July

Whew! Time flies in the summer! Here's another month-in review, if I can remember what happened.

Near the beginning of the month I attended the String Academy of Wisconsin's workshop for teachers of young children. I went because the assistant orchestra director at school recommended it and, lacking any kind of music degree, I knew that pretty much any training would improve my teaching of the 6th grade cherubs. As people were introducing themselves, I realized that some had come quite far to hear the wonderful Mimi Zwieg. I found out why!

She is a violin pedagogy expert from Indiana University. In addition to providing tons of information and conducting master classes, she and her colleague, Darcy Drexler, spent time demonstrating their techniques on us. With a few minutes of coaching they gave me many ways to improve my playing. And I definitely feel more prepared for my 6th graders. I'm thankful for the experience.

The view from my 15th-floor dorm room with Lake Michigan in the background

With a one-day stop at home, we then journeyed to northern Michigan with Tom's parents. First we stopped in Charlevoix, where the kids were the first to play in the new interactive fountain.

Until the end, they didn't notice the men sitting behind a one-way window controlling each spray and splash. Upon meeting these guys and seeing them in action, Jonathan added a new career path to his home building aspirations: Fountain Programmer.

We then immersed ourselves in some Upper Peninsula waterfalls:

At Munising, unless we were this close to the pictured rocks, we had a great view of the fog:

but it was still fun

We found our favorite driftwood beach:

And made great memories with the grandparents.

After separating from them, we visited Milwaukee and Chicago before returning home.

In the times between the trips, we've spent a lot of time with the cousins while their parents packed....

and packed....

and packed for Tanzania.

We were reminded that going anywhere with 7 kids age 8 and under is CRAZY even when they're good kids! At the county fair, we had 9 kids. Thankfully, we only lost a couple.

We also celebrated two cousin birthdays.

My sister is (hopefully) almost finished packing and will be leaving for Tanzania tomorrow. And while I know that the work they are doing there will benefit many people, I am personally very, very sad, as we probably won't be seeing them for 3 or 4 years.

It's always nice to walk along the road of life with your sister by your side.

Unfried Green Tomatoes

As I was upstairs getting dressed this not-so-early morning, Tom came in to say he was going to trim the lawn and needed me to come outside and watch Braden. I took a bit longer than anticipated and came out to find Braden helping himself to some of my tomatoes.

He did not discriminate between the red and green ones. And after enjoying their juicy middles, he spit out the skins. The deck looked like some singer had just given a very bad performance.

Lucky Number Thirteen

This week Tom and I celebrated our 13th anniversary.

I was playing music at a wedding recently, and thinking of the bride and groom, "They're just babies!" only to realize that at 23 they were the exact same age as I was.

How little we knew of one another in that giddy time of infatuation, and how little we knew of the magnitude of the commitment we were making. We had dated in the same city for 4 months, followed by 2 1/2 years of long-distance dating, breakup, dating again, and engagement. Phone calls and letters were enough to know that we were fundamentally compatible in such important areas as religion and temperament. But we knew very little of each others' day-to-day habits. These we learned through easy and difficult ways after we were married. And it was all good. Even in areas that we started at opposite ends of the spectrum, such as money (This man earned $19,000 his first year of teaching and managed to save a few thousand!), we've come to a generally happy medium, while our love has changed from infatuation to something deeper.

He's a great husband: smart, funny, wise, faithful to God and me. My friend and I once compared our husbands to rocks, keeping us grounded while giving us the freedom to flit and fly around.

On our wedding day, I would not have imagined us with 3 kids adding delight to special moments, drawing us closer, while demanding attention once reserved for only each other. I would not have imagined that after 13 years I would never once tire of living with him or regret our decision to marry.

To this day I could not imagine a better match for me and I'm thankful for him every day.

The Month in Review

As I've been a bit delinquent in my postings recently, here's a photo summary of the last month.

Jonathan celebrated his 7th birthday, for which I did not make the cake, but did make bug cupcakes for school.

As a side note, these ended up taking as long as a cake.

Anna's first ballet recital.

An 8-day visit from Tom's sister and her family, during which we went to the nature center,

picked strawberries,

and went to the beach twice.

We also managed to wrap up the school year and catch another nice little virus which we shared with our entire family and our neighbors. If we send them many more neighborly "gifts", they're going to move far, far away!

My sister and her family moved into my dad's house in preparation for their journey to Africa at the end of July. My kids are relishing the presence of all these cousins.

All-in-all a good month, but I'm still waiting for summer "break".

Bring on the Electioneerers!

I'm a newly minted soccer mom just waiting to give someone my vote!

Rotten Strawberries

Braden has been finding lots of treasures in our kitchen trash can, most recently a container of rotting strawberries. He promptly tried to eat them and was quite upset when I took them away.

When I told my sister, she reminded me that about a year ago I found Anna with sour look on her face, having just eaten something out of my dad's trash can. What she thought was chocolate frosting turned out to be coffee grounds.

Speaking of chocolate, here's Jonathan's impression of the cake I made for him on his first birthday.

He has since joined the rest of us in coming to terms with chocolate - very good terms, in fact.

Marching Around the Alphabet

Here's part of a little Mother's Day program from Anna's school. Of course this particular song has nothing to do with Mother's Day, but I think preschool teachers are masters of making this day special.



Here are the other people who make my Mother's Day special.

Happy Mother's Day!

Braden

Here's a picture of Braden I took this morning during his pre-breakfast reprieve. We always have a bit of happy time in the morning before he starts getting hungry. After that, I feel like he's hungry for the rest of the day, despite the fact that I feed him regularly! He eats just about anything, including salad, something my big kids don't even like. He does occasionally have his own ideas about what he will eat and when, which makes for some interesting mealtime interactions.

Despite all that eating, he's still a little peanut.

Party Pics

Thankfully Strawberry Shortcake didn't scare anyone.

I loved seeing Anna so happy about her long-anticipated plans coming to life.



Here's the singing

Mom and Dad

Uncle Mitch

My sister and I hated dolls when we were little, so this might be the only existing picture of us holding them.

Dad reading to Braden and Braden's very large twin

My sister and a real doll

The girls and cake

Opening grandma's card

Buzz Lightyear made an appearance

As did Mr. Turkey.

Take This Cake

Anna will be turning 5 next week, but since her cousins are in town we're celebrating her birthday tomorrow. In preparation, I made this cake which may have brought me to the end of my long and storied cake-making career.

In 2004, Lisa, my friend and former coworker in Virginia, was taking a cake decorating class and offered to teach me to decorate a cake for Anna's first birthday. I showed up at her house one evening to find an already-baked and cooled cake, sitting on the professional rotating cake platform, with a rainbow of premade frosting colors sitting in front of me just waiting for my bidding. There I leisurely squeezed stars onto my 3D bear cake for a couple of hours while enjoying friendly conversation. Before I knew it, boom! The cake was finished! Easy, right?

Little did I know how much work she had done before my arrival.

Somehow, since that time I have felt obligated to make a special cake for each kid's birthday. This one took over 5 hours! Who has 5 hours to spend making a cake while keeping up with 3 kids? Or preparing for a birthday party?

To top it all off, I'm afraid that Strawberry Shortcake is looking a little psycho. In the sample cake picture, the white specks in her eyes make them sparkle. On my cake, they make her look rather deranged. Perhaps she is reflecting the state of mind of her creator as I tried to cover all of the edges and white background parts of the cake using only 1/2 cup of thinned white frosting (beware of instruction typos!). And that was only step 1 of 14.

Anyway, right now we are in serious danger of never seeing Batman's smiling face at Jonathan's party a few weeks from now. This might be a good thing, as I am hard pressed to decide which character is scariest at a kid's birthday party: psycho Strawberry Shortcake, psycho Batman, or psycho Mom?

Scherazade

Although in my profile I describe myself as an occasional musician, in the past few months I've had more practicing to do than time to do it.

Currently I have the joy of practicing the second violin part of Scherazade by Rimsky Korsakov. It's the first time I've played it since college and I remember it as one of the only times I've ever had chills (the good kind) while performing. Normally while performing symphonic works, my feelings are more akin to panic, as I haven't had much violin training since high school, and I'm proof that a decent high school musician does not magically turn into a professional. Still, I love it - and hate it - but mostly love it.

Back to Scherazade, apparently the story is about a Persian King who, discovering the infidelity of his first wife, takes a new wife each night and beheads her in the morning. When Scherazade becomes the king's wife, she spends the night entertaining him with an unfinished story. He is forced to keep her alive to hear the end of it. This continues for 1001 nights, until the king pardons her.

Hmmmm....that might be more than I wanted to know.

But it's beautiful. Check out the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th parts as well.

Earthshake!

I was awakened this morning (at 5:36 apparently) by bits and pieces of my room rattling about. Further researched showed that it was from a big earthquake in Southern Indiana.


My kids, who are big fans of "The Land Before Time" were alarmed and excited when they imagined the devastation and destruction portrayed in that movie. Thankfully no one seems to have been hurt, which is amazing.

In other weather news, the meteorologist reported Wednesday that temperatures reached the 70's for the first time in 178 days. That's almost 1/2 a year, folks! We northerners must be a long-suffering, hardy folk. In high school I worked at the Wendy's drive-through window. When the weather first got warm, the customers suddenly became so pleasant! Even the surliest regulars improved for at least one day.

Needless to say, we are fully appreciating spring.

I haven't pulled out my camera yet, but here's one of my favorite spring pictures of Jonathan in our back yard in Virginia when he was 3.

Q-Tip Man

One of Braden's favorite activities is finding containers filled with matching things and relieving them of their contents. This includes Kleenex boxes, tea bags, marbles, bouncy balls, cotton balls, and Q-Tips:

In other Braden news, he has finally graduated beyond cave man grunts and the little sign language we have taught him to a few words. His first recognizable, consistent word was "Baba" for "Grandpa". Grandpa is one of his favorite people. That was last Sunday. Now he has added the word "ball" to his vocabulary. I've been getting tired of telling the doctor he isn't talking, but can't help feeling that with every milestone, I'm losing a little bit more of my baby.

Now for some Jonathan news:

In my spring break post, I forgot to report that Jonathan lost his 4th tooth on April 5 somewhere on Highway 65 South of Indianapolis. It was duly celebrated at kindergarten.

And now you know.

Spring Break

For the next couple weeks I'll be busy abusing my typing fingers practicing the the violin. In the meantime, here are some pictures from South Carolina.

Braden and Tom looking at elephants.

Cousins!

Braden's first time walking (climbing) outside

Another cutie pie cousin

Sleeping at Paris Mountain State Park

Milking the cows at Fair Oaks farms in Indiana

Hey, you've gotta stop somewhere! Indiana's a long state.