Happy Birthday?

Goodness, this picture makes me laugh! Friday was Grant’s 6th birthday, and what a “memorable” birthday it was. This picture was taken moments before we dashed out the door for the full dress rehearsal of our ballet school’s “Nutcracker.” Notice the following details in the picture:

1. Courtney, Erica, Sarah and Claire are wearing heavy amounts of makeup.

2. Brooke is being blocked (on purpose!) by Claire.

3. Brooke’s hair is being brushed by 2 big sisters. What’s remarkable about that is that she has very thin, straight hair; hardly seems necessary to have 2 people brush it, right?

4. Trent is looking a little unsure.

5. Grant is smiling happily in his brand new, grow-in-the-dark Spiderman t-shirt (he wore that shirt at least part of the day on Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday).

So here’s the scoop: May seems like such a wonderful month to have a birthday. The outdoors are finally warming up and greening up (Grant’s birthday was an absolutely beautiful day); schedules begin to lighten up; there’s the excitement of the Indy 500 being held just south of us. And speaking of the race, here’s a little Worley Indy 500 trivia: Mick and I met at the Indy 500, were engaged at the racetrack during qualifications, our first boy was born on Carb Day and brought home from the hospital on race day. This year, his birthday fell on Carb Day again.

As of May 2012, May has also become the month of The Recital. Our ballet school has a recital every other year and it is scheduled, apparently, right around Grant’s birthday, which is May 23rd. Our last recital was Sleeping Beauty and the dress rehearsal for that also fell on Grant’s birthday.

So back to this funny picture. Since Brooke was playing the part of a “Party Girl” in the Nutcracker, she was required to have curls rather than the usual ballet bun. As I mentioned before, Brooke has very thin, straight, and might I add beautiful hair, as is evidenced by this picture.

 

So, we needed some serious hairstyling to achieve curls … or so we thought. We learned of this technique for curling hair and had actually tried it out before for the Scottish Ball on a couple of the girls, with good results. It’s an interesting process of twisting sections of hair and securing them with terrycloth ponytail holders, like so.

What we were hoping for was something like this:

However, for whatever reason, what we got instead was … well, the word “frizz” comes to mind. “Tangled mess,” too. And all of this unfolded just minutes before we were ready to walk out the door … Oh, and sing “Happy Birthday” to Grant. So, we’re frantically trying to brush out her hair, while she’s fighting back tears of pain and frustration (“All that for nothing!” she wailed at one point), and I’m trying to get Grant and Trent to come to the kitchen, so we can rush through singing one verse of the birthday song to him and he can blow out the candles that Sarah had quickly stuck into his “birthday cake” of chocolate donuts. Oh, it was something else, quite a shining Mom-of-the-Year moment.  And yet, in spite of that, I could see the hilarity in the situation and grabbed the camera. Several of the girls (including Brooke!) thought it was a terrible idea, but I told Claire to block her from view and told everyone it was a part of the birthday memories for Grant’s 6th birthday.  Indeed it was.  :-)

The P.S. to the story is that we grabbed the curling iron and headed down to the rehearsal. Rachel had plenty of time to curl Brooke’s hair the traditional way and spray it heavily with hair spray to keep it all in place. Surprisingly, that held throughout the night and she looked beautiful!

And so what of our Birthday Boy? Well, Friday, May 23rd was exciting for him! Daddy: (1) took the day off from work, and (2) mowed the grass! Either of these things would make for an exciting day for Grant. Put them together and, well, that is a great day, as far as he’s concerned! Ah, simple pleasures.  :-) 

And the birthday party – the one when Grandma and Grandpa come and we have a nice meal and a proper birthday cake and he really turns six – is in the works. :-)