About Lucy

Hello my name is Lucy and I am going to be one of the writers on the awesome blog.  I'm nine years old and going into fourth grade so I'm pretty young to be a blogger. 

Amy Pence-Brown is my mom the one who started this blog.  I'm also a big sister to Alice my little sister she is so curious and funny.  You might of heard of me and my sister on my mom's posts.  I'm lucky to be a blogger most kids don't get to do this awesome job.  I hope you like me as a blogger and I hope I like this job, too.

    

KIDDOS: Spring shots

A few shots from the last few months of these daughters of mine I can't get enough of : My baby girl learns to write her name and gets creative all over the place. || She also joins a team sport for the first time (soccer with the Boise Nationals) and is more aggressive than I thought. || Lucy & Alice at Sara Smart's BOISE 150's Sesqui-Shop photo booth in April. || Dressed up as old west pioneers in the most creative kids' space I've seen in an Idaho museum. || The girls love the Ramona books as well as the screen version of Ramona & Beezus, so we took them to see the stage version in Idaho Falls. || Face painting at the school carnival. (Apparently mustaches are all the rage with tween girls these days. Who knew.)

CULTURE: Remnants of Boise exhibition

In April I was asked to help coordinate part of an exhibition of architectural artifacts for Preservation Idaho in conjunction with the City of Boise Department of Arts & History. This year, 2013, marks Boise's 150th birthday, or our sesquicentennial. In honor of that, the City has rented this really cool historic storefront on Main Street and named is the 'Sesqui-Shop.' For the entire year, new exhibits, lectures and events will grace the space each month.

For Remnants of Boise, the City put together a huge number of historic photos of neighborhoods throughout time. On behalf of Preservation Idaho, Dan Everhart and myself put out a call to the public for parts of major buildings which had been lost over time. As a result, I drove around town picking up some major sandstone elements and other quirky artifacts.

Here you can see some metal roof shingles from the old Territorial Capital, a door from a historic home, and an arched window from the old Veterans Home, along with photos of the building and what is in the location now. Most of the time, sadly, it's a parking lot. Oh, urban renewal (sigh).

You can purchase an exhibition catalog of sorts, with many of the stellar historic photos of Boise from BOISE 150 here and/or check out the cool virtual 360 tour that was part of the exhibition here.

KIDDOS: Ceramica birthday

As always, I make Lucy and Alice have a joint birthday party, since they turn a year older just two weeks apart. So far, at ages five and nine, they still love this idea. I'm going to milk that until I no longer can.

This year I took the easy way out of birthday party planning and splurged on a 'destination party' for the first time ever. In the past, as you've seen here on the blog, I always do it up fun and big in our backyard or at a park. For several reasons, I just didn't have the energy this year, and decided to take ten girls to Ceramica, just down the street in the Vista Village shopping complex.

Ceramica is a paint-your-own ceramics studio, a place the girls adore but I rarely take them. We've made some really cute platters with handprints for grandparents 'gifts, but in the past they've been a bit too young for art making like this.

I made my favorite easy cupcakes, these vanilla ones from Fannie Farmer's Baking Book, and handmade goody bags with a pencil, tiny notebook, and colorful bracelets from our gift stash at home. We reserved the private studio room for free, where they let us set up the treats and gave us our very own artist helper. Turns out, the party cost about the same as I would've spent at a home party, much to my surprise. It's only $5 a kiddo for the studio fee at Ceramica, and I pre-picked out 5" blank tiles for each of the girls to paint ($4 each). Plus, both Lucy and Alice got a large birthday themed plate, complete with all their friends' signatures and thumbprints as keepsakes, all for $96! It was so worth it. The girls thought it was the most fun birthday ever.

ARTSY: Carousels: Art & History in Motion

This spring we took the girls to Idaho Falls to visit their grandparents for a weekend. In addition to taking them to see Ramona Quimby, the play, at the local arts center, we also go to catch this wonderful exhibition on the history of carousels at the Museum of Idaho.

There was a real, working carousel as part of the show, which the girls got to ride indoors. Displays showing how the carousel animals are carved and painted, photos of historic carousels, and unusual lighting and hand-pedaling features were among the highlights. This show is only up through May 27, 2013, so if you're in or near Idaho Falls, I highly recommend it!

KIDDOS: Alice

Happy spring, y'all, from the Pence-Brown household. As my baby girl just turned five in April, she's taken on a new hobby of taking awesome self portraits.

KIDDOS: Knock Knock Joke Book

My girls, Lucy and Alice, love jokes. Knock knock jokes are their favorites, as they are the easiest to understand and tell, and it takes some group effort.

 

I picked up this book for 10 cents at the senior center thrift shop a while back and it is HIGHLARIOUS in my household. (I don't know why this damn photo is sideways; I've uploaded it three times now and it appears to be correct but it's not. I've given up. Whatever.)

The illustrations are straight up 1970s and I don't know why the book is titled the "World's Worst Knock Knock Jokes" because they really are pretty great.

See?