It's Really Quiet Around Here

My daughter is attending her first DiscipleNow weekend. She left last night (Friday) at 5:00 and won't be home until Sunday after church. My son is playing at a friend's house all day. For the last several years I've had many Saturdays when all I wanted was a bit of quiet. Now, I've had six hours of it and I'm a bit scared. I don't really know what to do with long, uninterrupted silence! It frightens me that I've grown so used to chaos. It took me almost an hour to realize no one was watching iCarly -- it was okay to turn off the television.
I'm writing this now because my son will be home in a few hours. In another 20 he and his sister will be terrorizing each other once again. It will be quiet no longer. But I'll have this post to look back on and remember the bliss.

Can You Feel the Love?

Two days a week I teach music to Pre-K - 2nd graders. I have nine classes a day, with about 12 in each class. If you ever need a boost to your self-esteem -- teach 5 years olds (but only in 25 minute increments; if they have you all day, I'm sure they don't like you as much!). In every class someone tells me they love me, how pretty my clothes are, how much fun they are having--it does a girl good!

But the kids can also be VERY funny. Last week.... all the kids from a pre-k were sitting "criss-cross apple sauce" ready to begin. Riley (a tiny little boy) was roaming for some unknown reason! He walked past Grace, who had her super curly hair pulled up in a cute, pouffy pony tail on top of her head. Riley reached over and tousled her hair as he walked by. As only a five year old girl can do, Grace let out that frustrated "humph" sound and stated, "Don't touch my hair!" Riley just sadly shook his head and replied, "But I'm just loving on you."

Valentine's Day is coming fast! Hope you have someone to love on.

Queen of My Heart

The Girl's Ministry at our church sponsored a Chocolate Festival this weekend. Girls (and their moms) were encouraged to enter a "chocolate creation" to be judged on presentation and taste. Well, my daughter has watched one too many episodes of 'Aces of Cakes' (that television is bad, bad I tell you) so we couldn't enter brownies or cookies or something common. She and her overachieving mother thought it would be best to put their complete no experience of working with chocolate together and make Chocolate Monarch Butterfly Cupcakes.

Inspired by the beautiful book, 'Hello Cupcake' we planned our work and worked our plan. I baked and iced, she piped and piped and piped.

To make the butterflies she had to pipe the outside of a wing in brown, fill in the inside, swirl with a toothpick to create the pretty mottled effect and sprinkle with white nonpariels (sprinkles). Each wing had to be created separately so it could be propped on the cupcake to look like it had just landed and then the body was piped inbetween.

They were a beauty to behold. When we were finished, I could hardly believe it.

Then, there was the judging....and our team was...runner up. Runner up! So close. And the Chocolate Queen got the whole royal setup --- tiara and the "Chocolate Queen 2009" sash. Beat out by a team who served chocolate crepes with strawberries and bananas. Wouldn't you rather eat a butterfly?

So now we're off to set the DVR for more episodes of 'Ace of Cakes' for inspiration and wait until next year.

Surprise

Like most Americans, I watched the Inauguration off and on all day (and late into the night!) yesterday. In a day filled with importance and ceremony, one of my favorite moments had nothing to do with the new President -- it was more about the dress. (In recalling previous Inaugurations I have witnessed I can only remember that Mrs. Clinton wore a bright blue hat and Mrs. Bush wore red. I hope I retain a bit more historically important information about future events. But here I am again, talking about the fashions!)
While watching CNN fashion commentators discuss what Mrs. Obama wore throughout the day, the news anchor stopped and announced that Jason Wu, the designer of the dress she wore to the Inaugural Balls, was on the phone.
This young man of 26 expained that he was one of several designers asked late last year to submit dresses that Mrs. Obama might wear. He sent her three. When asked when he learned one of his dresses had been chosen, he replied, "Tonight, when I saw her on television."
Can you imagine that moment? Regardless of your politics, what an honor. You're sitting in your living room and see YOUR dress on the first lady. Not only will photos of it be in every newspaper around the world in the morning, it will later be in the Smithsonian's permanent collection.
I know nothing about Jason Wu, but I was proud for him.
Here's hoping your 2009 brings a few moments that take your breath away!

An Accident Waiting to Happen

We've all heard the term, "He/She's an accident waiting to happen." I think it was written for people like my children. So far this basketball season (the jr high/pee wee version, not even the LONG NBA kind) My daughter....has gotten two bloody noses, two jammed fingers, and an ankle sprain that required a trip to the ER and crutches for a week. Today, my son got slammed by a ball in the thumb, taking his nail off with it (truly, it was gross; but don't worry -- one of his 9 year old teammates confidently looked at me as I approached the bench with the first aid kit and said, "I'll do that. I'm a Cub Scout.")

I'm threatening to send them to next week's games wearing bubble wrap. When I see these "Kids by the Dozen", "15 and counting", etc. shows all I think is..I hope you have a brother-in-law out there who's an ER doc!

Time to change the ice pack. Have a great weekend.

Back to "normal"

Christmas is behind us, we're home from our travels, school starts tomorrow. I keep hearing people say, "Now, things will get back to normal." I want to respond, "What if things weren't normal BEFORE Christmas?" Oh well. We have had a good holiday. I got very sick Christmas morning, so I spent the next week in various states of Nyquil-induced haze. We traveled to Dallas on the afternoon of Christmas Day and stayed with Darren's younger brother and family -- always a great trip (though, again, I don't remember much of it). The next day we went to Oklahoma to see our moms. The weather was great, by Oklahoma winter standards. My son got to play outside with his new baseball bat every day! Although he did, under protest, have to wear a coat and hat. The highlight (sorry loved ones) of my trip was getting my haircut. I've been neglecting my hair for many months because I haven't found a new "stylist" since our move back to Texas. Negligence is not good when you have naturally curly hair and live in humid coastal Texas! So, I decided to look up my old stylist Becki -- she started cutting my hair when I was in junior high and I went to her until we moved to Texas. The dear lady is still cutting away at Miss Jackson's in Tulsa. So, I don't remember any of the actual gift exchanges and could not really enjoy all the fabulous food cooked by my mom and mother-in-law -- but my hair looks good! Guess that made for a Happy Holidays! Hope yours were great.

Sure, no problem, plenty of time

I got this magnet off of etsy.com (if you haven't tried etsy you should -- fabulous handmade items) It sums up why I haven't posted anything in two weeks....

All the things I said yes to were great things...we had a "full blown" Christmas program at the Early Learning Center this year. As the music teacher, I was in charge. The pre-ks (all 85 of so) sang three songs, the kindergarten dressed up to act out the nativity, the first grade played the handbells and quoted passages from Luke 2 and the 2nd graders were cowboys out on the trail on Christmas Eve. They "narrated" the Christmas story. It all ended with the Texas-appropriate song, "From Our Herd to Your Herd, Merry Christmas." It was so cute...and so much work!

At church we are finishing an 8 week study on Christmas Eve entitled "Fulfilled". It has been wonderful. I'll post some photos of our art work. We have had a different piece of art displayed every week of the series (these are 15x 10 foot canvasses) each Monday evening we move the piece to the side walls and install the next canvas. I sort of volunteered to be in charge of writing a Family Devotion guide for each week and creating several things (see above magnet) for this past Sunday and the Christmas Eve service.

Now the kids are out of school and we're ready for Christmas. The weather has been in the low 50s, cold for this part of the country, so it feels like winter. We had dinner last night at our good friends, the Carson's.

Darren is recovering from being sick (he even missed two days of work last week) I'm not convinced he didn't have walking pneumonia and we're praying no one else gets sick over the holidays. Now we're off to the mall to get one last Christmas gift for my oldest nephew. Apparently, the other gift we got him (quoting my son), "Is good, but not really fun." Wouldn't we hate it if the nephew didn't think we gave good gifts. So much for breaking the 'approval addiction'.