First of all, I'd like to wish a happy 40th to my friend, Dana, who just celebrated the BIG ONE last weekend! We had a great "girls' night out" at Carrabba's and, as usual, ate way too much! Hope the evening was special for you, Dana...you deserve it! Dana is one of the hardest working, most organized and "together" friends I have....and I hope to be as clean as she is one day!
Michelle, Dana and ShannonEarlier this month, we celebrated Dr. Seuss' Birthday in the elementary library and the kids got to dress like their favorite Seuss characters. Sophie won a prize for her "Star-bellied Sneetch" costume....
She's on the left in the yellow shirt with a star on her belly ('cuz she's a star-bellied sneetch, get it?)The kids performed at their school's talent show a couple of weeks ago. They did their blue-grass-y version of "You Are My Sunshine"....it's the same one they did at Kevin's bday party, for those of you who saw that. They were the closing act and their final chorus was a sing-along this time with the whole crowd chiming in, as well as all the performers from the whole show joining them on stage. Very sweet!
Jacob had his winter sports banquet to close out basketball season. He had a great time playing for the middle school team and the team posted it's winningest (is that a word?) season ever! Here he is with his friends, Alex and Andrew, at the banquet.
And for Presidents' day, Isaac's kindergarten class dressed up as their favorite presidents and sang the "President's Song" at the school PTO meeting last week. Isaac was George Washington and sported a gi-normous wig made out of posterboard...not the most comfortable creation his mom has ever forced him to wear!
He's on the far right, in case you don't recognize him under those stiff, yet stylish curls.ALSO, this month (I told you we were busy!!) the kids were asked to sing at the annual "Top Ten" banquet, which honors the top ten graduating seniors at our school each year. Our four kids, along with the Bresnahan children (who also have 4 kids at our school), sang the school's alma mater at the banquet held at a local country club. It was fun, and we were honored to be asked!
This week, Mary Rose had to dress up to present a book report in front of the "upper" students (the higher grades who are upstairs) and for the camera crews (see explanation below), so we created some very unflattering concentration camp couture for her report on "The Boy In the Striped Pajamas." For those of you who haven't heard of this book, we highly recommend this account of the Holocaust through the eyes of a German child. They also just released movie version, but I haven't seen it, so don't know whether it is recommendable. Spoiler alert!!! --Keep Kleenex handy for the ending of the book!
Here she is with cameras rolling! (She hated every minute of it! How sad that our talented child absolutely HATES attention!)And finally, I've been busy working on a library project for the past few days. The local NBC news crew came to film our school as part of their special "Cool Schools" segment this week, so we wanted to spiff the place up a bit. For our story pit area, we made a whole scene out of book jackets, using children's books that are in the elementary library...it turned out colorful, at least!! Thanks to our favorite and best librarian in the whole world, Mrs. Scotti Harris, for displacing your classes all day to give us room to work! Hope you like the finished product!
We had a "real" cake for her sleepover party, but for the family party, I made two of Mary Rose's favorite desserts.....peanut butter pie and chocolate-chip-cookiedough cheesecake. It was my first attempt at real cheesecake from scratch....it turned out better than I thought it would, but still not quite up to Cheesecake Factory status yet!
The girls and I celebrated Chinese New Year at the home of one of their fellow students from Chinese class. Their new teacher prepared an amazing smorgasbord of authentic Chinese dishes for us to feast on, I got to sample some wonderful high-altitude oolong from China (the hosts are fellow tea fanatics) and we had a fun time getting to know everyone better. Their teacher, Yuehong, also taught us how to make perfect jiaozi (Chinese dumplings.) Well, hers were perfect; they looked like little bonnets with pleats, perfectly symmetrical. Mine looked more like distended rodent stomachs (yes, unfortunately I do know what those looks like ...our cats like to hunt and sometimes share their "leftovers" - YUCK!)
