Spring?

We've had a couple nice, warm days now, and I am starting to tentatively allow myself to hope for Spring. We went to the playground the other day in honor of the sunny weather. All of us(Malachi included) enjoyed being out of the house and in the fresh air!

(I post this picture in honor of the parents of 2-5-year-olds everywhere, who are greeted with a sight very similar to this one every time they leave the house and enter a bathroomless area)

Sleepy

I like the way Malachi sleeps with his mouth open, like just in case something to eat comes along, he wants to be ready.

Brackets!

I got Sam a book for his birthday, called The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything. It uses the NCAA Basketball Tournament system to rate any group of things you can imagine. So, getting ourselves in the mood for some "March Madness," Sam and I have been having so much fun doing brackets for everything we can think of! It's really addictive--and interesting to see how it all plays out. Sometimes the bracket system has unexpected results--the final four, for example, are not always your four favorites, if (for example), two of your favorites had to go head-to-head in the first round. Likewise, sometimes a contender will go farther in the tournament than you would have predicted, simply because it faced a poor opponent in the early rounds. Sam and I can usually, after much discussion and defending and setting of criteria, agree on who should advance, although occasionally we have to flip a coin for the winner.

Anyway, it's great--I've posted an empty bracket so you can give it a try! I've also posted a few Sam and I have done--avoiding others (such as our "worst people" brackets--but I will tell you, the winner was Gadianton) so as not to incite controversy :) Click on the image to enlarge it.

It maybe seems like we know these movies waaay too well. But actually, we just have excellent memories for this sort of thing. You'd be surprised how often we incorporate these quotations into our everyday speech, without even really thinking about it. "He loves to run, and run, and run," from powerhouse Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, won, mostly because it is such an effective part of the movie itself, and suggests so much more than the words themselves can convey. However, "An ahh? I can't wait an ahh!" from relative newcomer Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit was a strong second for pure humor.

This is my list, not Sam's (although we overlapped on quite a few movies!). The tiebreaker was how often I feel like watching these. Some are great movies, but only for occasional watching. All 32 in the tournament are worth seeing at least twice, though, in my opinion. A few ("Jane Eyre" comes to mind) were left off because I haven't seen them more than once, and thus don't know yet if they qualify as a "favorite" or just a "good movie." Oh yes, and "Bride and Prejudice" is an Indian version (a musical!) of "Pride and Prejudice," not a misprint.

This was a tough one--you might expect the rose to win, and it did, but mostly because it won the "fragrance" tiebreaker in a couple of rounds. Lily of the Valley beat Daffodil for the same reason, because in "beauty" I think they are tied. One of my favorites, the Gerbera Daisy, had to go up against Rose in the first round, which made it fall (perhaps unfairly) early.

I include this mostly for your benefit, Jessica (and yours, Rachael, should you chance to see it). I don't expect anyone else to be able to recall each of these moments in the movie. There were several very difficult match-ups here. Andrew's false-looking grin after Marguerite finds his note lost mostly because it's not an actual audible quote. "Yewsful to us" got extra points because it appears to be an instance where Armand said the wrong line. One line, which would have been unremarkable on its own, advanced to the second round on the strength of its being garbled by Rachael's VHS copy of this movie. The winner, "You had BUT to ask," won for its excellent balance of humor, oddness of inflection, and usefulness in everyday life. It also got bonus points for being the lyrics to an aria in Jessica's proposed "Scarlet Pimpernel" opera.

Birth Announcement

Here's the picture of Malachi that Sam drew for his birth announcement. I think it's Sam's best painting yet. :) He really captured Malachi's happy, bright little expression.

And, just for fun, here are the pictures he did of the other boys for their announcements. The top one is Sebastian and the bottom one is Abraham.

Lehman Caves

For Sam's birthday we went on a day trip to Lehman Caves (on the eastern border of Nevada). It was a beautiful day!! We stopped in Delta and had a picnic. There was a friendly cat there who kept trying to knock our water cups down with his tail.

The cave was great! (It is just one cave, the ranger informed us, despite the name.) We had our own private tour because no one else was there. The picture can't really do justice to it--it was so beautiful and otherworldly! We had the shorter, 60-minute tour, but the ranger took us in some extra rooms since we were the only ones. The formations are just amazing--some look so delicate and lacy that you can't even believe they're made of rock. The only hard thing was keeping Sebby from touching things.

Here's the view back towards home--the big desert that we drove across. There's our new car, too (Honda Civic Hybrid--and it was great, we only used just over half a tank of gas for this entire trip--380 miles or so). It was a great trip--even better than a birthday cake, Sam said :) (Although he got that too--pie, actually)

Smiler

Finally, I went and got the camera during one of these smiley times. Malachi is the smiliest, happiest little guy. Also, I just love babies wearing knitted baby suits!