Wednesday, May 06, 2015

Kindergarten Play

Up through 5th grade, each classroom at our elementary school puts on a play once each year. It includes some dancing and music and also focuses on some subject matter the kids have been studying.  The best ever was when Cap was in 2nd grade when his teacher wrote a play based on old radio commercials from the 30's and 40's.  It was so great.  Others have also been cute, some kinda boring or hard to understand, but it's always fun to come and see the kids perform with their class.



Last week was Skippidy's turn, FINALLY.  She's been coming to those performances for her whole life. And boy was she tickled to get her turn.  Her class put on an adaptation of the classic tale "I Know An Old Lady" but switched it around to "I Know An Old Teacher," about a poor teacher who was drinking tea when in fell a FLEA.  Skippidy played one of the two fleas. She skippidy-skipped across the stage every time the class got to the part about "I don't know why she swallowed the flea...." and did a little flappy flea dance.  They sang a lot of cute little songs too. I love those kindergarten plays.









I have to say I also really enjoyed the end of the show when all the kids came to the front of the stage and everyone started clapping and....Skippidy was the only one who would take a bow.  She grabbed the hands of the two kids on either side of her and she threw her arms in the air and then gave a deep sweeping bow.  And then another one.  And a couple more after that.  No one else joined in, just the two kids whose arm's kept getting yanked towards the floor. I was rolling.  It was awesome.



This year has gone by too quickly.  It's been such a wonderful year.  I have LOVED each of the kids' teachers and am so sad that never again will all three kids be at the same school again ever.  In fact, it will be rare to have two of the kids together again.  I'm trying to savor the last few weeks but as always time seems to be accelerating forward.













Tuesday, May 05, 2015

Wiggly


Oh our little Skippidy. She's pretty darn fun to have around. Seriously. I mean, yesterday evening Troy tossed her up onto his shoulders after she was all jammied up and the big kids were still being cattle-prodded through their homework. He took her for a little stroll around the block to get some fresh air and say hello to the neighbors. And she was trying to sing Deck the Halls the whole time. She's just joyful.

One of her favorite pastimes these days is wiggling. She has four loose teeth. They've actually been very slightly loose for months and months and it's only been in the past several weeks that it seems like they're making any progress. She'll just zone out, wiggling her tooth with fervor. (She favors the top right one and pretty much ignores the rest.) Then she takes a break, lifts up her gums and asks if we can see any blood. Then she insists that you take a wiggle. She's following her dad's tooth-losing mantra which is, "Wiggle 'til it hurts, and then wiggle some more." She does get a rather wide-eyed, silent look on her face whenever someone offers to tie a string to her tooth, tie the string to a door and then slam the door. This offer gets made a remarkable number of times. I'm a little surprised at how many people seem perfectly willing to do this to our daughter.

As I look at her sweet little mouth I have mixed emotions. For the most part I'm pretty sad. Seems like the last of babyhood is falling away when those cute little pearls fall out and their little faces are just never the same. Then again, Skippidy developed some decay on the surface of her two front teeth when she was pretty little, maybe only two, and our dentist zipped off the yucky stuff and put in a quick filling. It's been pretty good, but the fillings are a little discolored at this point and so it makes the loss of her little teeth easier to bear. It will be nice to start fresh with clean new teeth. But still....those wee baby teeth - I'm in shock that another last milestone is almost here. The last kid to lose her first tooth!




Saturday, May 02, 2015

Spinny Toys. Why Did It Have to be Spinny Toys?

As we were having our fun and adventures over spring break something exciting was going on just around the corner.  Our school playground had a little construction going on - we had some pretty old monkey bars that needed to be replaced and so the principal and kids' council picked out some new climbing sets.  As spring break went along we made sure to walk around the block and check up on the progress every few days.  Finally by about Saturday everything seemed all put back together and safe to explore.  The new equipment sat ready for kids to come climbing all over it.  Our family had a little outing one evening to give it the once over.  There were a lot of really fun features like a climbing wall and wobbling stepping stones.  And then I saw them.  Five, count them, five different apparatuses that spun in circles.  And they could spin fast. The kids were delighted and ran straight for them.  But the instant I saw them I had a sinking feeling.  Why on earth would you put spinning toys on a playground, especially where kids go to play right after they have lunch?  I had a pretty good guess as to what was going to happen.  300 kids running out for recess and one after another jumping on the spinners and within minutes the school would have a playground-load of motion sick kids.  I wasn't wrong.  I heard that on the first day of back to school there were plenty of kids moaning in the office.  It's not a choice I would have made.

However, now that a few weeks have gone by I think the kids have mostly learned a little about the concept of moderation and I hear that the nausea-rate is decreasing.

The weather has been so fine and lovely that we've had a few evenings when we couldn't resist a park outing and some of the pictures Troy has come up with are real keepers.  Luckily we have so far avoided any serious case of the queasies.















Spring BREAK - The End

After our quick little jaunt to dinosaur land, the rest of spring break sailed by rather quickly.  We had playdates and movies and breakfast with friends.  We had Peter and Sheri up for the weekend and had trips to the zoo and an outing to a play. We had Easter and two different brunches and a back injury and egg coloring and purple pens.  But I will get to all of that.

There is a lovely young woman - that makes her sound like a teenager but she's a grown woman of about 25 which pretty much makes her teenager to me - who has lived in the neighborhood for several years now.  Sadly, she will be moving away.  She has the most glorious soprano voice I have ever heard.  She makes the church choir an absolute joy to listen to and sing with.  And she let her neighbors know that she had been cast as the role of Maybel in one of my favorite shows: The Pirates of Penzance.  Oh I love that Gilbert and Sullivan.  This production was performed at a darling little theater that was, well, really really far away in a tiny little corner of the valley that I didn't know actually existed.  It was charming.  The show could be described as somewhat amateurish, sorry to say.  No one actually sang badly, but not everyone was especially strong or solid.  I hate to utter a bad word about a group of people who clearly were having a ball putting on this show, but there you go.  I waited until the part where Maybel makes her entrance and I was not disappointed.  My friend came in at the top of the stairs behind the audience and let her voice carry through the room so purely that I shivered all over.  She was wonderful.  I was there with a good friend who also brought along her grandfather who turned out to be quite skilled in the art of parallel parking his Jazzy in a tight corner of the seats.  She mentioned that he was a fan of Gilbert and Sullivan but I confess that I was shocked and delighted when I looked over at him during the performance and saw him mouthing along with absolutely every word of the show.  How great, right?  Turns out he was part of a Gilbert and Sullivan company in Seattle when he was a newlywed 60-some years ago.  That was something I did not know!

The theater was freezing - I was so glad I had some park blankets in the car we could huddle under

After the play we had a little impromptu gathering at our house where Peter and Sheri were arriving.  What a blessing it is to have a life filled with dear friends and family.  I'm sure I've said it before, but I'll just keep on saying it.

With our St. George cousins in town we did little but head to the zoo and hang out at my house letting kids play and having friends over for breakfast.  It was really very pleasant.  We enjoyed our trip to the zoo very much - mostly because the new little orangutan was out in his habitat playing and being darling.



We haven't seen Rizzo out for ages - it was fun to see her in the water again





Going to the zoo is exhausting!  One does often need three bags of fries after that excursion.


The girls couldn't believe their luck at getting the back row on such a busy day
Very late on Saturday afternoon the kids finally convinced us that we would not be allowed to escape the annual egg-dying tradition, much as the grown ups had hoped to.

I decided that I really like having Easter morning the same day as General Conference, especially when you have a DVR and don't have a single deadline all day long.  My parents and Margaret and her girls came over for some Easter brunch. I made this yummy shredded ham with potatoes and eggs and you know, it was just tasty.  The kids had fun finding a few treats in their baskets, and I confess to allowing the Easter Bunny to spoil Cap slightly by giving him all three Iron Man DVDs but that was partly because it was a gift for his parents as well.  We were shocked when we realized that we had not a single Iron Man DVD in our posession, even though Avengers 2 was fast approaching!  (Yes, we all have a thing for Marvel around here.)





This is how I know the Easter Bunny really loves me.  Yay Crayola for fulfilling my fondest dream.  I don't dare to use anything in there because I like the way it looks in the packages too much.

Here's where the back injury kicks in.  After the baskets and just as my family was arriving I went up stairs to get something,  I bent over and twisted just so and....I think you know where this is going.  PING!  No more functioning Rachel.  I pretty much took the rest of the day off.  I was good for holding still and that was about it.  I assume the egg hunt was fun and a success but I'm really not sure.  I was busy holding still.














We had a great srping break this year.  It couldn't have been more filled with fun and gatherings and good eats.  It only took me several weeks to overcome my back pain.