Frank Lloyd Wright and WC Handy

Thursday we went on a field trip right in our own back yard, to a house designed by Frank Lloyd Wright!

The Rosenbaum House was built in 1939 for a young couple named (bet you can guess!) Rosenbaum.   It's the only structure in Alabama built by FLW and the only home designed by him in the Southeast  that's open to the public.

The side of the house that faces the street is actually the back of the house.  

The roof lines...the house is sided in cypress

A view from the living room

Game cabinet in the boys' room

Luci can reach BOTH countertops in the original kitchen--it is so tiny.   That was the whole kitchen--where you see brick in front of Luci is the edge of the kitchen.

Dining area

Can you see the Eames chair in the background?  One of the few pieces of furniture in the home not made by FLW.

Study for the professor (John, I'd like something like this! but not in the basement, if you can manage that--cozy, with books and sort of hidden, but not quite.  Got that?)

Further into the study.  The desk, like the dining room table, is built into the wall and cannot be moved.  It's made of plywood, stained to match the cypress siding on the walls and on the outside of the home.

The living room.  This is a smallish sort of home, but the living room is large enough to hold a baby grand piano. All of the furnishings were owned by the Rosenbaums, and most of the furniture was built by FLW--out of plywood!  The furniture held up extremely well in a household with four boys.

View from the back, which was really the front of the home

A sprite designed by FLW.  It looks Oriental.

Under the cantilevered carport. We joined another family for this trip.  Luci is with the girls from the other family.

The house is very interesting.  It has been restored to its original state and is worth the trip!

We also went to the W C Handy birthplace, not far from the Rosenbaum House.  WC Handy is known as the Father of the Blues...not because he invented them, but because he was the first to publish music in the blues style.  His parents were not thrilled with his choice of vocation and took quite a bit of time to warm up to it.  I'm so glad they did not squelch his love of music, because he truly was a gift to the world.  We have a music festival every year before school starts--lots of music, much of it free!  You ought to come.  It'll be the last week of July, most likely.

The museum would not let us use our cameras past a certain point (that point being the place where things were starting to get interesting, boo!).  These two paintings are in the newer part of the museum.  You do get to go into the actual home WC Handy was born in, and our docent was a great storyteller.  I'm so glad we had her for our guide.

I love these paintings.

Then they made me turn off my camera.

Bless Her Heart.

That's what you say when someone is having great troubles ("Look, that lady just fell down while holding a grocery bag full of eggs...bless her heart") or when someone just isn't all there mentally:

Luci is invited to a birthday party tomorrow afternoon.  I told her that Sami has invited her to her birthday party at the skating rink!  Doesn't that sound like fun?

Mommy, how can I go to her party when it isn't my birthday?

(Now see, this is when you say, "Bless her heart.")

Since the party is at the skating rink, the birthday food will be pizza and a cake.  Luci will have just eaten lunch, so skipping the pizza should be easy.  But cake?   

M-o-o-o-o-o-m-m-m-m-m-y!  I have to have cake!

So today I made a batch of Betty Crocker Gluten Free Vanilla Cake Mix into cupcakes (the box makes 12), and frosted them with Glossy Chocolate Frosting (the recipe is in my Betty Crocker cook book, if you want to borrow it ☺). 
 
They turned out great!  Really yummy.

Baby Oil

Me, wiping stage makeup off of Luci's face with baby oil:

I'm using baby oil.  Do you know what it's made of?

No.

Corn oil is made from corn.  

So baby oil is made from babies?

Do you know how they get corn oil?  
They squeeze the corn.  So how do they get baby oil?

From baby pee?

Would I rub baby pee on your face?

No, but I would rub it on JT's face!

Valentines from Afar

John and Bryan left Sunday for a mission trip to Tanzania.  They are visiting the Tanzania Christian Clinic, a medical mission set up by my cousin and her husband, Nancy and Danny Smelser.  They are a nurse-doctor team.  John will be hooking up some electrical equipment for them: an x-ray machine and some other jobs that need to be done.  Bryan is helping John.

Luci found out that Valentine's Day is right in the middle of this trip for Daddy and brother.  Worry set in.

We got Valentines for John and Bryan and some Girl Scout cookies, and hid them in their backpacks.  That helped her, but she was truly concerned that she would not get a Valentine from her Daddy.

She is so afraid of being forgotten.

Makes me cry.

John hid a Valentine for her before he left, for me to put out, and this is what Luci found this morning:

Now I have a happy girl who knows she is loved, even from afar.

She had me send an email to John, thanking him for the puppy, and requesting that he "take a picture of Africa for me!"

Alabama Version of...

Darth Maul.

Luci adores face paint and decided that she wanted to look like Darth Maul, a scary guy from Star Wars Episode 1.

I don't understand how...

...she can draw this with no previous instruction.

Belle in a bathtub, with a door in the background.  Luci wanted the door locked, so she drew a key. 

This is not the impressive part.

 This is the impressive part.

Luci drew a three-dimensional box, put the key in, and left the lid opened. 

Luci,  how did you know how to do this? 

I don't know, I just did it.

I told a friend about this drawing, and she said, "Perhaps she'll be an architect."

Luci said, "No, but I might be a girl who builds houses!"

Valentine's Day Craft

What you need: 

a shirt to paint
doily
paint
brush (a sponge brush works very well)
plate to hold the paint

How to do it:

Center doily on shirt.
Put paint on the plate.
Dab brush into the paint.
Dab paint onto the pattern on the doily, being sure to hold the doily still.

Final result:

Set paint according to instructions.

What I've learned:

 Little girls love crafts.

Doily is a really funny word.

Ivory Soap

This idea came from Toys in the Dryer.

My Feingold friend Rachel, at Real Life Eating, shared it with me.  This is fun, and seems like magic.

Take one new bar of Ivory soap (new works best because it's not all dried out yet).

You only need one quarter of the bar! 

Put it in the microwave for about 2 minutes.  It will probably be done before the time is up.  I put ours on a paper plate.

 Final product!  Luci says she likes to break off a piece to wash her hands.  

 

Why does it work?

According to wikiHow:

The expanding effect is caused by the heating of the water that is inside the soap. The water vaporizes, forming bubbles; the heat also causes trapped air to expand. Likewise, the heat causes the soap itself to soften and become pliable.

The Ryan's Belt

Well, maybe not The Ryan's Belt...but we did see the Orion Spacecraft today!   It's on its way from White Sands Missile Range to Cape Kennedy.   Here are some photos of the test performed at White Sands--a launch abort test.  Orion will eventually be used in NASA's human spaceflight program. 

Visitors got to sign the Orion!  That was cool.  This man, who works for Marshall Space Flight Center, wanted to take Luci's photo signing the spacecraft.  She was up on JT's shoulders so she could find an empty space.  He's going to send me the photo in a few days and it might make MSFC's newspaper.   I love that Luci dotted her "i" with a heart.

JT getting in on it!  I signed it, too.

The kids got an Orion badge!  We've bought several badges at the US Space and Rocket Center, so getting one for free was nice.  :)

The entire assembly.

Of course, we found some good "toys" at the gift shop. 

John helping Luci--I think John will have more fun with this than the kids!  As a matter of fact, he's in the dining room now, putting together a 3-way switch.

 Luci found an Astronaut Barbie.  Of course we got it.  We got a second one for a birthday present for a party tomorrow night. She's cute and wearing a blue space shuttle outfit.  But--this Barbie has a rolling suitcase!  Why?!  Why on earth couldn't they put in a little space shuttle or something?

The Swing

How do you like to go up in a swing,
Up in the air so blue?
Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing
Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,
Till I can see so wide,
River and trees and cattle and all
Over the countryside--

Till I look down on the garden green,
Down on the roof so brown--
Up in the air I go flying again,
Up in the air and down!

 

That's one of the poems, written by Robert Louis Stevenson, that I memorized 'way back when.  It's what came to mind today as John put in this marvelous swing for Luci. 

And, I recited it as the kids swang  swung  went up in the air and down.  (Oh, Mom!  Do you have to do that?!   Yes.  Yes, I do.)

It's right next to Luci's tree house, and sails out over the hill and meadow below.  The ropes are 20 feet long!  A good, wonderful swing.

And, of course, the neighbor's dopey dog, Gator, joined us.  He had just played in the creek and came over, all smelly and wet.  (oh joy)

I found this on the swing tree!  Love it.  I had no idea that John carved this a few months ago:

Heard Today

Anakin:  not the familiar character from the Star Wars trilogy (the cute kid who eventually grows     up to be Dark Vader, uh, I mean Darth Vader) --an Anakin is a person-sized doll at a clothing store.  You might know it as a Mannequin.

 The Ryan's Belt:  More familiarly known as Orion's Belt.  We had a great field trip to a planetarium (Von Braun Astronomical Society) on Friday.  Luci finally got to spot The Ryan's Belt in the sky tonight.  But she missed Betelgeuse!  (did you know that if you type in "Betelgeuse" into Google's search engine, Beetlejuice the movie pops up?  That disappoints me.)

Behemoth:  Ok, so she pronounces this correctly and knows what it is!

Is it you?

Right after Luci lost that tooth, she asked me this question:

Is there really a Tooth Fairy?  Is it you?

If it's me, then you don't get a dollar.

without skipping a beat...

Okay, there's a Tooth Fairy!

Lost another one!

Doesn't she look happy?

Luci won't let me touch her loose teeth after the great "Dental Floss Incident" of last Spring, in which I tried to pull a tooth that wasn't quite ready.

She pulled out this one all by herself!

2:25

in the AFTERNOON.

Rainy, rainy day!

and, wanting to copy this most-favorite photo for use elsewhere:

Chinese New Year--Year of the Dragon!

Luci and I made a dragon cake for Chinese New Year.

It's a scary dragon!

We got the idea from the Do They Have Salsa in China? blog.  M3 (the author) and her friend made a very intricate cake for her twin daughters' birthday party, and it is gorgeous!  For directions on how to make this cake, please see her blog post.  And when you look at her cake, don't judge mine for the poser it is.  Please.  Ours tastes fantastic, and the main person it's for (Luci) is very happy with it.

Luci and I made a simple version, and as you can see from the second photo, Luci is plenty happy with it--It's scary, Mom!   :)   We also made ours gluten free, with no artificial colors in the frosting (used turmeric for the yellow).  I got the recipe for the bundt cake from Allrecipes.com plus I made these changes:  I used Pamela's Bread Baking Mix (gluten free) for the flour, and I added some extra instant coffee, and used the chocolate syrup mentioned in the heading of the recipe instead of the coffee liqueur.

She's at it again!

Last night Luci and I were watching TV.


What she says was "an old man" (he was my age!!) said, "I used to be cute."


He shouldn't say that--it's naughty to brag.


Me:  What if it's true?  I used to be cute!


Luci looked at me from the corners of her eyes, and said,

You sure?

Oh, yeah:

I bet you didn't know...

According to Luci, there are three kinds of tea.

She figured this out as she prepared a tea party for us for lunch today:

There are three kinds of tea.

Hot Tea.

Sweet Tea.

T-T.

Happiness!

It was coming down horizontally for a while!

Luci's tree house is back there, somewhere.  Can you see the pink?

A few minutes later, there was so much more.  Any snow here is a treat!

JT and Luci made this Mickey!