Tradition. . .

Every year for as long as I can remember, we have decorated eggs for Easter.  The kids usually start bugging me about it a few weeks before Easter and I put them off until a few days before because it always makes such a huge mess.  This year I didn't hear anything from the kids about this little tradition at all.  I started to think maybe they were just getting too old for it.  I decided that might be just fine since, you know, it always makes such a huge mess.  But I bought a bunch of extra eggs anyway.  And a couple of boxes of egg decorating supplies.  And I waited.  Still nothing from the kids. 

Gloria had planned to have a friend stay the night on Friday night which I realized would be our only decorating night so I decided to have her friend join in the fun.  Unless it would be too silly and little-kiddish.  As soon as I mentioned the Egg Decorating Party, the kids realized they had forgotten all about it but quickly made up for their lack of enthusiasm.  And it turns out that her friend had never experienced the fun and mess that comes with decorating Easter Eggs so that was just a bonus!!

The eggs turned out just beautiful, of course. . .

I'll let you decide who each of these belong to. . .

When all was said and done, it turns out I'm the one who is getting too old to decorate eggs.  I went to bed before they were finished but woke up in the morning to a completely clean kitchen!!  I call that win-win!!

Art?

For the first time in 11 years, Zach had to go to school on his birthday.  Someone had to celebrate so Gloria and I spent the day at Roaring Springs.  By the time we got home, it was late in the evening and we were cold and tired but Zach still felt the need to celebrate his 19th year by going out to dinner.  We told him to pick the place and, with a little prompting from Rob, he chose Golden Corral.  Gloria and I are not big fans of the smorgasbord layout but we tagged along anyway.  At the end of the meal, Zach began doodling in his dessert plate with his fork.  The following pictures are both disgusting and remarkable all at the same time. . .

Well, I was impressed. . .

Wednesday, May 25th, Gloria's Very First School Program EVER. . .

I wasn't as involved in Gloria's school this year as I would have liked to have been but there wasn't really any pressure to do much so I just sat back and watched Gloria have a really good year.  A few months ago, however, the arts director of the school got wind of the fact that we own a sound company and asked for a favor.  She needed a little assistance with the end of the year concert and wondered if we could donate sound and maybe lights and did we know of a good venue and, oh yeah, a spot light would be cool, AND some black lights for the 6th graders portion of the show. Um, yeah, a stage, too.  I ended up saying yes to everything and even worked it out for the program to be held in the church gym.  I questioned my sanity a few times but in the end, it all worked out and I'm so glad we were a part of it. . .

Gloria was very excited for the part her class was playing in the show.  They painted black clothing with white paint to look like skeletons as a part of their science unit on bones and fossils.  They also had mummies and other interesting aspects to their choreographed dance.  Unfortunately the paint on their shirts didn't work with the UV lights but we didn't find that out until about an hour before the performance.  We had the shirts but no kids so we (Zach, Gloria, Me) quickly cut out bones from white paper and taped them on to all of the shirts!  Gloria's teacher and a few other people helped out for the last half hour and we got them all done!  It turned out really great and was worth all of the effort. 

Each class performed to a couple of songs from The Carnival of the Animals and everyone did a great job!!

I would say there were about 400+ people crammed into the church gym. . .

This picture is from the finale'.  You can see Gloria's proud face peeking out from behind her class mates:

This is her class in front of the stage taking their final bows:

The school principal told her the next day that they sure are glad she goes to this school. . .

(That was helpful knowledge on the day I forgot to pick her up later in the week and she had to sit and visit with the school principal for 45 minutes.  Just when I think I'm in the running for that elusive mother-of-the-year award. . . . .)

Three Things. . .

First, an update on Lucy: She is mostly the same.  We thought she had lost her appetite since she wouldn't eat anything yesterday or this morning but it turns out she's just feeling very picky.  The vet told us we could give her plain chicken with white rice in lieu of the bland, expensive stuff and she scarfed it down three times today.  She is still yellow but she is also still getting around pretty well and is pretty perky.  She wears out very quickly so it's obvious that her body is working hard at getting rid of whatever is making her sick.  We go back to the vet in the morning to see what needs to happen next. . .

Secondly, I've been working really hard this week on getting all of my books organized so I can sell them for close to what they are worth.  I kept most of my home school stuff separate from the yard sale because some of it is worth an arm and a leg.  I've been searching the web to find fair prices and I've gone through every single book to sort it into piles: some by subject, some by title, some by curriculum, etc.  Probably way more work than was necessary.  I expected it to be a lot of work but I didn't expect to feel so sentimental about some of the books.  For the most part I think this has been a very good transition year for all of us.  After teaching both of my kids for the last 11 years, Gloria has had a great year at her charter school and Zach has worked pretty much independently of me.  Mostly because I can't do Calculus and Physics.  We've had some great discussions about politics and world religions but he sets his own schedule and finishes his work.  I check in to make sure it's all getting done and that's about the extent of my "teaching" this year.  But on the other hand, this was a big part of my life for a very long time and looking through the books brought back memories of snuggling on the couch reading books, getting those Aha moments when something clicked (for me as well as for the kids!) and even taking a scalpel to the belly of a frog.  Those times are all behind me now.  It's a little bittersweet.  I am pretty happy, though, to say good bye to all of these books!!  I'll have a big book sale on Saturday and then I'll be moving on. . .

And, lastly, the kids decorated their Easter eggs this evening.  I boiled the eggs and went about my business, eventually returning to take pictures. . .

It's been a tough week for a lot of reasons but today I actually felt a glimmer of hope. . .

Memorabilia #17: Artwork. . .

I realized today that when I posted Memorabilia #1, I said I would be going through boxes for a few days.  I must have been in denial to think that I could empty the family room, Gloria's room and the room Zach moved out of 6 months ago (leaving most of his stuff behind) in just 3 days.  I'm definitely making progress but it feels like it might never end.  One of the things that keeps me going is knowing that I can post some of the treasures that I find right here on the blog.  Plus I'm really enjoying my new scanner/copier/printer that is WIRELESS.  I'm easily entertained. 

Today I found piles and piles of artwork.  There is definitely a difference in the way Zach and Gloria draw.  I don't want to say it's necessarily gender differences but it just might be.  Gloria tends to draw pretty pictures with princesses and ponies, rainbows and unicorns, friends and family.  Zach, on the other hand, draws creepy, gory, bloody pictures with swords and jagged edged weapons.  Here is a little sample of what I'm talking about.  Both of the pictures were drawn in the past, the first one was probably drawn 6 or 7 years ago and the second one, maybe 3 or 4 years ago.  Try to guess who each one belongs to:

I assumed the second picture was depicting a little teen-aged angst but when I asked Zach about it he pointed to the creepy figure and said, "No, that's Gloria. . . "  And somehow that made me feel better.

Gloria's Vision Board. . .

You've Come A Long Way, Baby . . .

One of my favorite hobbies when I was a kid was to cut pictures out of magazines and make them into collages. My mom always had a lot of magazines around and I would spend hours cutting and pasting. My favorite cut outs were from cigarette ads. They used full size figures so they made great paper dolls as well as interesting collage subjects. I did a Google search to see if I could find an example and I was taken back to 1970-something when I saw some of the exact same characters that I cut out when I was 9-ish:

Maybe that's why the idea of a Vision Board was so appealing. I've also spent a lot of time lately pondering my life in the past, present and future. I'm definitely going through a phase of evaluating who I am and what I've accomplished and how quickly time passes and how very little time I have left in the great scheme of things which I'm sure is all part of the aging process so the idea of looking into the future in an intentional way on New Year's Day made perfect sense.

Instead of making a bunch of resolutions that I would fail to keep, I found myself thinking about what the coming year might hold. And how I can prepare myself to deal with it! Things like: Zach graduating from high school and entering college, Gloria becoming a teenager, a business that continues to get busier and more physically demanding, and, maybe the most difficult of all, turning 45.

Maybe it's just me but I think we all must reach a point when we decide how we're going to age. It started to hit me when I was about 42. I looked around and I saw people who were over 50 and some of them still seemed to really enjoy life. Others just seemed old. I decided I wanted to be in the former category. . .

It's easier said than done and there are always circumstances beyond our control but I want to choose to live in the present and not focus on what could have been or should have been or what MIGHT happen. . .

I want to remember 2011 instead of letting it become a blurry memory. The other day I wrote in the notepad on my Blackberry (my favorite place to keep deep thoughts!), "Someday has arrived". This is it. This. Is. Someday.

So. . . I spent the entire day on Saturday looking through magazines and waiting for words and pictures to strike a chord. And this is what I came up with:

I'm expecting this to be a good year. . .

Art, Eyes and Eggs. . . AND an April Fools Joke Backfires. . .

Like I said in my previous post, we had a very busy spring break. It wasn't stressful-busy, just something-going-on-every-minute-busy.

Take Thursday, for example. April Fool's Day. Not a fan of April Fool's Day. We woke up to snow. Not a fan of snow, especially in April. Megan stayed the night and I had errands to run so the girls had to get up early even though they didn't get to sleep until after 3 a.m. Which means I didn't get to sleep until after 3 a.m. We managed to get to swimming lessons in downtown Boise (almost) on time after which we dropped Megan off at her house, ran a few more errands and then picked Steph up for lunch. After a quick bite to eat, we dropped Zach off at home and I took Gloria and Steph to horse lessons (between Meridian and Nampa). It was a blustery, snowy, cold afternoon and the horses were restless. It was good lesson in spite of the weather but I was more than ready for it to be over. After we unsaddled and put away the horses, I dropped Steph off at a friend's house near State Street and headed back into downtown Boise to (quickly) finish up some work at the shop. I don't think I made it back home until close to 8:00 p.m. and I still had to boil the eggs that I had promised the kids they could decorate. I was admittedly cranky by this time.

In the meantime, I had encouraged Zach to finish the picture he had been working on for Tony's birthday that he started in February so we could (finally) give it to Tony at our family Easter gathering on Saturday. I was happy to see that he took me seriously and had made some good progress in my absence:

Unfortunately, he got a little off track when Gloria arrived home. I had been in the garage helping Rob replace a part on my truck when I walked into the kitchen and found this:

Yep, he painted her eyelids to look like this:

Kind of creepy, wouldn't you say???

Turn-about is fair play, so he let her paint his eyelids, too. . .

You really had to be there, I think, to get the full effect of how weird this was. . .

I had to order them to smile for the camera because they frightened me just a little bit. . .

They kept striking strange poses and I kept taking pictures. Don't ask me why. . .

I finally corralled the kids back into the kitchen to decorate their eggs and I went back into the garage to help Rob. Thankfully the kids are old enough to read and follow directions (since I was too tired and cranky to help) and they came up with some pretty cute Easter Eggs:

Like I said, it was a busy April Fool's Day but I had (mostly) avoided getting pranked. Gloria had been trying for three days to fool me. I had plastic spiders on my counters, the scary stuffed monkey in my bathroom and a flying (plastic) bat in my cupboard, but none of these things really surprise me anymore. She finally tried the rubberband-on-the-kitchen-sprayer trick but when I asked her to run water over the boiled eggs for me, it backfired.

I didn't even know what she was planning so I think I was as surprised as she was when I turned on the water and she was the one that got sprayed!!!! Again, maybe you had to be there, but it was just what I needed to get me out of my cranky mood! I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed!! Luckily, she laughed, too!

What a day. . .