Pointe taken

This year, we signed up Courtney & Erica for their first summer ballet intensive, which was a 3-week-long camp. We knew they’d learn a lot and be stretched – literally and figuratively - and boy were they. To say the first couple of days were rocky would be an understatement. Day 1 was a frustratingly difficult day for both as they tried to adjust to new faces, location, techniques, expectations, etc. Day 2 was even worse, and Rachel and I spent most of the drive home giving them pep talks while they stared out the windows, looking defeated and exhausted. I started fearing mutiny and mentally prepared the ‘ol “Do you know how much this thing cost?” speech. I don’t think it would’ve mattered. On the drive there on Day 3, just before we got to the studio, Courtney asked me what road we’d just turned off of. After I told her, she said “OK, I’m just trying to memorize the route in case I decide to walk home.”  She did not sound like she was kidding.

On top of all the newness of everything, they also had to try to get used to “zee Russian accents” of their instructors. All but a couple of them were from Russia. During the intensive, the ballet school posted this picture on their FB page:

Imposing bunch, no? The lady in yellow is the founding artistic director and, in spite of the beautiful smile, was quite a tough cookie. They did like her, however. In fact, the tall, intimidating guy at the right end, “Mr. Alexei,” was their absolute favorite. He told lots of stories of his incredibly-demanding life growing up as a ballet dancer in Russia. This was their favorite quote of his: “With American dancers, you cannot slap them or insult them.  You must find different ways to motivate them.” The girls thought this was pretty funny, actually – especially when said with a Russian accent, which seemed to improve each day, right along with their ballet skills. ;-)

After those first 2 rough days, however, Day 3 ended up being the turning point, and things started coming together. They started learning their dances and getting used to the heavy accents. And they especially enjoyed seeing good friends Emma and Isabelle during lunch each day, sharing stories, jokes and food. They came home each night and entertained us all during dinner with their stories and demonstrations of bits of their dances. They made friends with the Japanese dancers who knew no English. We looked up a few Japanese phrases online, but they were too shy to try them out. They did share the common language of ballet, plus some popular American songs that they sang together.

Through it all, they spun this elaborate tale about how good all the other dancers were and how awful they were. Being latecomers to ballet, I knew there’d be a learning curve for them, but when I accused them of exaggerating, they said “No, we’re not kidding Mom!” and “You’ll see!” On the last day, the school put on a recital, showcasing what they’d learned, and, well, what can I say? I was stunned.

From the contemporary dance. I need a higher resolution image so you can see the detail in Erica’s arms! So strong!

Courtney is in the middle of this pas de trois.

I mean, how beautiful are they?! It was all I could do keep from standing up and announcing to everyone they were my daughters! I was incredibly proud of them. They learned so much … and I did, too. I learned that they can definitely hold their own in a group of dancers who, in some cases, have studied many more years than they have. I also learned they are awfully hard on their own dancing skills, but these pictures tell the real story!

 

Bathroom Makeover … Part 2

Here’s our fearless leader in his natural element: hard at work! Well, the project ended up growing, there have been unexpected surprises, extra trips to Menards and Lowe’s, a small fire underneath our house at about 1:00 am (no damage, except a humongous blister on two of Mick’s fingers), and some blood, sweat and tears.  OK, I made that last part up: no blood, no tears – not even when he burnt his hands. Plenty of sweat, though. ;-)

The skylight is out and the opening closed up and re-roofed – and just in time: it ended up raining that night! Glenn came on Saturday and put up drywall (a huge help!) while Mick worked on the skylight. He mudded last night and now it feels like we’re at about the halfway point. Sanding (possibly more mudding), painting the cabinets, painting the walls and then the flooring.

And after a week of it being out of commission, we still walk into that bathroom thinking we can wash our hands. HA!

Bathroom makeover in 4 days?

 

We did a major bathroom renovation about 15 years ago. It was a VAST improvement over what we had originally and has served us well since then. However, a few issues had cropped up in the past few years and it was starting to look a little rough around the edges. So, now we have a new (to us) bathroom vanity, dark brown ceramic floor tiles and a gallon of white semi-gloss. Mick has this week off and is already well into our second bathroom remodel.

One of these days I’ll get out the pictures of the bathroom as it looked originally and scan them in. There were definitely some quirky things about that bathroom, like the 40-gallon water heater just inside the door. You couldn’t lean over to wash your hands in the tiny sink without bumping into it.  :-D

The first picture in this post is a before picture I took yesterday morning, and the one below shows the same area as it looked a few hours later. Sadly, the skylight has to go. :-(  When we added onto our house back in 2007, the new roof attached right next to the skylight. Even then, one of the older framer guys was worried it might cause a leak … and it did. We’ve tried to have it fixed several times, but haven’t been able to make it work.

Today, Mick is planning to square up that wall on the right, so the sink base will fit properly, and also begin tiling the floor. More to come!

“Jane Eyre” by Charlotte Bronte

A long, long time ago, in a world that didn’t used to be quite so busy, it seems like I used to post an occasional picture of someone reading. It seems like it’s been a long time since I’ve done that. We are still reading around here, and this photo is evidence of that.

She knows the story. She’s seen the movie. But for the first time, Rachel is reading this classic … and she’s loving it!

Grant’s 6th

Grant’s at the age now where he really anticipates his birthday, counting down the months, weeks and days. He has a lot of expectations for his 6th year. In the past couple of months, he has made a couple of predictions:

• “When I’m 6, I’m going to take ballet”
• “When I’m 6, I’m going to be a football player”

(When I reminded him about the ballet, he said “I’m going to do both!”)

• And last night “Now that I’m 6, I’m going to drink Pepsi.” HA! 

Because it had been April since Mom and Dad been here and I’d done absolutely nothing with my flower beds, we had to do some last-minute landscaping on Saturday. If I don’t at least weed the flower beds, it is impossible for Mom to keep from doing some weeding while she’s here; she’s powerless to stop herself! So, the girls helped out a lot by weeding the flower beds, while I got some flowers and mulch.

Here are before and after shots:

Nothing too dramatic, but it’s amazing what a difference a few petunias and some mulch makes!

So, back to the Birthday Boy. Here he is, descending the stairs in all his glory. :-) I had to be quick with the camera – it’s a little blurry because he was moving so fast!!  Ha!

We had barbecue chicken, mac ‘n cheese, rolls and salad. The girls decorated nicely with streamers and the good dishes. One of these days, I’m going to try to be more on the ball and get a picture of the decorations and the dinner table! We’ve got 2 more birthdays to celebrate this year so here’s hoping.  :-)

He also requested “chocolate cake,” which around here translates to Mocha Layer Cake. (Grant: “No, I want chocolate cake.” Me: “Mocha Layer Cake is chocolate cake.” :-)

He raced us from the cake to the gifts. Yes, he was excited.  :-) Grant has been in a Spider Man phase lately. He’s not seen the movie – I don’t think he knows there is a movie – but is intrigued by the idea of Spider Man.  :-)  So, I bought several Spider Man gifts and also splurged on Spider Man wrapping paper, which you can just barely see in the next picture.

 

And here is the one gift I got a picture of Grant opening: a Cars coloring book. Why did I only get one picture? Because my camera battery died! Grrrr!!!!

I put the batteries in the charger and we watched him open the rest of the gifts, ate the cake and ice cream, then went outside to play for a while. We did this partly because his final gift couldn’t be wrapped and had to be brought up from the basement and set up. In order to capture this, I grabbed the partially-charged battery and started snapping away. Drum roll please (yes, I did that on purpose ;-)

 

Oh there’s been lots of excitement over this gift! I was at a Once Upon a Child back in March or April with the boys and Grant actually spotted this drum set on a high shelf. He pointed it out to me, but I smiled and said something like “that’s neat,” but inside I was thinking “No way!!”. When I told Mick about it that night, he said “Did you get it?” “How much was it?” So, I went back to the same store a week later, just intending to shop for Sarah’s birthday and I noticed it was still there. I spent about 15 minutes contemplating whether or not to get it before I finally decided to. It’s been hidden in our basement, covered with a tarp under the ping pong table ever since.

 

Contrary to my fears, he has NOT played the drums day and night, nonstop. :-) Like all the rest of the toys, he plays them in spurts. And if I do say so myself, he actually sounds pretty good!  :-)

And lastly, a stroll through the years …

   

 

 

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. :-)

SuperTrent!

 

Yeah, this definitely falls under the “Favorite Photos” category. This was a family project we undertook on a cold, snowy January afternoon when Trent was about 3 months old. The goal was that he would be asleep when we took the picture and it would look like this was his dream, but every time I got him to sleep and laid him down, he woke right up! Ha! He’s STILL a light sleeper. ;-)

The girls were very helpful with ideas about how to do this. The “buildings” he’s flying over are VHS videotapes laid on end, some with bits of construction paper for the lighted windows. The “moon” was a sheet. He was wearing a pair of white socks that passed for tights on his stubby legs and we had a red onesie we were able to slip a blue shirt over. I remember it took a long time to get to this point – probably a couple of hours, literally. But the kids were so excited throughout and the end result was far better than what we hoped.  :-)