From Last Year to This

The 2011-2012 school year was difficult beyond belief for Thing 1.  Crying herself to sleep at night.  Begging to move back to the old house.  Trying to talk us into trading back all the advantages of moving if she could just Go Home.

This year was completely different.

I attended the 5th Grade "Graduation" ceremony on Tuesday.  I know, I know, you're not really graduating in 5th grade, but in this area 6th and 7th grade are at a different school, so the kids are leaving elementary school, therefore they have a little ceremony.  

They handed out a "moving on" certificate to all the kids, then they distributed a few awards.  There were presidential awards for good grades.  There was a silver award for a GPA of 3.5-3.75 and Thing 1 got one of those.  They had some awards from the gym teacher for kids who had done so many push-ups and laps and whatever.

Then they did what they called the Citizenship Award.  Each of the four classes was asked to vote for three of their classmates on who best represented the class for honor and fairness and bravery and all around good citizeny stuff.  Three students were chosen from each class.

And Thing 1 was chosen.

I was totally floored.

She is so quiet, so reserved.  There are other kids in her class who are very dynamic and outgoing and noticeable, a couple little girls I know of who are really lovely little girls.  Of course I think Thing 1 is all those things, but I'm her mother and I'm aware there is a certain bias here and she is not very self promoting and I imagine she blends into the background a lot...  But apparently the other kids noticed her too.

It was really lovely.  There was a certificate with a little pin attached.

Then right at the end of the whole ceremony the music teacher said she had an award.  She said there has been one student all year who has helped on every promotional banner, has stepped up every time and made herself available to help at every opportunity.  She had one award to give out, and she gave it to Thing 1.  Thing 1 pretty much swept the award ceremony.

The school had a 5th Grade concert last Thursday, and Thing 1 sang a song.  When she announced that she wanted to try out for this performance because the kids could sing solos if they wanted to, her sister and I didn't know what to think.  When she announced she had passed the audition we murmured to ourselves that we weren't sure if this was a good thing or a bad thing.  In a brilliant move, Hubby found her a voice coach and I have taken her down  to the valley for voice lessons.  She's had 4 lessons, and the teacher taught her to relax and sing out and just the extra practice and singing in front of him did her a lot of good.  She did beautifully at the performance.  I had suggested she sing The Show by Lenka, which was a good choice for many reasons, except that it starts bam on the the first note.  No introduction, no preamble, the music starts and the song starts.  So it's really easy for her to get off.  And she has a hard time getting back on until there's a break in the music, and she can hear where she's supposed to be.  Sure enough for the performance she didn't come in on the right beat and was a beat behind, until the first point that the music pauses and she can catch up.  She was by no means perfect, but she hit a couple notes she usually has trouble with, and she sang out, and did really beautifully.  I was tensely watching her perform, noting every little thing she did wrong, instead of letting her wonderful performance wash over me...  I have heard her sing it enough that I don't sit and cry when I listen to her. Which is a good and a bad thing.

It has been a very good year for Thing 1.

Arts Festival May 3rd

Look how behind I am.  

The Friday after we got back from our Disney Cruise was the school's Arts Festival.   

I kind of feel responsible for part of the Arts Festival, because they changed the way they do it because of me.  One of the other mothers, who is instrumental in the Festival, was at my house last year and saw some of the pieces of art I'd purchased at our old school's Art Fair Auction.  These are pieces made by the kids, and auctioned off at the festival.  When this other mother was admiring them (as the most interesting art in our house) she was floored when I told her they were made by my daughter's class in 2nd grade (she made the bottom heart)  This piece is about eighteen inches long by about eight inches wide.

and by the 1st graders in our old school.  I am not related to any of the kids who made this piece, it was just my favorite that year.  This one is about three feet long and weighs a lot, as the clay pieces are glued onto an old piece of metal, the swirly things are welded on.

Anyway, you get the picture, they're kind of neat unusual pieces of art.

So she proposed we do collaborative projects like that for this school, and sell them at the festival, and asked if I'd help.

So this year they totally changed the way they do the festival to include these collaborative projects.  And my biggest disappointment here is that I don't have pictures of the pieces, because they were TRULY AMAZING.  In this school, instead of the Art Ladies running the whole show and picking out with the teacher a project for the class to do and making it, the parent volunteers, who run the art projects in the class every month, picked out a project for the classes to do and did them.  At our old school there was a lot of pottery, and a lot of welding.  We don't have a kiln in the school here, and no welders that I know of.  So we had to resort to other things.

I am in charge of Thing 2's art class of 4th graders, and this is what we did.

We did two copper weavings.  The kids wove copper strips and wire into a larger sheet of copper, and rubbed texture into all the copper to make it more interesting.  Then I took it over to the woman's house who first saw the art in my house and suggested we do collaborative pieces, she is a real artist, by the way, and she helped me cook it with a torch to make it have the burny patina.

I didn't get close ups... but I may provide a close up grab from my picture.

We made two weavings.  Because only a couple of kids could weave at a time, I had to come up with something for the rest of the kids to do while waiting for their turn.  So I came up with a copper rubbing idea, keeping with the copper theme.  Each kid rubbed a little five by five piece of copper.  I strung them together in sets.  There were three sets of five, and one set of three, which my artisty friend helped me distress.  That is the one I bought, which is why I got a picture of it.

I was at a friend of Thing 2's the other day and found she had bought all three of the five panel pieces, and was hanging them side by side.  I should have got a picture.  They looked great together.  We didn't distress them, just let them stay shiny coppery.

The other thing about this arts fair is that they let the kids have booths.  Normally they let local artists display their stuff for sale, but this year they opened it up to the kids, instead.  I knew Thing 1 would come up with something,  but had to help Thing 2 come up with something.

From the Epbot blog, which is one of my first go-to spots for all things interesting, I found this idea of baking baking pony beads to make little flowers.  Bingo.  Thing 2 is going to love this.

The problem with putting up a booth, is you have to have inventory.  Both girls and their mother (ME!) worked night and day for the month leading up to the cruise, and the week after, making sure there was enough inventory to sell at their art booths.  

I suggested Thing 1 start with Polymer clay necklaces.  But once she made the beads they were SUPER labor intensive for me to assemble.  Then she made a tiny little polymer clay animal.  All that was required of me was to put it on a pin and make a pendant out of it, and put the clasp on a cord or chain.  Eventually Thing 1 was even able to do most of this herself, though she never really mastered the bending of the pin to make a perfectly round bezel hook, so I did that part.

And this is the result.

 This is just a close up from the previous picture.   You can see a red flower, then a little piece of cake on the left, going right there are penguins and hedghogs and other little animals, ending with some birds.

She sold the little animals for $5, the bigger ones for $7, and some of my more complicated necklaces and earring sets for $12.  

Thing 2's inventory was a little less labor intensive, and she had more items.  

She sold these hair clip sets for $2.00, the necklace and earring sets for $3.00.   Bookmarks and magnets were a dollar a piece.

At the end of the night I was somewhat frustrated that the collaborative pieces auctioned off so low.  Those big pieces I had done, easily 2 feet by 3.5 feet of copper, went for about $50.00.  The copper alone in them was worth I don't know how much, but at least twice that.

The little pieces went for about $20 each.  The school made about $3000.00.  I wish they'd made twice that but the other art ladies were very pleased, saying it was the first year we'd done it this way, and seeing this great art in each other's homes will be a good advertisement for next year, when they intend to do it this way again.

My girls made out great.  Thing 2 cleared $120, and Thing 1 made over $200.00.  

They want to have booths again in next year's arts festival.  I told them now I've shown them how to do it, next year they're on their own, and they have to pay for more of their supplies, though they both have a lot to start with already from leftovers from this year.

They were so tickled, though, it was a lot of fun to watch people coming over and admiring their items, and it's been really neat to see people wearing their jewelry and things around town.  Is this what it feels like to be a real artist?

Catch Up

Five more weeks of school.

I can't wait.

The last two weeks  have been insane.  The build up to the last two weeks was equally insane.

Two weeks ago was our spring break.  Hubby suggested we go on a Disney Cruise.  Okay.

Then he suggested we take my niece, my daughter's favorite person in the world, who is between them in age.  She is a natural peace maker, and a great foil when Thing 1 and 2 start bickering...  Brilliant!!

Her parents (my brother and his wife) agreed even though it didn't coincide with her spring break and would require her to miss a week from school.

We flew to Orlando on the evening of the 20th of April, and after riding around in the biggest personal rental car on the planet, just shy of being a city bus, the girls loved it.  Our car at home has a third row, and is big... but this was ridiculous and Hubby couldn't wait to turn it back in and get on the boat.

Which we did the next day, Sunday the 21st.

Since there were five of us, we got the extra big stateroom on the top of the boat, right under the swimming pool deck.  It was lovely.  And alarmingly convenient to the self dispensing ice cream machines.

 I was especially pleased that there was so much room in such a tiny little space.  The bathrooms were brilliant - two little bathrooms - one with a sink and a toilet, one with a sink and a terribly clever shower/tub combination.  Had I known such a thing was available when we refinished our basement, I would have seriously considered it.

Though they consider it a five day cruise, it's really three days on the ship.  The days at either end boarding and disembarking hardly count.
The first day was in Nassau, which we had heard from my brother was a tropical resort where you can go look at all the beautiful people hanging out.  So we decided to take advantage of an excursion where they take you out to swim with the dolphins.  We had the worst weather on our trip here, and had to interrupt our dolphin swim experience to go stand under the gazebos while a tropical deluge rained down on us.
This is also where I ruined Thing 2's underwater camera.  I was so proud of myself for remembering it, but must have not closed it  up tight somewhere along the road, and it filled with sea water and died in the middle of our excursion, shortly after I got in the water.  Not sure if or how I can even get the pictures off of its corpse.  Hence the only photos I have of this excursion are the ones that we paid for before we got back on the boat to ferry us off the island.  But it was delightful and memorable, and we all got to get the foot push across the pen from the dolphins.  Though there was a beautiful beach there and I had scheduled us the earlier swim so we could stay and play on the beach, it was raining, so we went back to the boat.

The next day was Castaway Cay, which we learned is confusingly pronounced Key.  I feel compelled to edit out the whole long paragraph of how we found this out. Suffice it to say our assigned dining companions were very very informative.  Very.

Castaway Cay was just beautiful, and not as crowded as it could have been, based on the number of empty deck chairs on the beach all around us.

We were late on the beach because we had to stop and buy some flip-flops for the girls, who had left their crocs in a cubby by the AquaDuck the night before. (They had been picked up by the Disney crew but were slow to get turned in to Lost and Found and we didn't get them until the next afternoon.)  Our only other real problem was that my cool super strong sunscreen was totally and completely inefficient.  I have posted a scathing review on Amazon and thrown away two bottles of the stuff I brought, but it was too late, Thing 1 was completely fried and the rest of us were merely badly burned.  Except my niece, who used a much less powerful but actually effective sunscreen.  Luckily I used an effective non-pore-blocking sunscreen on our faces, and the girls wear rashguard shirts, but still all other exposed skin was red.  Thing 1 put on her long sleeved rashguard (shown in the picture above) too late.

The slide was fun, the ice cream was fun, the beach was lovely.  Hubby napped on the deck chair, I hovered and relaxed.

The sunburn made everyone crabby the next day, our day on the boat.  Also the girls decided they were too old for the kids area they were registered for, and would rather come back and watch movies in the room.  They did go to a screening of Oz in the big theater, but other than that we just kind of puttered around the boat and our stateroom and veranda, enjoying the proximity to the ice cream machine one deck up.

When we got off the boat the next day, Hubby's luggage was missing.  We had put it outside our stateroom as instructed, but it was not waiting for us with the rest of the luggage in the big luggage warehouse after getting off the boat. Poor Hubby was rather limited in his wardrobe and was doing washing for the rest of the trip.  Spoiler - His bag somehow partied its way across the country and turned up at a United luggage desk in Los Angeles two days after we returned home.

When we gave up the search for the lost bag, we drove to Universal Studios for two more days of fun.
I found that Universal is neat but a little dodgier than Disney.  The rides are rougher, and maybe I've reached a certain age but I found myself getting more nauseous than I ever have before.  There's not quite so much Magic.  I was glad we went, but not sure I need to go back. Our favorite part was Harry Potter World, where the Dragon Challenge ride was probably as close as anyone could get to riding a real dragon.  A dragon who would be happy if you were to be flung from off its back.

The girls bought wands, and of course we had butter beer, pumpkin juice, and bought chocolate frogs and bertie botts beans.

At the end of the 1st day at Universal, the girls were getting so run down that we left early for dinner, and both Thing 1 and my niece fell asleep in the restaurant waiting for the food to come.  We had pretty much run them down to the nub.

I think we were all getting tired and ready to come home, but all in all it was a lovely vacation.

Writing another post while waiting for Hubby to come home

March 3rd ----

Geez.  Last time I blogged I was waiting for Hubby to come home from a big European Trip.

He comes home tonight from India.

He's been gone a week.  Just 8 days.  For an international trip, that's pretty short for him.

He'll be home a week, then he leaves for a nasty one.  Russia.  New Zealand.  Who knows where else.

We had a truly lovely time in California!

Once I got over my guilt - wait! Have I gotten over that guilt yet? hmmmm..
Anyway even though I DID NOT create a miracle and DID NOT get everyone and everything packed up a day early and DID NOT accomplish everything I had to a day early despite being very sick the week before, we arrived as scheduled on Saturday.

We had two days in Disneyland, a day at the Wild Animal Park or whatever they call it now.  Disney was crowded, as expected on a Sunday, but surprisingly so on the following Thursday.  Yes, it was the Thursday after President's day, but geez, why aren't these people keeping their kids in school?  Surely the whole of the western half of the United States doesn't have the whole week off, like we do?  I thought we were an anomaly!  Pictures should follow here - I'll get on that.

It is always too short a time, and we drove back just in time to beat a very nasty winter storm that hit the next morning.  I had to drive down the canyon to fetch the dog and the guinea pigs, and had a rather harrowing drive home.  The canyon was closed to anyone without 4 wheel drive or chains.  I saw several cars off the road, some just spinning out in the slow lane, unable to climb the hill.  I do really like our car, by the way, with snow tires on we just trundle along past all the problems!

March 13th...
I keep not publishing posts because I think I'll get pictures uploaded.  At this rate, I'll never post again.  So until the pictures get added, I'll just put up the post.

Hubby got back from India, and left on Monday for New Zealand.  He'll get back in a couple weeks, be home for a day and a half, then head to Russia.
I like it better when he travels in the states.

California or Bust

Hubby's in Budapest.

Before that it was London.

Before that it was Paris.

Before that it was Stockholm.  Where he left three shirts (DANG!), one of which he said was his favorite that I gave him for Christmas.  I don't know which one it is, I don't know if we'll ever see it or its friends again.

He comes home tomorrow. (Snoopy dance!)

The next day we leave for California, our (nearly) annual trip to stay with my parents in the condo they rent on the beach.  For a WHOLE WEEK!  A week of sun and beach and Disney and whatever else we want to do and no snow!

I expect fabulous things from this vacation.  And yes, it always delivers!

I believe that the day after we get back from this vacation Hubby leaves for India, New Zealand... and I don't know where else.

It'll be a nasty stretch.

Thing 1 is nearly done with wearing the splint on her broken arm.  Her arm seems completely better, and we are so happy she picked the splint instead of the cast as she has started taking it off briefly when it completely annoys her.  This means she doesn't completely annoy the rest of us.

I still haven't sent out my Christmas letter.  I have actually written one, I was just trying to get some cute photos to go in it...  I was planning on doing a Valentine's letter, but can see that's not going to happen.

Last week was the book fair, I only volunteered for one shift a day, but seemed to have somehow lost more than the two hours a day I spent at the school.  And it would seem I caught a nasty bug there - Friday morning I started coming down with something that had me flat on my back miserable all day Saturday and Sunday, barely seeing the light on Monday.  Tuesday was marginally better, and today I can at least function, though I still sound like I swallowed a frog.  And on top of all the catching up I need to do, there's the class Valentine's party I need to put on tomorrow, and the kids valentines that we have to do tonight, and riding lessons and art lessons and packing and getting everything ready to go, and getting the dog to the kennel, and the guinea pigs to the friend's.  We ought to be all packed up by Thursday night because my goal is to pick the kids up from school just after noon on Friday and keep on going!

I rarely meet my goals.

But that doesn't stop me from making them!

Another Broken Arm

Hubby bought a season pass to the closest resort, and has been going up whenever he can, an hour or a half day here and there.  He's kind of caught on the snowboarding thing, and has been really enjoying it.  The girls have just gone once for a private boarding lesson Hubby took them up for, then three times with the school program.   I hadn't gone at all (except for the day I did ONE RUN as chaperone for the girls program, but that's another story.)  So we went skiing (me) and snowboarding (the girls and Hubby) on Martin Luther King day.  

With the girls we kept to the bunny hill, and they were doing great.

Then Thing 1 was trying to do some toe turns, and some snow bunched up behind her heals, and she fell backward.  She'd been falling on her butt so much she was worried she broke her tailbone, so she put her hands out to catch herself, and...

It didn't look like anything bad to me, like she'd just rolled onto her butt.   I skied down to where Thing 2 was a little further down the mountain next to the lift, expecting Hubby and Thing 1 to come meet us.  But they didn't.  So sure was I that Thing 1 wasn't that badly hurt that Thing 2 and I went the rest of the way down, and got on the lift for another run.  Surely Hubby would have called me if there was anything wrong.  As Thing 2 and I were lifted up over the trees I saw Hubby and Thing 1 walking down the mountain, him carrying both of their boards.

He told me later he knew it was bad when she couldn't move her fingers. 

They found a ski patrol person who took them to the clinic on the mountain, where they took an x-ray and found Thing 1 had a "buckle" break, which is kind of like a crimp in the bone.

Thing 1 was in a splint for a week, then went in on Monday to the hospital to get a cast which she would have for three weeks.  Only the doctor gave her the option of a cast or a splint.  We chose the splint.  The cast was the choice for kids who wouldn't leave a splint on, he told us.  The more comfortable splint can be removed for bathing.  And for going to CALIFORNIA.  The cast/splint could officially come off February 18th, and we leave for California on the 15th.  This solved all the problems, and Thing 1 has been super about leaving it on, to the point that she was trying to put the bathing bag on it the other day.  She figured she didn't want to take it off too early.  Then even when I did take it off of her, she wouldn't get it wet.  I had to assure her it would be okay several times, and would feel good to wash her arm and hand.

Needless to say she's being very good about keeping the splint on.

Because my first ski day in 14 years was spent on the bunny hill and worrying about Thing 1, Hubby and I went back up on Wednesday for an adults only ski day.  It was horrible weather, snowing like crazy and very cold.  I had a ball.  I really love the skis my brother sold me (out of the goodness of his heart, a gesture I think he has regretted since and I am sorely tempted to give back to him except THEY'RE SO WONDERFUL THEY SKI THEMSELVES!) and had a great time skiing with Hubby.  Hubby, however, was quite disappointed with the weather, and just about the end of the day he took a spill getting off the lift and landed hard on the ice right as you get off the lift.  I think he bruised his pelvis or something.  He could hardly walk.

He felt much better the next day, but it did alarm me that snowboarding has already taken it's toll on 3 of my family members - Thing 1, Hubby, and my niece who took a nasty fall a couple weeks ago.

Yet Hubby wants to get us all season passes next year.  He is undaunted.

Mid December

I got our tree up right after Thanksgiving, and the house is all decorated up.  But I needed a new wreath for over the mantel.  I didn't want to spend a fortune, but I found most fake conifer wreaths were too expensive, or looked totally fake.  So I decided to make a ball wreath.

This is the end result:

Last year I'd redone the tree with those wild colors, so when I found mostly wild colored ornaments at Walmart, I decided to forge ahead and use them for the wreath.  One of the things I am pleased about is that it's mostly flat.  So it hugs the wall pretty well.  I actually liked it really well with just the pink, blue, and green larger balls, but some of the holes between the balls were kind of big.  In retrospect it might have been easier to wrap the wire frame in tinsel, or just cut pieces of tinsel and stuff them into the holes.

Change of topic:

Hubby is in Australia until Saturday.  He's been pingponging around between Sydney, Brisbane, and Melbourne and getting tired and lonely and ready to come home.  It comes down that he's a great traveler, but a lousy tourist.  He needs me for that, I'm a great tourist.

He took this with his photo stitching app

Change of topic:

On Thursday after I dropped the kids off at school, I went to the dentist, then went to TJ Maxx to do a little shopping.  I need some new jeans and until I lose some weight, I refuse to pay more than about $20.  I found a pair that will do, but as I was putting my own jeans back on, I noticed that I could see daylight - I had popped the fabric in the butt.  I have been walking around for HOW LONG, before today, with daylight showing up the butt of my jeans?

I had to go to confess to an employee that I needed to wear the new jeans out of the store.  She took me to the front cash register, where I had to go around behind the counter for them to take the electric alarm tag off the jeans.

My consolation is I was of course sitting down at the dentist's office, it was early so not a lot of people were out and about, and I'm hoping that most people look at my face, not my butt.  Unless they're behind me.  In that case I'm sure the inch of white underwear would draw the eye.  Sigh.

Change of topic:

Ever since we moved into this house I have hated how dark it is at night.  The outside lights we had were like large cans attached to the house, with light directly below them.  They light up a ten foot circle on the porch.  Everything else is in total darkness, including the stairs going up to the front door.  I was waiting for the garage remodel to be done before I dealt with it, because I knew I'd need new lights and would get ones that light up more than the circle below them... but also I put in a landscaping light system that I'd gotten at Home Depot. It was pretty easy to install and I'm really pleased with it.

Change of topic:

Thing 1 has always taken art classes, and I have struggled to find something for Thing 2 to involve herself in.

Well since we moved, the opportunity presented itself.  I got a lead on a really good horseback riding instructor.

She has taken three lessons, and absolutely loves it.  I really love the teacher.  She's this energetic young girl who is also teaching Thing 2 responsibility and independence and stick-with-it-ness more than I ever taught her.  She is so positive... I am so happy we found this teacher!  The only down side is it's a half hour drive out to the lesson, half hour back. And of course when you start riding, you can't practice at home, so she suggests we pay $60 more a month and do a partial lease, which will get us what we get now plus two more chances to ride per month, mostly unattended.  This works best if we can do it the same time as Thing 2's friend, so they can ride together and we can carpool.  Not quite there yet but I expect that's where we'll be.

Here is a little video of one of Thing 2's lesson.  This teacher doesn't need to go to the gym, she gets a great workout with each lesson.

Isn't she cute as a button?  

All right that's everything in a nutshell.