Son, moon and stars

Three sons. How did I get so lucky? There's something so very wonderful about the mother/son relationship. I love my boys. I love when they fight bad guys. I love how they play Legos. I love how protective and loving they are toward their mother. I love how they ask me for help building things when daddy isn't around, knowing I won't be of much use. I love their boy minds. Yessiree, my home is filled with 'son'shine.

My daughter wants to be a star. She has claimed recitals to be among her talents. You should have seen her in the Primary program on Sunday. Blowing kisses, putting on her pretty smiles, grabbing the microphone like an old pro when it was time to say her part, and delivering it with crystal clear perfection. And afterwards, telling me that the Primary program was just so much fun, and when can she do one again? She is already counting down the days until her dance recital in the Spring. And she wants to be a "rock band girl." Which is funny, b/c I wanted to be a rock girl when I was young. But I have never told her this. How does this happen? I feel like I am raising myself, performances, rock dreams and all. She likes to be noticed.

Last month she decided that, to be Fall-appropriate, her name should be Isabel Charlotte Owl. Which has a nice ring and rhymes with our last name. But for Thanksgiving she wants to be Isabel Charlotte Turkey. Doesn't have the same ring. But she doesn't care.

When Lucas was a baby I made some photo wall art of my kids' pictures. I finally got Mason's done and added to the wall. These are simply B&W 5x5 photos on a slightly larger square cream cardstock on pretty scrapbook paper; they're supposed to look like photos within a mat. So I finally have all my sons and my star on the hallway wall, and I'm over the moon about it.

In November 2001, when Brian and I had been married just three months, I suggested we wake up at 2 a.m. one morning and drive out to the middle of nowhere and watch the Leonid meteor shower, an annual meteor-shower event that returns every mid-November. That might has been the first clue he'd married something crazy. But he stuck. We went, froze, watched a ton of shooting stars, and had a great time.

This week, the Leonids again were at their peak. I really wanted my kids to see them. I prepped them by making a little space-themed dinner. Moon pizzas (with the English muffins they are supposed to look like the surface of the moon...???)-

Jupiter's Great Red Spot drinks (aka Pomegranate 7-UP, something that came to me about 2 minutes before dinner. It's amazing how excited kids will get about something when you give it a fun new name. Plus they rarely get to drink soda):
and for dessert, why, Milky Ways and Starburst, of course!

We hooked up Mason with a sweet space movie (I have never showed Mason a movie, but it was cold out and I thought it if could buy us a few minutes of viewing it would be good, and it did; never too early, right?)-

while we bundled up and headed outside to watch the skies.

We knew the best viewing would be after the moon had set in the wee hours of the morning and before sunrise, as the sky would be dark enough then, but we tried anyways. We had fun finding things in the sky, but as I feared, the moon was way too bright for meteors. After a while we headed back in and watched some Leonid shows on the computer, and also looked at some pictures of the Milky Way galaxy, the moon, Earth viewed from the moon, etc. Connor has been studying moon phases at school and is a bona fide moon expert. He taught us that the moon we saw was a waxing gibbous moon. (Another favorite 2nd grade project was making moonscapes; it might not look like much, but there was a lot of effort that went into creating the craters and highlands, let me tell you)-

Brian actually woke up and went outside at 3 a.m. to check the skies; if it was a good show, he was going to wake up Connor for a quick peek. But (fortunately?) it had clouded over so, everyone enjoyed a full night of sleep. Otherwise, I might have been seeing stars today.