All State

This weekend was all about my boy. I already told you where we were and why we were there, so, how about telling you what we did?




I took him out for pizza, 'cause that's what you do with boys.




He made a little music too.




We had breakfast at a cereal bar. Seriously. It was so cool!




This is the delicious mess he ordered up.



Now, I am definitely not a city girl. I like taking pictures of trees and, well, natural things. I also didn't have much time to explore and think about picture-taking. But still, I had my camera everywhere and saw some things that I liked.





Then I found something a little bit more to my picture-taking liking.



I ran into my junior high band director.



This man so greatly influenced my musical life. He made sure I went to see the Nutcracker so I could see a real orchestra. He's the one that put a bassoon in my hand. He taught both of my brothers and myself. He even played a song for my wedding. It was such a pleasure to introduce him to my son, who plays the same instrument he does, and to tell him that I'm a music teacher now.

But most of all, there was a concert. An awesome concert. And my boy was in it.

My Girl Rocks

Me: That's a pretty picture you're drawing there (noticing the swirly, pointy, flower-ish shape on the page).

Emma: It's a symbol for girls that says, "Hey. I'm a girl. I can get by on my own, thanks. It's for girls who know what they're doing."

Me: Cool. I love the colors.

Daily Bliss: a bath, smack in the middle of the afternoon
Wake-up Playlist: Man on the Moon, REM

Soaking It In

My heart is full, my eyes are tired, my belly is still trying to make sense of dinner (pasta? at 9:30 PM? what?). The fairy costume has remained untouched today. It's a good thing they can choose to do their reports on Wednesday or Thursday.
The entire day has been saturated with Yankee rain. You know the kind? Well, if you don't live here you do. Florida's rain drops are fat and violent. They splat and pelt. And when Florida's rain comes down, it's accompanied by startling cracks of thunder and lightning. But today's rain has been more what I remembered from my Midwestern childhood. All day long it rained, heavy clouds hung in the gray sky, and it was a soaking, deep, gentle rain. At one point, it was even misting out there. Mist! The snow of the above-freezing precipitation world. It drifts and floats to the ground, getting there whenever it feels like it should and not a moment sooner. The mist brought a very un-May-ish chill to the air. I rather enjoyed the change.
Emma's SAT scores are in for the year and they were astounding. I was explaining the results to her while we were still in the classroom and her teacher actually asked me to move out of earshot of the other children. I think I won't post them all, but know that my second grader received two post-high-school scores. Awesome.
Andrew's spring band concert was this evening and it was so impressive. The director is very talented and she's got, I think, a fantastic music program going. It's fun to see all those kids on stage. Some of them are nervous, some are having fun and some are more in tune with their instrument than others. He did well and enjoyed himself immensely, which is the whole point. We went out for dinner afterward, since we hadn't time to eat before the concert. He was behind a music stand the whole time, but I took a picture anyway (Drew's the one in the middle):

And now I find my eyes will not stay open any longer. Fairy costume. Tomorrow.

Daily Bliss: English peas for a snack! It's so fun to unzip their little pods and see all the peas lined up in there, just waiting to be eaten. The kids liked them almost as much as I did. which is saying a lot.
Wake-up Playlist: Winter Birds -Ray LaMontagne

Busy-Ness

My sister-in-law, Mindy, tells me that she knows we are crazy-busy when I don't blog regularly. She's probably right. We shall see if I can make up for it while all of my machines at work are happily humming along and I have nothing to do but make sure they all have bellies full of paper. Last week and the weekend that accompanied it were just insane. You all know that Chris was out in Orlando with Andrew at his first-ever TSA conference. I sent my camera along with Chris (that's why there were no photos of blueberry picking or pie, Amy!). So, here's a little proof of where they were: He's so cute, all business-like in his official blazer, though he'd never allow me to say so in public. He was a voting delegate for their club. Each club has two delegates that cast votes for the organization's officers for the upcoming year. Also? There was a lot of gaming going on. Food Court lunches are the best I think I said before that he was a finalist in all three of his events and came in third place in one of them. He got to bring home the team's trophy for the weekend and it was in the living room, on display for all to see.

And on Sunday, Emma had her first piano recital! We are SO proud of her! As is evidenced by the story of the Spelling Bee Choke, she has never gotten through anything on stage. She cried every time she was a flower girl (one time, she even refused to walk down the aisle), she has choked at every spelling bee, and the few times she has had to sing with her class on stage have terrified her enough that she absolutely refuses to be in the chorus at school. But she made it through her recital piece. No. Wait. She owned it. She loved her special dress that we bought, She played so perfectly and musically. There's a difference between playing the notes and playing the song. And she definitely played the song, simple though it was. It's surprising to note that you can hear a difference between those two things, even in the first year of playing. And when it was all over, she was thrilled to get a bouquet of flowers from her daddy. All the excitement was so overwhelming that we didn't notice until it was over that she had artwork on display in the lobby gallery as well. This was a Fine Arts Showcase, not just a piano recital. And none of us, including the Artist Herself, were aware that she was also a featured artist. I'm sure someone sent home the information, but I probably missed it in the mountain of other end-of-school-year papers. Here she is, explaining that it is a fish print, a Japanese technique, that she made using an actual fish! On top of all the good stuff, there was other crappy stuff. The only one I'll share publicly is that our car needed a new radiator. It was spewing coolant everywhere. My boys (hubby, brother, dad and son) took care of that for us on Monday night while I made a big pot of black bean soup to feed everybody. So, that problem is solved. A mountain of others remain. But that's the way it goes, isn't it?

DAILY BLISS: Emma, conquering a little bit of her own fear

Off

Things have been a little off around here, it's true.
Today was more of the same.
My guts are wrenched for the pain and loss a dear friend is suffering.
It's the sort of thing that makes you look at the world through different-colored glasses than usual, and let me tell you, they're not the rose-colored ones that people like to talk about.
You just sort of shake your head and you don't understand. You know that nobody ever understands the hard stuff, but you still feel like you need to try. And it doesn't work.

Sigh.

Some good news, though - Andrew and Chris are in Orlando for the Florida State Technology Student Association Conference. Kids from schools all over the state come and compete in a wide variety of events. Andrew's in three events over the next three days, and in his first event, the Multimedia Presentation, he is a top-10 finalist! That means he had to put on a navy blazer and a TSA tie and be interviewed. We won't know his final placement until Saturday, but it doesn't really matter to me. I think it's fantastic that he's already done so well. I mean, it's one of those things where you aren't really surprised, but it's still surprisingly awesome.

DAILY BLISS: a nest full of baby mockingbirds in my front yard - i think it's the same pair that nested there last year. i'm loving the sweet little hungry noises they make!

Hello, there

Well, hi. I don't really know where I've been. I haven't said anything here for several days and that's rather surprising. There have been things I thought of writing and just didn't. There have been things I thought were interesting and it turned out that they weren't. Sometimes you just don't have much to say. And I don't really suppose that's changed much, but - here's the odd thing about blogging - I feel compelled to check in, say hi and give you the rundown of our weekend anyway.
Saturday's art show went well. It was a Family Fun Fair sponsored by the Lakeland Women's Club or something like that. They have art on display from students around town and little activities and crafts set up.
Emma's selected piece was a bit of torn paper work depicting an astronaut with a jaunty ponytail:


A couple of her friends also had pieces on display. It was very fun to run into them while they were all wearing their "Featured Artist" name badges and feeling important. Also, there was a juice-and-cookies reception. It does not get better than that.
Later on Saturday, I endured the pageant birthday party. They had a girl come in and do hair and makeup for the "contestants" and Emma got glittery green hair spray. She was awfully proud of that. Here she is in full regalia, makeup, an old Lapis slip dress (that I found ages ago at a thrift store for a steal) and full-on stilettos from Nana (whose grown-up feet are the same size as Em's 8-year-old ones, so the hand-me-downs are deliciously fun)

The scarf was an add-on of her own choosing. She also wanted a brooch and some costume jewelry. When I suggested that might be too many accessories, she replied, "You can never have too many accessories!" Of course. I should have known.
Here she is on the runway. She was Miss California - "Starr Golden."

She had a pretty good time, but I did not. I don't know that I've ever been in a room with more fake boobs. I don't mean to come off like some self-righteous hippie. I just mean, you know, it wasn't my crowd. Having my second grader shake her booty on-stage to a song called "Nasty Girl" isn't my idea of fun.
Sunday afternoon was spent with my bestie, a chick flick and a tasty bottle of wine, and no children. That did much to heal the party damage.
I am knitting furiously and will update one and all with an entertaining and shocking tale from my knitting basket soon. I just hope to have a few photos and a little more information before I bare my yarn-y soul to you.
I guess there was more to say than I thought!

DAILY BLISS: strawberry jam, made by my dear friend, eaten by the spoonful. no need for bread, thanks.

Things to Brag About

This was Report Card Day! Both kids came home with straight A's (Emma's were straight S's, due to the kindergarten grade scale.), and I am so proud of them!
Andrew turned in his very first science project, and I was so glad to have it over with.














I made a cake for my grandma's birthday. I'm proud of that too.
We celebrated my grandma birthday at her house with my aunt and uncle (who live so far away we haven't seen them but once in three years) and the whole family gang who live here already. There was this moment that I looked around the room and listened for just a minute. Here were 13 or so people, some of whom liked each other at the time and some not so much, all crammed in a tiny room laughing and telling stories. There were constantly two or three conversations shooting across the room at the same time. It was really loud and probably would have been uncomfortable if they were just friend-people. But this was family. Liking each other at the moment doesn't have to matter. Seeing each other often doesn't either. Somewhere along the line, through blood or through legal documents, you're linked. And that's enough.

DAILY BLISS: Surprise Coffee on my desk this morning. OH - and did I mention that my kids both made straight A's?

<3 Christy