Courtney’s Sweet Sixteen

What’s a girl to do when she’s planned and daydreamed about something for months, even years?! Well, you drag out the actual event for almost 2 weeks! I can’t remember when Courtney first started talking about her 16th birthday; I know it’s been at least a year. Easily. Who knew it would end up being more like a birthWEEK or birth-week-and-a-half.  :-)

Two weeks ago, we were being socked by a winter storm, followed by two days of arctic temperatures (I think the high temperature was –11 one day) which the experts said was caused by a “polar vortex”. The storm hit on Sunday; Monday and Tuesday were the extremely cold days, Courtney’s birthday was on Wednesday. Since it was still very cold and snowy, I had to work and Grandma was sick, we decided to postpone the party. But we decided to have a little celebration here at home with just us. Since I had to work all day, that ruled out anything homemade for dinner and cake. Kroger came to the rescue with jarred spaghetti sauce, frozen meatballs, frozen garlic bread and even a chocolate fudge cake! We had a few gifts for her to open and rescheduled for the following Sunday with Grandma and Grandpa.

 

Grandma and Grandpa were able to make it on Sunday and we were able to do all our usual birthday stuff: nice meal, homemade Strawberry Shortcake for the birthday dessert, all three verses of Happy Birthday, and gift opening in the living room.

 

The Strawberry Shortcake was delicious – tasty, fresh fruit year-round has got to be one of the nicest benefits of living in the Modern Age. The recipe I follow for the shortcake is very simple; I got it from a Strawberry Shortcake cookbook Mom gave to one of the girls years ago. I use it every time we have this dessert. I often use a heart-shaped cookie cutter to cut out the shortcakes, but sometimes I use a flower-shape, which is what I did this time. This is what Mick’s plate looked like. Can you tell it’s one of his favorite desserts?

When Mom picked out her shortcake, she found that she just couldn’t bring herself to eat it – er … him ... Her?

Ha!  The two “eye” holes were made from the candles. I promise we were not intending this when we were hurriedly putting the candles in the shortcakes! It was the only shortcake that looked like that – with the perfectly placed sideways crack for a smile. :-) We all had a good laugh at it, but strangely, no one could bring themselves to eat it!  :-D  It sat on the counter for a couple of days until two hungry little boys snagged it and I caught them hiding under the barstools nibbling on it.  :-D

We also planned a “friend” birthday party, with 21 of Courtney’s closest friends on the guest list.  ;-)

Here is the invitation we emailed:

 

On Wednesday evening, Courtney’s friend Moriah flew in for the party. Thursday found central Indiana getting hit with another winter storm; nothing like the previous one, but more snow and cold. Thankfully, the roads were cleared quickly. On Friday, Rachel made 8 homemade pizza crusts and a huge salad, Texas Sheet Cake and Orange Bars. Meanwhile, I picked up cousin Holly and brought her up from Indianapolis with me, and then, around 5:30, everyone else started showing up.

I think we had a total of 17 guests who were able to come. Our friend George made on good on his threat to crash the party, but he was only here for a short time, while waiting for friends to pick him up when they dropped off their girls.

The girls all had a great time eating, chatting, laughing and making bracelets together.

 

 

 

 

The fun continued on into the weekend, with 3 cousins and Moriah here Saturday night into Sunday morning, and cousin Holly and Moriah here Sunday night! Last night, around 9:00, the girls pushed back the dining room table and started doing some impromptu dances to Irish jigs, and when I got into bed around 11:00, I could hear them laughing downstairs while they played Apples to Apples.  It’s been an exciting week and I think I can safely say it lived up to all the months and months (years?) of build-up.  :-)

I’ll end with just a few pictures of Courtney through the years. Keep in mind, the vast majority of my pictures of her before the age of 10 have not been scanned yet!

 

 

 

 

 

Children’s Pilgrim Progress

I just found this great animated narration of A Dangerous Journey: The Story of Pilgrim’s Progress. I’m putting a link to it here so I don’t forget to show the kids.

Courtney just finished the original book last night for her literature class. When she got to the end, she said “It was all a dream?” Apparently, she doesn’t remember me reading this to her about ten years ago.  :-).

Our pastor lent me the Modern English version a couple of weeks ago, which I do plan on working my way through … once I finish the three other books I’m in the middle of. Some years ago, I read a good portion of the original, which I borrowed from Steve, but I think I returned it. Maybe 2014 should be “The Year of Pilgrim’s Progress.”  Not a bad goal, I think.  :-)

Solo Recital

It seems like there are far more things I want to blog about than time to blog. But I really, really want to write about Rachel’s first solo recital before too much time passes. Last August, Miss Kim told Rachel she wanted her to perform a solo recital. She gave her the list of songs she wanted her to perform: some of the songs Rachel already knew (her State Fair competition pieces), but others, she would need to learn. She spent most of her Fall lessons working on these pieces. Miss Kim told us to invite family and friends, so we decided to have a nice picture taken for the invitations. Our friend, Sally Puckett of Puckett Photography did a great job with that.

We set the date (Dec. 6), made arrangements at a nearby church and I planned on a few snacks to serve afterward. Unfortunately, a winter storm hit that day and caused us to postpone the recital to January 3. This gave Rachel a little more time to prepare, although with Christmas and New Year’s Eve and Day celebrations, practice time was pretty scarce. She did manage to squeeze in as much practice as possible the week leading up to the recital and she even did a dress rehearsal on Thursday night for us in at home. Miss Kim wanted her to introduce each piece, talking about the composer, song, etc. and Rachel really wanted to practice what she was planning to say. The rehearsal went well and ended up being about as long as we expected: 50 minutes.

We decided to type up programs to pass out,

 

and had them printed the day before the recital. For refreshments, we planned on lemonade and water, and I made Tiger Butter, Shortbread Cookies (which we dipped in white and dark chocolate to resemble piano keys ;-) and White Chocolate Dipped Pretzels and picked out fancy dishes to serve them in. We picked out some white roses to hand to Rachel after the recital and hid them in the back of the van. We made plans to arrive at the church at 5:30 (the recital was scheduled to start at 7:00 pm) just to have plenty of time to set things up and give Rachel some last-minute practice to loosen up. 

Everything seemed to be falling into place very well, but in spite of all our preparations, there were a couple of minor, last-minute issues that we didn’t expect. First several inches of snow fell over most of the state on Thursday. Thankfully, there was enough time for the major roads to be cleared off; however, we were left with temperatures in the teens and a bitter cold wind by Friday night. We knew that would probably keep at least a few friends and family from being able to make it, but we decided to go ahead with it anyway, rather than reschedule it a second time.

We arrived at the church in plenty of time to get everything taken in and for Rachel to have lots of practice time (I think she ran through all her songs). The deacon was there to unlock the church and greet us and even offered to get the drinks ready and move the piano to the center of the stage. So, what was the other glitch? Well, simply the fact that, for some reason, I took very few pictures. Maybe I was just so preoccupied with thoughts about everything being ready and our friends and family getting there safely (Uncle Bob and Aunt Melanie had to call for proper directions) and hoping Rachel didn’t get too nervous (she didn’t). For a long time, I didn’t even know where my camera was. I took a few pictures of the little ones watching Rachel practice beforehand and a short video of the refreshments area.

 

Strange, huh?

As we imagined, there was a very small crowd that night, but in spite of that, it was just a wonderful evening. Rachel looked beautiful and she was poised and seemed comfortable during her speaking, She played very well and didn’t forget any of her music – yes, she memorized all those songs! A funny thing that happened was that during Schumann’s “Child Falling Asleep”, Trent actually fell asleep on Erica’s lap.  :-)

Even though I didn’t get any pictures of her playing, I did videotape the entire show and took a screen shot of the footage that looks similar to a photograph.

In spite of my fears that I would completely forget to give her the roses, I remembered them and made a quick scramble to get them out from underneath Erica’s chair while everyone was still clapping.

In the end, it was a learning experience for Rachel and us. We are proud of her for all her hard work and look forward to hosting future solo recitals.

Snowmageddon 2014

 

It all sounded ominous: heavy snow accumulations for central Indiana, strong winds, possible blizzard conditions, travel advisories. By Saturday night, we’d gotten word that church services were cancelled. With weather maps like this, we were bracing ourselves for the worst.

And then, we woke up Sunday morning and were greeted with absolutely beautiful snowfall. Huge snowflakes that stuck to everything! Practically balmy temperatures (around 30) and very calm.

It was like that for hours. And then things changed. The wind picked up and the snow blew sideways; the temperature started dropping quickly.

What? Don’t all kids swing during blizzards?

And then it got dark … and really windy.

Around 8:30, the power went out, and the kids got really excited and lit the oil lamp and candles.

LOTS of candles.

And then, before we knew it, everybody gathered up pillows, blankets, stuffed animals, books, booklights and a HUGE down comforter and staked out their spots in the living room, close to the fireplace. They were all so excited. Isn’t it great how kids just live in the moment? Mick and I had unspoken concerns about how long we might be without power, especially considering how cold it was supposed to be for the next two days. I knew there was absolutely no way we could get either car from the garage out to the road, or even down the road, for that matter. And that wind and all that snow … it was just unbelievable. I was 8 years old when the blizzard of ‘78 hit. Strangely, I don’t really remember it, but I’ll bet I was just the same as our kids: excited about the novelty of it all and not worried at all about safety or warmth. Just the way our childhoods should be.

(Guess who was really, really excited?)

Rachel ended up reading a couple of chapters of Little House in the Big Woods out loud while I dozed (guess I wasn’t too concerned, after all. ;-). When I woke up around 10:00 pm, Mick had gone out in the frigid temperatures with sideways-blowing snow and hauled a small generator into the garage from the pole barn. In near pitch black, he wired it up to our furnace, making several trips between the garage and basement. At this point, it was still fairly warm in the house, so even though he got it all hooked up, he didn’t start it then. We woke up around 2:30 am, when the power came back on (Mick said later he was just getting ready to turn on the generator). The temperature in the house was just 58! The kids were still cozy and sleeping; in fact, Grant had taken his shirt off because he was so warm under that comforter!

We woke up the next morning to frigid temperatures (-11), frosty windows and a surreal, snowy landscape that looked like a scene from a science fiction film.

 

 

 

Obviously, Jack didn’t mind the cold.

Today, Mick decided to tackle the “driveway”. Driveway is in quotes, because he couldn’t actually blow out the driveway – that’s where the biggest drift on the whole property is. I haven’t taken a measuring stick out, but I would guess the drift to be between 4 and 5 feet high! So, Mick actually just plowed a direct path from the garage to a “low” spot in the driveway.

After a couple of days of little outside movement, the dogs were highly entertained by his work.

Unfortunately, the snow blower wasn’t enough for this deep, hard snow. Through the years, Mick has developed a system of chopping the snow up with a shovel, then blowing it away with the blower.

It’s long, slow, hard work that took about 4 hours. I checked the temperature around this time and it was 7 degrees. When Mick finally came in, he was exhausted, sore … and sweaty!

Here’s a look at the finished product. Our driveway is actually to the left of this shoveled out path.

Somewhere under this mountain.

The dogs were less than impressed.

And what was going on inside the house? Not much. With the timing of this storm hitting at the end of our Christmas break, it just felt like an extension of the break. We spent a lot of time reading, surfing, eating, relaxing. and looking out the windows.