Casa Camisas

It takes about a million tiny tasks to launch a group of children into the new school year.

Registration fees to pay at three different schools; supplies to purchase and organize; back-to-school and meet-the-teacher and back-to-business and PTA barbecues; scheduling appointments with the pediatrician for athletics physicals; registering Chromebooks with the technology office; setting content filters for said Chromebooks; getting in fights with disgruntled teens who suddenly can’t watch YouTube at all hours of the day; making sure the bicycles are in working order; making sure everyone knows the combinations for bike locks and gym locks and garage door keypad combinations and bus numbers/stop locations/pickup and dropoff times; putting money in school lunch accounts; paying for yearbooks and school pictures and spirit gear (ha) and club memberships and ASB cards; figuring out tuition and carpooling for piano lessons and swimming lessons and choir rehearsals and cross country meets; practicing getting up at 5:30 a.m. for seminary; organizing Friday breakfasts and carpools for seminary.

Forms and forms and forms and forms and forms. (My hand hurts.)

And that doesn’t even include what happens when we put on our long pants at the end of summer and find that they are all mysteriously too short, or there are holes in the knees.

All of this, of course, comes at the end of a stint of being the Activities Director for the family “Employment Enjoyment Summerslam Grill Jam Fun-Splosion,” capped off with a Grandparent Party Week, where we went on a low tide walk and the county fair and the Museum of Flight and Leavenworth and the Boehm’s Candies factory tour.

And a night-before-school campfire cookout . . .

. . . and massive school-supply free for all . . .

. . . and the opening of schuletuten . . .

. . . all of which left me just a wee bit exhausted on top of the early-morning seminary jet lag.

But hey. Die kinder done got launched. Grades 11, 9, 7, 3.

I intended to spent the following days having a knit-a-thon while watching the BBC miniseries adaptation of Middlemarch; but instead I ended up running a lot of errands instead (cause, y’know, we need food and stuff). In the afternoons when I had a spare moment to knit, I ended up collapsing into drowsiness, accomplishing little, and ending up tired and cranky when the children arrived home.

By Friday I decided to Hang It All and do my knit-a-thon — I watched almost the entirety of Middlemarch in one dang day — and by the end I felt awful for sitting still for so long (even if I did finish the second sleeve for Kristen’s sweater, hooray hooray).

Creeping anxiety began to take over; coupled with the familiar sensation that I’m somehow frittering away my life without accomplishing anything particularly tangible or meaningful.

Obviously, this means I need to get back on the writing/practicing wagon come Monday. But what does it say about me that I can’t even take three days for myself without feeling guilty?

Either way, I decided to fill our first school-year Saturday by trying out something new with the family: Mountain Fest at Camp Long.

This is a mountain-climbing festival for families sponsored by Seattle Parks & Recreation. Different climbing organizations come and let kids try out all the climbing apparatus for free!

Camp Long used to be a Boy Scout camp in the early 20th century, until it was decommissioned and turned into a city park. There’s a big lodge and little cabins, a fire amphitheatre, etc. all of which are available to anyone for renting out.

But what it’s famous for are the stone climbing/rappelling walls, among the first of their kind ever built as part of a WPA project in 1939. They’ve been preserved by the city, and the kids had a blast trying them out.

First they all tried bouldering (which was pretty easy for all of them):

Next the kids moved on to rope-assisted climbing (I’m sure there’s a more accurate technical term for this, but I don’t know what it is).

William couldn’t figure out the medium-difficulty wall, but didn’t give up. He took on the high-difficulty wall and made it to the top!

Katie had fun climbing but got nervous about rappelling down. (I admit rappelling is counterintuitive.)

There was also a rappelling course built into a hillside (I’d never seen anything like it before).

But best of all was the high-ropes course, which Brian did along with the three older kids. Sadly, you had to be twelve years or older to go, which Katie was not happy about. She had a bit of a personality breakdown on the way home as a result.

The city also had a bonfire with free hot dogs and s’mores for everyone to roast, along with informational booths from a variety of outdoors-adventure organizations. It was pretty much felt like Scout Camp in a Day.

I’ve read about Mountain Fest in the past, and I can’t believe we haven’t ever been before. Rest assured, we will try not to make that mistake again! Thank you, Seattle Parks & Rec!

On “safari” in the Lamar Valley! In addition to scads of bison, pronghorn, big horned sheep, elk and osprey, we were lucky enough to observe a juvenile black bear right next to the road. When he got too close, the rangers carefully shooed him away. Our goal was to have a picnic dinner at our favorite spot on the banks of Pebble Creek (where we had a surprise meet up with grandparents and cousins). Sad to drive home now but so thankful to spend time with these wonderful animals.

 

 

We made the big drive up to Yellowstone today via Grand Teton NP. The kids did not like posing for photos in front of the mountains; Katie has incredible tolerance for the frigid waters of Jenny Lake; Brian and the boys ate something called the “Signal Mountain of Nachos,” and we waddled around some geyser basins afterwards. Time to collapse!

All four kids performed at Benaroya Hall in the Seattle Children’s Chorus’ 30th anniversary concert this afternoon. (UGH, the dropoff carpooling! Let us never speak of it again.) I was sneaky and took a few pictures of the combined choir onstage….. and then a few of the organist & trumpet soloist performing Bach to warm up the audience….. and then when Katie forgot her hoodie backstage I couldn’t resist taking a few more pics with the Seattle Symphony’s percussion kit…..lots of musical sneaky sneaks today. Oh, and beautiful music from the kids, too. Good job, guys.

Way, way back in 2013, my sainted in-laws took Jeff, Eleanor and myself on a trip to Washington D.C. and a other assorted U.S. history-related sites (like Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg). It was a lot of fun, but I spent much of my time there wishing that I could go on a similar trip with my whole family.

Perhaps when Katie turned eight, I imagined, we might do another similar East Coast trip, but perhaps to the Boston area, instead?

Little did I know that such imaginings might one day become reality! Last fall Brian and I unearthed a killer deal on airfare to Boston ($230 per person, round trip!) and we began planning a fast and furious Magical History Tour.

(It didn’t hurt that we had friends in the region that we wanted to visit, too.)

So here begins a lengthy travelogue, which are possibly the worst kind of blog post, so my apologies in advance.

Day One

My first priority was to amend a mistake I made back in 2007 when I had the chance to visit the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art and then didn’t. I’ve regretted that decision for the last decade.

Regrets no more! On our first day in Massachusetts, we immediately pointed our rental car towards Amherst and the museum.

It’s a tiny little place — only two galleries — but beautifully curated. My teenagers were especially pleased by their temporary exhibit, which is all about graphic novel author/illustrators.

I especially enjoyed the museum’s reading room, which features a library of picture books alphabetized by illustrator’s last name (usually it’s by author). Cheeky, that.

Admittedly, I was slightly disappointed by the small number of artworks on display. The museum has something like 4600+ original illustrations in its collection. Only a tiny fraction of those were available for viewing by the public. It seems a lot of what the museum does is create moveable exhibits that tour children’s museums around the country. Which is fine, I suppose.

The museum bookstore had the biggest collection of Very Hungry Caterpillar merchandise, ever. But their bookstore was AMAZING — one of the best children’s bookstores I’ve ever visited.

They had a bumper sticker that says “The Pigeon Is Not Authorized to Drive This Vehicle,” along with a drawing of the Mo Willems pigeon. Of course we had to get one. It was practically written in the stars. It’s on my van now.

Amherst is also home to the Emily Dickinson Museum, so of course we had to make a stop there as well. It was fascinating to see the research that historians have done to learn about what Emily Dickinson’s life and habits were like — she’s still very much an enigma in many ways. Her brother’s next-door house was also part of the home tour, and it’s been marvelously preserved — an incredible time-capsule of well-to-do Victorian-era life in New England.

(Spoiler alert: this was but the first of many, many historic homes we toured. I thought I was boring the kids to pieces, but on the way home, William listed the home tours as his favorite part of the trip. He really enjoyed seeing what day-to-day life was like for people long ago. And yes, I did a series of mental fist-pumps when he said this.)

That evening we rode the T into the city to see the Red Sox play the Detroit Tigers at Fenway Park.

We had to do a bit of arm-twisting to commit ourselves to taking everybody to a ballgame. I am not a sportsing person. Brian is to an extent, but he’s not a big baseball fan. All of the kids groaned at the idea (especially Eleanor) but we heard so much positive feedback from friends and family members who have gone to games there, that we decided to give it a try.

I’m so glad we did! My brother told me that his experience there was “magical,” and I have to concur. There’s some seriously deep nostalgic Americana going on with that place. It’s so tiny and charming, and everybody feels like they are having a laid back party. We ate overpriced hot dogs and the most delicious kettle corn I’ve ever had. The audience did “the wave,” and someone got engaged on the JumboTron. What more could you ask for?

Oh, and there was a baseball game. (Katie actually giggled in my ear during The Wave and said, “we are not paying attention to baseball, mama!”)

The Sox won! Yay!

We actually left before the game was over (since we had a very long trek back to our hotel, and we didn’t want to do that at midnight) and the kids, who had been grumbling and frowning on our arrival, then begged and pleaded to stay one more inning.

Day Two

My bestie Libby lives in the outskirts of Boston, and she was more than happy to pull her kids out of school for the day and meet us in the city for some hard-core touring. It was so fun to see her again! And much was the marveling at how big our kids have grown, etc. etc.

We started our day at the U.S.S. Constitution!

It wasn’t our first time visiting this ship; we made a visit with Libby and her family back in 2007. Jeff was five years old and obsessed with history, and he loved the USS Constitution so much that he vowed then and there that he would be a “powder monkey” when he grew up.

(He has since changed his mind.)

We had lots of fun climbing through the different levels of the ship listening to the servicemen on board who told us the (very extensive) battle history of the ship, and why it’s called Old Ironsides. (It’s because it’s constructed of live oak, which is stronger than the regular oak that the Brits used.)

Afterwards, Brian, Jeff & William broke off from our group to take a quick gander at the Bunker Hill Memorial (which they were interested in since reading about Bunker Hill in One Dead Spy.)

We met back up at Faneuil Hall for a very, very crowded and busy lunch. We ate on a bench and felt incredibly lucky to have that bench. Geez.

Afterwards, we wandered back through the North End (aka Little Italy) to try out cannolis at Mike’s Pastry. The kids each chose a different flavor (there are twenty or so different kinds).

 

Our destination was the Old North Church. We arrived just in time to hear a docent give a history of the church. I was pleased to see that there was once a time when churches had pews with doors that locked. Would that I could have had such a thing when my children were toddlers.

And for some reason, the Old North Church recently built a restored colonial-era chocolate shop — Captain Jackson’s Chocolate Confectionarie or somesuch. Whatever — the point was that we got to see a cool demonstration of period chocolate-making techniques, and then get free samples of hot chocolate. (The mixture was so delightful that I bought a bag to take home. I’ll save it for Christmastime.)

At this point, it was time for Libby and her kids to head home for some after-school appointments. We decided to keep touring on our own. The next site of interest on the Freedom Trail was the Paul Revere House.

I found this house not so interesting because of Paul Revere (who, really, wasn’t all that interesting a person) but because it’s one of the few Tudor-era buildings in the U.S. Dark exposed wood beams! Purple diamond-paned windows! Fireplaces big enough to roast an ox! Be still my heart.

Annnnnnd for some reason, there’s a bonus bell displayed outside that was made at the Revere forge. Liberty and all that.

We had hoped to have time to ride the swan boats in the public gardens that day, but they closed early that day. Oh, well.

But at least we got to see the Make Way for Ducklings statues! This was a surprisingly big deal for me. They were all decked out in bumblebee suits and tiny handknitted hats for springtime.

On the drive back home, we drove through the Harvard campus and stopped to take a photo at Peabody Terrace, where Brian’s family lived when he was born. Aww.

We finished up the evening at Lizzy’s Homemade Ice Cream, where I got to have a big scoop of the Sweet Cream flavor (which I’ve only seen at ice cream shops in New England).

Day Three

ENOUGH of Ye Olde Colonial times — make way for the Industrial Revolution, baby! We headed north to Lowell to see the National Historic Park there.

The big thing to see there is the Boott Cotton Mills museum. They have a whole factory floor of period weaving machines there, and keep them running so that guests can see, feel, and HEAR (boy howdy hear) what it was like to be a textile factory worker in the 19th century.

Eleanor was especially interested because she recently learned about Lowell in her Social Studies class. I’ve been interested ever since I read Katherine Paterson’s Lyddie (one of those rare books I think EVERYONE should read).

The park rangers gave us all earplugs, which was wise. The racket was powerful — and only about a dozen of the hundred-odd machines were on! I told the kids to imagine 10x the noise, fourteen hours a day, six days a week. That’s the foundation the textile industry was founded upon. Think about that the next time you shop for clothes.

There was a museum upstairs with more information about the Lowell textile industry. Everyone was very interested in trying out this little tabletop loom.

After the museum, we then had a challenging time finding lunch. We initially wanted to go to a diner where Jack Kerouac was rumored to haunt, but it closed at noon (!). A second diner was supposed to be open until 2:00 p.m., but when we arrived, it was also closed (!!). So we settled on a place called the Purple Carrot that had tasty food, but was unfortunately understaffed and so our food took a little on the side of forever to get to us.

It was while we were waiting that we noticed that Katie had a huge hole in the toe of her shoe. So our next stop after lunch was a quick trip to Target for shoes (and my required dose of Coke Zero).

Which is all a way of saying that our tourism stride was interrupted and we didn’t see as much as I would have liked that day. But at least Katie has cool rainbow sparkle shoes now.

After all that, we drove down to Concord to see the Orchard House, aka the home of Louisa May Alcott and her family. Despite my best efforts, nobody else in my family has read any of LMA’s books, so I was concerned that everyone would be bored by (yet another) historical house tour.

But on the contrary — the Alcott family is interesting enough that their home is full of curiosities, and everyone found it really interesting, especially all of the drawings and paintings that “Amy” made all over the walls, as well as all the handmade custom modifications the family made to the house and furnishings.

(By an astonishing coincidence, we saw another family from our stake back in Shoreline leaving Orchard House right as we were arriving. Crazy.)

Admittedly, my favorite part of the tour was overhearing the Orchard House docents chatting in the gift shop, gushing with excitement over the new film adaptation of Little Women that’s coming out this Christmas. It brings me such joy to see fans find their fandom.

It began to get seriously drizzly rainy by the time we pulled up to the Minute Man National Historic Park, so we were more than happy to spend time watching the cool interactive media presentation at the visitor’s center. It was nice to see the full geographic connection between the Old North Church and the Battle of Concord.

Afterwards, we trekked through the rain to see the (reconstructed) North Bridge, where the battle took place. Brian called out “everyone who’s wearing red should go stand on the far side and prepare for everyone else to shoot at them,” and it took a few moments for Eleanor to realize that she was the only one wearing a red coat and shout, “hey!”

It was a lovely, peaceful stroll around the pond. . . or would have been if I didn’t learn the hard way that my shoes also had holes in the soles. A squishy walk for me. My shoes got so waterlogged that I had to borrow Brian’s spare pair (brown dress shoes!!) for that evening and the next day.

That evening, we headed back into the suburbs — Eleanor had been invited to Beth’s birthday party (Libby’s daughter) and we had dinner with Eric & Abby, who were our good friends in Pittsburgh. In the eleven years since we’d seen them, they’d had two children, and it was fun to compare notes about how much everyone had changed.

(Alas, their gregarious seven year son, Nathan, developed a bit of a crush on Katie and kept trying to hold her hand, which she wasn’t wild about. “He keeps trying to be my boyfriend,” she explained. I understood her distress, but privately found it adorable and hilarious.)

Day Four

Our goal on this last day was to head as far down Cape Cod as was physically possible and still make it back in time to have dinner with Libby and Scott.

So! Onwards at the break of day to Plimoth Plantation! First, a quick stop to see the “real” Plymouth Rock. Which I understand is about as “real” as Washington’s cherry tree, but what kind of red-blooded American tourist would I be if I didn’t stop and see Plymouth Rock??

Would you believe it’s in a sand pit in the middle of this Grecian temple??

There’s a ranger whose job it is to make sure nobody jumps down and tries to chip away a souvenir. I’m giving myself infinite kudos for not snorting with laughter during our visit.

Thus my personal Liberty Bell/Mount Rushmore/Plymouth Rock triumvirate is complete! USA! USA! USA!

Eric and Abby met us with their children at the Plimoth Plantation, since they had never been to visit. (Nathan was wearing a sweater vest, which he apparently chose as a way of trying to impress Katie. It didn’t work.)

FYI — tickets at Plimoth Plantation are expensive enough for a family of six that it’s cheaper to buy a membership. So, now we can visit whenever we want for free? Lucky us?

As far as living history museums go, Plimoth Plantation isn’t the largest, but whoa the dedication of its staff!

The museum recently added a Wampanoag village to its grounds, and the interpreters there were really interesting. They were all people of Native American/First Nation heritage, and were really open and frank about their interpretation of U.S. history (“we don’t see borders the way you do,” one man said) as well as what brought them to the museum (“my girlfriend is Wampanoag, so we came here together,” “my mom wrote a grant about preserving the Wampanoag language”). They were very much 21st century people talking about the past.

On the other hand, the residents of the Pilgrim village were hard-core dedicated to being their characters — real people, on a particular day and year in the past. We walked from house to house, asking them questions about their situation, habits of living, what brought them to the New World, etc. and it was mighty impressive how much each interpreter knew about their particular character’s situation.

The crowd favorite, of course, is Miles Standish. He had a pencil-point moustache, a cape, a rapier, and spent a long time describing a horrible siege of a Dutch village by the Spanish. He scoffed at the idea of the Pilgrims immigrating for religious freedom (indeed, very few of the villagers listed religion as their reason for coming to North America).

I also admit that the children and I began singing “Trogdor” as soon as we saw all the thatched-roof cottages.

After wrapping up our time in Plimoth, we headed down the darling Old King’s Highway for a driving tour of Cape Cod’s coastal villages. My friend Libby said afterwards, “think of every cliche you’ve seen about Cape Cod from movies and TV — and then multiply it by ten. That’s the actual Cape Cod.”)

SO MANY SHINGLE WALLED COTTAGES!! I told the kids they could shout “awww!” every time they saw something charming or adorable. Everyone then kept “awww!”-ing for a solid five minutes, until we all agreed that our throats would wear out if we kept expounding on the cuteness. Cape Cod is cute. The End.

For lunch, we stopped at a place called Seafood Sam’s. The guy who took our order was a stocky gentleman with grey hair and a double-heart tattoo on his forearm. He looked like he just stepped off a boat, and spent a good amount of time telling us that the fried clam bellies from Cape Cod were the world’s best. Ditto the lobster rolls. He was incredibly charming in his own gruff way, and I think half the price of the food was just for the privilege of talking to him.

The next stop on our driving tour was to see the Edward Gorey House. I was a little apprehensive about this stop, because, like the other literary houses we’d visited, the kids weren’t too familiar with Gorey’s work.

But once again, my fears were unfounded. The Edward Gorey House is CRAZY. The museum curators have done a bang-up job making fascinating displays of not just Gorey’s art and history, but of all the kooky stuff he delivered. Everything is displayed to highlight his quirky, kind of dark sense of humor.

The kids “got” the joke right away, especially when presented with a Gashlycrumb Tinies scavenger hunt. There were little references to all twenty-six dead Gashlycrumbs hidden throughout the house, as well as giant cut-outs of many of his characters.

I basically had to drag the kids away when it was time to go. The museum is small (only the first floor of the house) but we could have easily spent another hour there.

Onwards, onwards, onwards — finally, we made it to the Cape Cod National Seashore. We only had an hour to spend there, but the kids said that they wanted to “touch the Atlantic Ocean,” and by gum, we were gonna do it!

At the visitor’s center, there was a quote from Thoreau, saying that when you’re on the beach at Cape Cod, “a man may stand and put all of America behind him.”

Brian and I think that’s a quintessentially East Coast thing to say. I can’t imagine anyone in Washington (or California, or Hawaii) standing on the beach and getting such an impression.

I’m also pleased we were able to squeeze in a token lighthouse sighting. True, we have picturesque lighthouses on the West Coast, too, but this one! With the little cottage behind it! Who are you to resist it, eh?

It’s a good thing we had dinner with friends waiting for us back in Boston, or I don’t think we would have turned back for a long time.

 

Home Again

We had to wake up at four in the morning to make it back to the airport in time for our very early 6:45a.m. flight. Urgh. At least the lines for security weren’t very long.

And we had time to get a box of Dunkin Donuts before boarding. Very important New England experience.

Also fortunate: it was a direct flight, hooray.

We were all a little dazed when we tumbled out of the SEA-TAC airport and realized it was only 11:00 a.m. On the way home, we did the mental math and realized that if we headed down to Richmond Beach right away, we could say that we’d touched the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in the same 24 hour period.

Yes, I know we’re fudging a bit with Puget Sound. But it has saltwater and whales, so I says it counts.

It’s lovely to be back home, but I think our visit was all too brief. It’s making me feel optimistic about choosing more adventurous travel with our kids in coming years, however. Time to start planning.

I’m often fairly low-key when it comes to Easter. I think it’s because it’s kind of the last of the holiday crush: Halloween->Thanksgiving->Christmas->New Year’s->Valentine’s->Pi Day/St. Patrick’s->Easter.

Thus, I’m often disinclined to put together any kind of big shebang to celebrate. In some ways, this is a good thing, since it allows me to fully focus on the religious aspect of the holiday.

However, I had a difficult time focusing on even that this year, because of (say it with me): TOOOOOOTH DISCOMFOOOORRRRT.

I had a filling replaced at the end of March, and the tooth began to tingle/ache like crazy. It amplified right over Easter weekend, and since we were leaving town for Spring Break the Tuesday after Easter, it was very difficult to not think about. Especially when playing the organ for church services.

But we still managed to check off most of the holiday boxes. I managed to make Hot Cross Buns (delivered with haste before heading off to the Kirtland Art Center for a pottery class with Katie’s scout troop):

Then, on Saturday, the three big kids had a temple trip, so Brian and I decided to take Katie to the tulip festival at Mt. Vernon. I don’t think Brian and I had ever been to the festival together, and it was really neat to have some Katie-only time.

A few days ago, Katie came up to me sighing, saying she wished she could be a middle child, “because I would like just one person to be older than.” Sometimes I forget that, like Beverly Cleary says, “grown ups forget that when you are the littlest person, you sometimes have to be a little bit louder and a little bit more stubborn in order to be noticed at all.”

The color was spectacular at Roozengaarde, it’s been a few years since I’ve been able to go during peak bloom. Because of the temple trip’s early start time, we were able to arrive in Mt. Vernon right at opening time, which meant it was busy, but not too crowded.

SO many fields were “on.” I loved it!

I was especially tickled by the number of display beds that were created to look like different shapes:

And then there were the beds so bright you practically need sunglasses:

Afterwards, we headed to Edison for lunch at Mariposa. Brian hadn’t ever been there before. It’s pretty much the only good Mexican food I’ve been able to find in the Seattle area, and he was moaning at the deliciousness. Maybe it’s a good thing that it’s over an hour’s drive away.

Also the obligatory stop at Breadfarm. Ohhh, buttery cinnamon-y graham cracker goodness. I bought three packages: one for me, one for the family, and also one more for me. [rolls eyes innocently up towards heaven]

Afterwards, we hastily dyed some eggs while Jeff and William hosted a Magic: the Gathering tourney at our house.

Easter Sunday was peaceful (when I wasn’t worrying about my tooth). The program included hymn changes I hadn’t been informed of ahead of time, which is always exciting. I managed to execute my special “last verse” arrangement of Christ the Lord is Risen Today, which always sounds wonderful. My piano teacher, Jensina, was really impressed and moved by it (she gave me three hugs afterwards).

Brian went all out with fiendishly difficult hiding spots for the children’s Easter baskets this year: in the pantry behind boxes of cereal; buried under newspaper in the recycle bin; inside the piano; and hidden under bags of frozen veggies in the freezer. (I can’t remember the fourth hiding place! Too fiendish for the likes of me.)

Since I wanted to keep things simple this year, we only invited Kristen & Patrick over for dinner — and then they came down with a stomach bug!

We ate our grilled leg of lamb anyway, and then made up plates for them and drove them down to their house. I tried a new potato recipe from my favorite Beat This! cookbook. They were tasty, but I don’t think I realized how long they take to took (after boiling and squishing the potatoes flat, you then have to bake them for 40+ minutes).

And of course we had carrot cake. Which is so exciting it apparently requires jazz hands.

Happy spring — happy Easter!

Spring has sprung, and the Brooke is running . . .

. . . everywhere. This time of year always feels especially hectic for our family. It seems like there’s a different kid event every night. Meanwhile, the Dire Spectre of Summer is looming over the horizon, threatening to cancel all my personal productivity, so I’m scrambling to get as much writing done as possible before school gets out.

Every summer I tell myself I’m going to write every day, and every summer it never happens. It’s nearly impossible for me to focus with kids running around and squabbling — or worse, zoning out on YouTube. (Ugh, if I could throw Jeff’s school-issued Chromebook in a lake, I would.)

BUT that’s getting ahead of myself. In between all the scurrying, there’s been much to enjoy.

Eleanor did a great job in her school’s production of “The Internet is Distrac– Oh Look a Kitten!” She played a creepy Kermit-obsessed Wikipedia contributor. Her friend Esther played the lead, a kid who is desperately trying to finish the last paragraph of her essay about “The Great Gatsby.” (Eleanor’s character changes the Gatsby wiki entry to say that the green light represents Kermit. “That’s not weird! YOU’RE weird!”)

The next day, I made my annual pilgrimage to see the cherry blossoms at the UW. Laura is moving away to California this summer (I am very sad about this) and in all her years of living in Seattle, she’s never seen the cherry blooms, so I invited her to come along with me.

Brian was able to walk over from the hospital and say hello, too. It’s such a nice, fresh way to say hello to spring. It always feels like a big public party.

And of course I had a double-header: the afternoon after the cherry blossoms, I climbed in my car to head off to the annual Northwest Pilgrims retreat. We had a much smaller turnout than usual this year (about 55 people instead of 80+) and . . . I don’t know. I shouldn’t use attendance size as a measure of how successful the retreat is. But it’s hard not to. The tone of the retreat felt “off” to me, as well. For the first time, I began to question whether or not I should be there. Perhaps it’s just me feeling burned out on organizing the retreat every year. This was the sixth year in a row for me. Maybe I need to take a break. Eh.

It was still fun to network with other curious, questioning women from all over. I made a Captain Marvel hat for the silent auction. The first attempt turned out enormous:

So I unravelled it and tried again. Better, I think (modeled by Julia):

Here’s something hilarious: on the Sunday of the retreat weekend, Katie went to ward choir practice, and once again the director brought cookies for everyone to share. Katie grabbed an extra for me, but on the way home, she decided to take a little bite. Soon she was saving half a cookie for me . . . and then a quarter.

When I arrived home, Katie handed me this:

I remarked that it sounded like something from a “Frog & Toad” story. But Brian suggested that in a real F&T story the cookie would be completely gone, and I’d only get an empty bag full of good intentions. So I guess I should be grateful that I got this much. `

Spring is still springing, despite the absence of cookies. Our main seasonal attraction is this guy:

This is Mr. Robin, and he and his mate built their nest stupidly close to our dining room window. Ergo, Mr. Robin keeps seeing his reflection in the window, thinks it’s a rival bird, and tries to chase him off. All day long this bird is attacking our window, so we’ve got a fairly constant thump-thump-thump in the background as we go about our day.

We’ve tried putting bird cutouts and other deterrents on the glass, but it’s not working. I’m worried that Mr. Robin will injure himself. We’ll have to wait and see if the eggs hatch soon.

In the meanwhile, we’ve been having a bit of Arts Extravaganza lately. Since I’ve started a better household budgeting program, we’ve been able to set aside money for going to more performing arts events. Eleanor and I went to see “Marie, Dancing Still,” a new musical at the 5th Ave. Theater which many people predict will be headed to Broadway soon (it was written by the people who wrote Ragtime and directed by director of The Producers). It’s based on the statue “Little Dancer Aged Fourteen” by Degas, and imagines the friendship that developed between the artist and the young dancer who was his model.

I thought it was a pretty good show! What made it stunning was how they used digital projections to make the scenery look like Impressionist paintings. I was able to snap these images from intermission and the curtain call:

Meanwhile, Jeff finished another run on the tech crew of the school drama club. He was the spotlight operator for their production of “Newsies.”

Kristen and Sven got to come watch a matinee with Eleanor and I last weekend. The tech crew came on stage for the final curtain call and did a little line dance together, which was really fun. I’m so happy that Jeff has found his funky tribe with the theater people.

(Oh, and Kristen and Sven got to come over for a massive dish of paella afterwards. I put William in the picture for scale)

Finally, this weekend Eleanor turned fourteen! She asked if we could do an “escape room at home” party. I found a company that sells downloadable escape-room kits, and we chose the zombie-themed one.

The scenario was as follows: the girls were trapped in a hotel room surrounded by pizza-eating zombies, and the last surviving pizza was locked in the oven! To escape, they had to get the pizza, get a weapon, unlock the door, and then shoot their way to freedom.

The puzzles were . . . uneven. The best part was the end, when a “zombie invasion” required a shootout. Paper zombies were lined up for a shooting gallery, and the girls took turns firing at them with a Nerf gun.

 

Can’t have a birthday chronicle without Cake Commentary. This was the “She Loves Me” daisy cake from Rose’s Beautiful Cakes, split and filled with lemon curd and blueberries. Divine.

The festivities continued the next day, as Eleanor and William got to meet their “fur-st cousin,” Maggie Murderface, at Aunt Kristen’s house the next day. We then embarked on a yarn-shopping expedition (I’m planning to knit Kristen a sweater) followed by a lunch of savory waffles:

We then finished the afternoon watching Pacific Northwest Ballet’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which was very fun, even if it didn’t have the play-within-a-play. (I guess that would be difficult to do in ballet mime.)

Only one more week before Spring Break . . .here’s to hoping we survive the carpooling madness!

. . . but math puns make me number!

Get it? Eh? Eh?

Yeah, it’s gloriously stupid. And I love it.

We had a variety of math puns on hand for my favorite fake holiday, Pi Day.

As per usual, we had S’mores Pie from Shari’s Diner (someday, SOMEDAY I will pick a different flavor. I make the same promise every year. And then pick the s’mores one once again. Never fails).

We also had the big chicken pot pie from Costco, which we ate while watching Donald in Mathmagic Land. This year, however, we were able to add the Norton Juster/Chuck Jones collaboration The Dot and the Line. The kids were finally old enough to appreciate all the puns. It was lovely.

The next day was the Ides of March, and appropriately enough, I had Piano Juries. Ack!

Bit by bit, I’m beginning to get over my performance anxiety, but it’s still a big problem for me. The week before, I played the same piece (Debussy’s “La cathedrale engloutie”) at the winter quarter student recital, and I totally nailed it!

But at Piano Juries, I found out that I was the last one on the program, and that was enough to psych me out. (Ha — I initially picked up a copy of the program and thought, “hey, I don’t see my name. Maybe I don’t have to play after all!” Then I remembered that paper has two sides.)

My left hand somehow forgot what to do during the opening measures of the music (why????). I was able to rally and finish the piece (I didn’t stop) but I’m still annoyed that I blanked after so many perfect performances at home. Oh, well. Onwards to Beethoven’s Pathetique sonata!

The kids didn’t have such problems with their performances the next day with the Seattle Children’s Chorus. The kids were performing in two different concerts, so Brian and I decided we’d each attend a different one. (They raised the ticket prices, and we couldn’t bring ourselves to shell out $100 for this.)

I got to go to Eleanor’s performance (Jeff missed the concert to do tech rehearsals for the high school musical). It sounded beautiful as always — I was sad that I didn’t get to hear Jeff sing “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder,” as it has really cool polyphony.

My only complaint is the Denny Lutheran Church where they performed — it’s beautiful (and a little smaller than other performance spaces, so it felt more intimate) but the women’s bathrooms had only one functional stall. You can imagine what intermission was like.

Once again, Eleanor’s choir dress aged her about 5 years. A great way to welcome spring!

Brian and I went out for date night that evening, and when we returned, we found that Katie and William made adorable leprechaun traps for St. Patrick’s Day. (I thought they had forgotten about this, but I was wrong. Luckily I had a few random gold-foil-wrapped candies lying around.)

William’s trap was basically an impossible-to-enter-box that he dared the leprechaun to enter. (Reverse psychology, see.)

Katie’s was your more traditional pit trap. Nice use of decorative ponies, there.

And apart from those goings-on, life has been fairly quiet. My biggest recent achievement: successfully cancelling the Pinewood Derby without hurting anyone’s feelings (yay!).

And we’re switching Cub Scouts to meeting only twice a month, to match the Activity Days program. This got a unanimous “yea” vote from all the den leaders. And the Primary presidents are so happy that I was willing to be Cubmaster that they basically approve of everything I want to do.

Hopefully, this will give me a little breathing room. It’s been a tough couple of years, juggling two Scout troops, along with PSC, Northwest Pilgrims, and . . .y’know, the whole parenting-four-kids thing.

Eleanor recently submitted her high school registration packet. Ack! It’s going to be so different from Jeff’s high school experience; I hope we’re all ready. On her science teacher’s recommendation, she decided to take Honors Biology, and we’re all a little nervous about it. (Apparently the counselor felt obligated to give her a little “do you really know what you’re signing up for?” speech, which upset her. Blech.)

And William turned in his papers for middle school, which we’re old hands at now, so no big deal. (Wish I could go back and say so to the Freaking Out About Middle School Brooke of 2015.) William’s teacher occasionally will have a “coupon store” where the kids use their good-behavior points to buy items, and he used almost all his points to buy a hoodie with the middle school logo. He’s been wearing it constantly ever since. Aww.

Eleanor and I have both had a renewed interest in knitting lately. She’s spending time making little stuffed bunny toys that she wants to give to cousins at the family reunion this summer. I’m making a hat inspired by Captain Marvel. The first version turned out too big:

I calculated the gauge wrong. Ironically enough, this mistake happened at the Math Olympiad. Knowing that the hat would just end up in a closet, I quickly unravelled the whole thing and started over again. But we still took a picture for posterity.

Lastly, Brian and I went to the temple yesterday and stopped at Lil’ John’s Diner afterwards to finally try their sweet buns (they’ve been sold out every other time we’ve visited). They were in takeout boxes when we bought them, so we didn’t realize how huuuuge they were until we ate them this morning. Let’s just say: wowzers.

Jeff ate a WHOLE ONE. Or at least tried to. He ended up spreading it out over a couple of meals. Hollow legs, indeed!

This past Thursday we woke up to snow on the ground once again.

Noooooooooooooo

Fortunately, school was neither cancelled or delayed. Everyone was happy about that decision except for Katie, who woke up early, crawled into bed with me, and urged me to run downstairs to check for school district text messages.

Alas, poor Katie. School for you.

Other than that, life has finally gotten back to our normal pre-snowstorm life.

In other words, kind of ho-hum, nothing to see here. The kids had piano recital and did MAP adjudications (Eleanor didn’t place in the honors recital this year, although she was a runner-up).

We just finished a week of early-release days for William and Katie because of parent-teacher conferences (so . . . even less productivity on my part). Spoiler alert: the littles are doing great at school.

I made Polish “paczki” donuts for Fat Tuesday.

Yes, I know that’s not a religious observance I usually make, but I have a Facebook friend who lives in Detroit, and she posts dozens of paczki memes every year. So I decided to spend an early-release afternoon making them with the littles.

Second spoiler alert: I think we might make these every year. Yowza, delish.

On Friday afternoon, I performed Debussy’s “Sunken Cathedral” prelude at the community college winter recital — and I crushed it! It’s the first time that I’ve felt good about a public performance; and I think the kids in the audience noticed, too (several of them complimented me afterwards!). My teacher, Jensina, was so pleased she made “fist pumps” at me across the performance space.

I suppose the biggest event we’ve had lately is William’s participation in the Math Olympiad yesterday. It’s the first time one of our kids has participated in this event, despite past encouragement from me & Brian.

William loves puzzles and logic games, so it’s no surprise that he likes and excels at math.

Brian and I both signed on to be chaperones, which involved a lot of walking back-and-forth to keep our assigned teams company during test breaks. It was fun to hang out and talk, and to get to know the other parents and teachers.

The team that I chaperoned scored in the 3rd place ranking for all the 6th grade teams! And William scored in the 12th ranking for the individual tests. (His teammate scored in the 3rd place individual ranking).

The only downer was when we had to sit in the community college gym for a solid two and a half hours while waiting for the tests to be graded and awards handed out. This was a real drag, even though the kids were incredibly well behaved.

The organizers did their best, booking a variety of entertainment to watch during the grading period. Hip hop dancers, a martial arts demo, and best of all, a One Man Band. (Just like Bert from Mary Poppins!)

Even though William did pretty well for his first olympiad, Brian and I were exhausted by the time we got out of there. But to tell the truth, it was still a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to next year. William’s already talking about it!

Buuuuut the day didn’t end there! Yesterday evening, our ward hosted a “Spring Chicken Dinner” for members aged 50+. The youth were asked to come be food servers, and I was asked to come and play background music for the dinner.

Squee! I had just purchased a five-volume set of Piano Stylings of the Great Standards, so I was beyond thrilled to have an excuse to play a bunch of piano jazz.

I was quite literally jazzed.

All week long I practiced songs like “Moonglow,” “Embraceable You,” “Blue Moon,” “The Shadow of Your Smile,” “Bewitched,” and “Star Dust.” I had, it turns out, more than enough jazz to last through a three course dinner.

It was so fun to play all this music for people who appreciated it. I’ve always had a fantasy about performing in a jazz club. And best of all, many of the “spring chickens” came up afterwards and said how happy they were to hear songs that they remembered from their childhoods or young adulthoods. Yay! That was the idea!

And I’m sure that my family will be more than happy to get the Great American Soundbook out of their heads.