Disneyworld and Disneyland as a toddler, but had no memory. Princess had also been to one but didn't remember. So these trips were the "first" times going to Disney for all the kids!

Pop, Emie with baby Lucy, Steve, Princess and A
JT, Grandma, Joy, Superstar, and Derrill

Falliage

 We enjoyed driving through the Stephenville foliage after church. No, it's not upstate New York foliage, but it's nice in its own way. One of our favorite trees was ours. Here are pictures of each of us trying to climb our tree. Happy autumn!

Things my children have said (mostly JT)

Someone reminded me recently to make a copy of these somewhere other than Facebook. So here are some fascinating things my kids have come out with in the last month or so.

June 14 - Superstar was examining his cargo pants for the first time. Together we wrote a parody to the tune of "Hinges"

I'm all made of pockets, cause everything opens

From the top of my pants, way down to my toes.

I've pockets in front and I've pockets in back.

If I didn't have pockets I wouldn't have pants!

June 10 - John-Thomas says, "Fear me, for I am cute!" He also says, "Happily ever after happens when you get married, and not to the wrong person. And when your life is over."

June 7 - As we drove through Colorado on Saturday, we stopped at a restaurant for lunch. I was talking to JT about whether he would like a regular burger or an elk burger, and explained that the difference was that one of them he was eating an elk and the other he was eating a cow.

JT: I want a regular burger. Don't kill the innocent animal!

Superstar, our resident demi-vegetarian, quickly leaned over and informed him that cows are innocent animals too. But this had no effect.

JT further explained: When you kill the innocent animal, you shed its blood and you shouldn't eat the blood.

June 1 - As we drove up to UT we were playing a religious trivia game.

JT said, "Come on, brain! Tell me the answer!"

We asked him, "If President Nelson died, who would become the next prophet?" He answered, "Daddy!" Terrifying thought, really, though it's nice to know I have his vote of confidence for now.

May 24 - Overheard at church: Jesus had to suffer and die, and you have to eat the crust.

May 20 - I wish I could remember what originally prompted JT to say "That warms my heart," but he has learned that we think it's cute so now he comes out with it at random moments. Looking through his schoolwork for Kindergarten, he occasionally announced to Joy, "This is my greatest creation!"

May 18 - Princess declared during dinner: "Chicken are almost fish. If only they were a bit more curved and didn't have a beak and had a tail instead of legs and scales instead of feathers."

Superstar suggested they might need gills too.

"Gills come with the scales!"

May 16 - My favorite part about introducing Raiders of the Lost Ark to Superstar was when they started explaining the ark was the ultimate weapon, that any army that carried it into battle couldn't be defeated. Superstar blurted out something like, "No! It's not the ark that's a weapon! Come on! It's keeping your covenants with God that gave the Isrealites power, and when they broke their covenants they lost!"

The Kids on our COVID-19 experience, week 2

John-Thomas - COVID bad. Bad bad COVID. I like staying home, but I don't like that Matthew can't come over because my birthday is coming soon.

Princess - I like General Conference, even though people might not be able to come to the place.

SCHOOL
[For our home school experience, the kids have three groups of things they need to do. 1 - They get ready for the day with the usual things they need to do anyway. 2 - They have their school subjects. 3 - They have additional school subjects that we want them to learn, like Duolingo and more advanced math for the older kids. They can choose when they do each subject within each group for the most part.]

Superstar - I have my school stuff to do and a couple hours of 8th grade algebra, which is frustrating.

Princess - I like to do more art, more preparation for [JT's] birthday

Superstar - During recess I don't get to play football with my friends.

Princess - I miss my classmates and my teacher.

JT - School is more exciting. The fun yesterday was more exciting. I almost beated the level on Wii and the movie was fun too. Movie movie movie!

Superstar - I like being able to choose what subject comes next. I sometimes get to play Wii at school once I finish everything. We get to do Zooms - it's a face to face online video chat you can have with other people. Sometimes we have zooms with the entire class and sometimes it was 3 people. In Zoom I like how you get to share anything on your ipad on your screen so that everybody can see it and you can make yourself have a virtual background. So if I'm standing at a green background it looks like I'm at the beach. [I asked him what's good about in-person classes.] There are a lot of good things about Zoom.

Princess - I like the new clothes I've been getting. Two people brought me pretty new clothes. I get more me time, quiet time, reading time. I like almost everything about homeschool, except when I'm on the Disney dance pad, I can't sit down.

JT - I like Disney dance cause I get the gold star!

Superstar - At least this happened before we got to track, cause I didn't want to do track.

Princess - I like science. I tried an experiment from my teacher. So you put some water in one cup, about half full, and put water in another cup about half full, and then you put a lot of salt in one and then you don't put any salt in the other. I dropped an egg in each and in one it floated and one it sank. Then I put the egg in the one that floated and put the water from the one that sank on top, and the egg floated in between the two waters!

Superstar - I've shared a google doc with some of my friends so I can talk to them through the google doc. But the google doc, it doesn't give you a notification when someone says something. Google classroom and share it with your class, everyone in the class can see it and there's a notification. But then you can have a small chat with someone in Zoom that gives notifications as well.

CHURCH

JT - Church is yummy. Because of the homemade bread. Feels like I'm eating the house!

Princess - One thing I like about home church is that I'm only talking to 5 people when I bear my talk so it's not as scary as usual when I bear it normal church.

Superstar - I don't really like revisiting Primary because I'm the only young man. But I kind of like that they are letting me teach, which kind of brings it back up again. I also like that I get to pass the sacrament to my family every Sunday. I'm not looking forward to that ending. It's interesting that Dad gives the sacrament tray to me, and then I hand it to him because he's the presiding person. He hands it to me and then I hand it to him, and then I pass to everyone else. It's kind of cozy. And we have rocking chairs! So I get to sit in a rocking chair the entire time. Pretty cool.

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)

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!)

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!")

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.

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!

Christmas 2018 - Santa's coming

Inspired by a McDonald's, we decorated our front
door  and left it up until Superstar's birthday.

Our new tree - first large one in 10 years - the stockings,
and the Santa present for each child.

Princess got a fairy princess tent.
It is still set up in her room.

JT's punching bag was ... a big hit </Dadjoke>
He loved the feeling of power.
Sadly he destroyed it in a few weeks.

Superstar can now go fast, but he mostly lets Princess
play with it these days so he can focus on soccer.

Santa didn't bring this, but she's adorably happy
and I think that happened before my parents got here.

One happy Christmas!

Nov-Dec 2018 - End of being a faculty fellow

Time to do some catch up!
JT's school wanted to remind their students at Thanksgiving to be "Thankful 4" by writing the things they were thankful for on a number four.

Enjoying the fall colors

To Light the World, we continued our tradition of inviting the kids to donate
most of their toys. (Why most? Because we've had a hard time keeping them
clean and organized, and they don't play with the vast majority anyway.)

The farewell dinner for Beth and me

This year was my last as a Faculty Fellow at Tarleton. This was a tragically sad thing. I love(d) working with Jim, Kelly, and the other Fellows. Faculty Fellows are involved in teacher development programs to increase faculty's teaching, research, and service abilities. It got me involved in the broader Tarleton community while working with some of the greatest, friendliest, funniest professors anybody could know. Oh, sure, we still see each other now and then; but when Jim, Kelly, and I had "the talk" about how I was about to come to the end of my days, I was depressed. I felt like I'd been to a funeral!

Dec '18 Graduation - the colleges of business and education.

A new tie from one of my seminary students

The sunrise from our home one morning - one the benefits
of teaching seminary.

We had a lot of fun making caramel/chocolate apples
 for my mother for Christmas.

We practiced telling gospel stories with felt pieces
I ... can't tell what story Princess was telling here.

The boys, helping us get ready for Christmas with my parents.