First Day of School!

If I had it with me, I'd post the most awkward of awkward pictures ever taken of me on my first day of third grade. As it is, here's an adorable Rockwell cover.

Wait! Also, this:

My first day of school, ever.

Pasadena, California. September 1996.

Listen to this.

Provo.

(photos: Cor Jaring)

So...my mom is pregnant.

One

 

Two

 

Three

Four

 Five

Six:

?

Psyche Knot

Lately I have been thinking about Victorian hairstyles, and while researching them, I found these pictures from Girl's Own Paper and Women's Magazine in 1911. This woman is demonstrating how to tie a psyche knot, a hairstyle that was immensely popular in the late Victorian period.

This is so lovely. I'm excited to experiment.

Overdue Tree Lamps.

This one is my favorite:

Greta spent a really long time drawing a tree lamp. She then tore the page out, started over, and eventually handed my book back and told me not to look at her drawing until I got home. The next day, I remembered it and read this note:

He's back.

He can solve a Rubiks cube in a minute.

Other than that, he's basically the same.

The Texas-est cookies you've ever seen.

\

Tomorrow!

Can't talk. Having a Lord of the Rings marathon.

I am such a nerd. 

Soonnnn.

Three days until these kids are reunited.

My parents are flying from Ontario to Dallas today and touring around his mission with him, meeting everyone. They fly back with him on Friday. Sunday is his homecoming and some of us are speaking, including me. My little brother said he wanted to give a talk just so he could sit next to Collin on the stand. Our extended family will be there for the meeting and then lunch at our house. After that, there are two or three days before Collin and I drive to Provo.

And then I have my brother for the whole year. :)

(Photos: Public Domain, Wikimedia Commons) Then, dearest child, mournest thou only for Jupiter?
Considerest thou alone the burial of the stars?
Something there is,	25
(With my lips soothing thee, adding, I whisper,
I give thee the first suggestion, the problem and indirection,)
Something there is more immortal even than the stars,
(Many the burials, many the days and nights, passing away,)
Something that shall endure longer even than lustrous Jupiter,	30
Longer than sun, or any revolving satellite,
Or the radiant brothers, the Pleiades. -Walt Whitman's "On the Beach at Night"

It's fun to listen to my brother shout in amazement at how fast he can play the piano.

I like that kid.

I discovered myself and the world, and forgot them, and discovered them again.

March 1997

Mesa, Arizona

"Like any child, I slid into myself perfectly fitted, as a diver meets her reflection in a pool. Her fingertips enter the fingertips on the water, her wrists slide up her arms. The diver wraps herself in her reflection wholly, sealing it at the toes, and wears it as she climbs rising from the pool, and ever after."

-Annie Dillard's An American Childhood

(Best book ever.)

What if I did this?

Dear Stephen Foster,

Meet me halfway- let's say 1937. I want to talk to you.

Sincerely,

Emily Brown

My brother took these a few years ago in Arizona. Nine days.

My brother comes home in ten days.

I am excited.

That is all.

Something I learned this weekend:

(Image: kathysharpfrisbee.com)

Massasoit
|
(somewhere down this line, apparently)
Running Deer

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Mary Lewis

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Sally Hulet

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Mary Cox

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Edwin Marion Whiting

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Martha Whiting

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F. Ray Brown

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Nora Brown

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Richard Brown

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Emily Brown

  

Sometimes I forget that little kids never feel like little kids. I was talking to this one earlier this week (Melissa- she's eleven now) about that. She's the youngest in my family and sometimes I think I treat her more like a little kid than I should. All my life, I've felt like a full-blown person. Never once, when I was five or eight or thirteen did I feel like I knew less than the rest of people did, or that I was capable of less.

Also, I recently realized that I periodically write like J.D. Salinger when I'm feeling pensive. I re-read Catcher in the Rye this summer. Maybe it's part of my dialect right now.

Art in Boxes

An embarrassing amount of my summer has been devoted to going through boxes and boxes of things I left at home before I went to BYU. Most of it is writing, but some of it is art. I came across these the other day:

I'm not sure when I painted all of these, but I think they're mainly from around 5th or 6th grade. This last one is my favorite. :)

Big Sarah's Little Boots

When I was little, I loved this book:

It's about a girl named Sarah who loves her rain boots. When she grows out of them, she fills them with rocks, stretches them (with the aid of her dog), and even waters them, trying to get them to grow up with her.

(Photos: Kids Can Press)

But Sarah's efforts are to no avail. At the end of the story, she passes her adorable yellow boots on to her little brother in favor of new yellow boots, with a "fire-engine red" stripe around the top.

Eventually, Sarah's mom bought her larger and larger pairs of yellow boots, and eventually, some ended up at a Goodwill in Orange County. Because guess what Madelyn and I ran into in our thrift store perusal of Newport Beach?

Yes. Big Sarah's Little (ish) Boots.

The Stover Gentlemen's Club

This year, I made friends with an entire hall of boys living in Stover 3100 of Helaman Halls. How this happened is a long story (if you want, ask me sometime), but the point is, I became close with the talented and interesting group of gentlemen living there. Around Christmastime, 3100 collaborated on making a Christmas album, just for kicks. They called it "Christmas with the Stover Gentleman's Club," and it was hilarious in parts and brilliant in others. Needless to say, it was the soundtrack to my winter break.

Around Valentine's Day, they recorded another album all together called "Love n' Stuff," and it's part of the soundtrack to my summer, along with Leonard Cohen, Sam's playlists, and the Troilus and Cressida score.

I miss these guys.