Caitlyn's Movie

She's quite proud of it.

Some Like it Hot

And some complain mightily when it's 90 degrees in April.

You guess which ones we are.

Other than the weather (hot one day, tornado watch the next, rain a couple days after that; we must live in Kansas!), it was a fairly uneventful week.

(As most of ours are. Busy, and yet nothing really seems to happen.)

Letssee:

Megan got to go to Botanica and the zoo for a botany class field trip. That was the highlight of her week. She got to see behind-the-scenes things at the zoo, and then spent the rest of the time getting lost with a classmate and remarking how cute little kids were. Then, at Botanica, she gushed over the roses -- they were, as one person who worked there remarked -- incredibly beautiful. Then when she got back to school, she dashed off to the National Honor Society induction, and was sworn in. Hopefully, that will be a good experience for her.

Caitlyn's highlight of the week was 1) finally getting a meeting with the principal with a couple of her friends. See, they came up with a fundraiser idea for St. Jude's and got teacher approval, but they needed to get the principal's approval before they could do it. They tried once before, a couple of weeks ago, but much to their frustration, he blew off their meeting. This time, however, it went well, and he'll make a decision as to whether or not they can follow through on their project. Hopefully, he will. 2) Our mother/daughter book group read Hunger Games this month and then we had a field trip to go see the movie. Caitlyn and I were more than willing to see it again, and enjoyed the movie as much as we did the first time. And it was fun to go see it with the book group.

Alison and Kristen just plodded through the week (it's so hard being the younger kids), and then had a party on Friday. Alison got to sleep over at the Chavezes, and Kristen got to go over and play with Sarah for a few hours that evening. It was so much fun. And then, Dad took them to the park for a few hours on Saturday because the rest of us went down to Oklahoma City to the temple. So, it was a boring week for them, but they've had a good weekend.

And now, they're off school tomorrow (gotta love those in service days). There's only three and a half weeks left of school... I'd say it's hard to believe summer's almost here, but honestly: it's supposed to be in the 90s again this week. If that isn't a wake-up call, I don't know what is!

If It's July Weather in April...

Does that mean it'll be October weather in July?

Piano Recital

Last Sunday, our friends the Austins hosted a little piano recital for some kids in our ward. Both Alison and Caitlyn played a song each.

Due to a Lack of Interesting Material

Three videos that made me/us smile:

The Lizzie Bennet diaries (it's Pride and Prejudice in the form of a video blog)


The best part of last week's Castle (what's a video list without Nathan Fillion?)


And a catchy book people song


Also, this (it's from a microfiber cloth) from the library volunteer's luncheon (in which I didn't network):

 

Lots of things, actually.  

(Well, we did go to Kansas City to the temple open house, but you can read about  that here.)

Better Late than Never: Alison's Music Concert

About blinking time I stuck this up. Somehow, putting videos up for Alison's Christmas school music concert slipped through the cracks. And since Kristen's is coming up soon, I figured I needed to get these up here! Enjoy!

A Day in Kansas City

We've been following the news about the Kansas City temple with quite a bit of interest around here. No, it's not our new temple (being more than 3 hours away, while OKC is only 2 1/2 -- I know, big difference...), but still. It's not often we get temples built in these parts, and so it was exciting.

Anyway, when the tickets for the open house were released, we jumped at the chance to get them. Unfortunately, we were too on the ball: Megan missed out on the chance to go down with a van full of friends during the week because we'd already planned on going on a weekend.

Even so, we drove down yesterday afternoon, stood in line,

watched a nice little video (the first stake in Kansas was here in Wichita, in 1962. Didn't know that.), went through the temple (keeping younger kids from climbing on furniture and touching crystal bowls and staying quiet the whole time), took pictures,

and basically had a good experience.

From there, we drove back around to the Kansas side and stopped in here:

Alison and Caitlyn had brought their dolls and some money, and had them all done up at the doll salon.

No, I don't know why only Kristen stuck around for the pictures... She had her birthday money to spend, and went around the store looking and looking for something to buy. But, eventually, I convinced her that she'd get all the things she wanted through birthdays and Christmas once she gets her doll, and she decided that she didn't want to spend ALL of her money, so we went next door to Barnes & Noble, and she bought a little art present. Because she likes that sort of thing.

It was a long afternoon/evening (especially because we decided kind of last minute to pack a dinner rather than eating out, and didn't plan especially well, and kind of ended up eating practically on the side of the road; or at least on a picnic table covered in bird poo...), but a good one. I'm glad we took the time to go up.

 (It was taken while we were barreling down the turnpike at 80 miles an hour. Turned out pretty good, I think.)

Just About Right

On Tornadoes

The sunshine after the storm.

So, we had tornadoes last night. This is that story.

Friday, Karen called me up trying to cancel the piano recital that she had arranged for Alison and Clarissa because there was a 70% chance of tornadoes on Saturday. I, being a good Michigander, talked her into not canceling, but just dealing with it. I should have known...

By 10 a.m. on Saturday, everyone was freaking out by the "storm of the century": the church activity that Megan was planning on going to was canceled; and (of course) Karen called again to cancel the piano recital. (I lost a dollar to Megan; after the church activity was canceled, I bet that Karen would call by noon; Megan said by 11 a.m. She called at 10:48.) The catch: it wasn't storming. It wasn't raining. It was cloudy, but honestly: it was the equivalent of Southerners canceling school the night before a snowstorm was supposed to come.

We spent the rest of the day making fun of it. (I have decided that my cavalier attitude toward serious weather -- and meteorologists -- will get me into trouble.) Cleaned house, went shopping, sent Kristen to a birthday party, ate dinner, got ready for bed, sent the younger two girls to bed.

Then, at 9:30 p.m., the tornado sirens went of. Oh! So they weren't just making stuff up??

Russell woke up the younger two and brought them down to the basement. We turned on the TV just to see, and the meteorologists were predicting that a huge, massive, enormous, monster tornado ("Seriously, people, don't go out to watch this!") was headed STRAIGHT FOR WICHITA. Kristen dissolved into hysterics. The only solution? The episode of the Muppet Show with Steve Martin. The Ramblin' Man does wonders for hysterics. We kept an eye on the weather on the laptop, and after following up with Carol Burnett, let the kids crash in the basement.

Ah, but what about that MONSTER TORNADO (must be said in the "monster truck voice")??? Well, when we first moved here, someone told us that there was an old Native American legend that said if you're west of the river, you'd be safe from tornadoes. It came up southwest of town, and headed through the southeast of town, up the turnpike and away from us. We got an interesting lightening show (Russell is a bit disappointed he wasn't quite brave enough to go out and watch it), and about 10 minutes of pummeling rain. So, while Wichita was hit (Boeing got hit badly. Serves them right for deciding to relocate to Oklahoma and Texas!), we were perfectly fine.

Russell and I finally bailed at 11 p.m., when the tornado warning was downgraded to a watch and figured if another storm cell formed a MONSTER TORNADO, the sirens would wake us up. (I did wake up when there was a huge clap of thunder outside in the middle of the night, so there's that.)

Other things happened this week, of course, but nothing quite as interesting as last night.

In Which...

...people are busy.

 

...Kristen has a birthday.

 

... Kristen has a birthday party.

 

...we celebrate Easter by being low-key.

 

... it rains an awful lot.

 

....Russell and I go to a vocal jazz concert.

 

....we watch two superhero/blow-em-up movies (Thor and Cowboys vs. Aliens).

 

...Megan goes to a party and gets in a sand fight.

 

...Caitlyn kills bugs.

 

....Alison says the two things she can't live without are "food and cute fictional boys."

 

...I leave the blathering for another week.

 

Happy Easter!

Six Things About KristenTurning Six

1. You get two cakes, because you want cupcakes for school on your birthday, and then you get a party a few days later and mom is nice enough to make yet another cake for the "everything" party you've planned.

2. Going along with the two cakes, you get to have "Happy Birthday" sung to you twice, and you love that. Seriously.

3. You open presents first thing in the morning, and Alison talks you into the "blue" present, knowing full well it's two seasons of Avatar (Earth and Fire), and then you spend all available time for the next three days watching the discs.

4. You don't get a lot of presents, mostly because you're the fourth of four girls, and there really isn't anything left to get you. But you're wonderfully enthusiastic about the presents you do get, which is so nice.

5. Because your party is on Easter weekend, not everyone you invited came. But the girls who did had a grand time with your party: we painted, did crafts, watched Tangled, played dress up and had a dance party, and opened presents.

6. And because it was raining, our pinata had to be in the garage. But you had a grand time hitting it with a stick anyway. And everyone enjoyed the candy and toys you and dad had put in the night before.

Bonus: when we mentioned that the dress you're wearing was the same one Caitlyn wore on her sixth birthday, you said, "Great! We're twins!" Happy birthday, Kristen. You are a joy.

"Anamails Only"

 Russell -- posting on Facebook -- said it best:

Alison and Kristen and a couple of neighborhood kids are busy building some sort of animal trap out of some spare wood they've found in the open field behind our house. So far they have asked to borrow a hammer and some tape, to put the trap together, and an orange and some lettuce, as bait. The raccoons don't stand a chance, methinks.

Back to Normal

So, it was a busy week, but it wasn't SO busy that we were overwhelmed. In fact, I think we were quite grateful to get back to school and a routine. (Or, at least I was. Even though Monday was pretty hard.)

Some highlights: Megan's finished the paperwork needed to graduate early and turned it in. All that's left is for the principal to approve it, and since the counselor signed off on it, we're pretty confident that the principal will. Then, it's taking a government class this summer (in June before Girls Camp), and a heavy load in the fall, and she's done. Now, to get started on fund-raising for India... Also, the University of Chicago has really caught her eye, not only because the admissions department is really clever (an email entitled "Milkshakes and Shakespeare", for example), but also because they offer several majors/programs she's interested in. We were talking to Sarah Evans (who's at Friends with Russell, and in our ward), and she said her brother is a sociology professor there and a counselor in the bishopbric of the single's ward, and loves it. So... IF we manage to swing a trip to Michigan this summer, we need to stop by Chicago and see what they have to offer. (People ask me if I'm overwhelmed or teary or anxious about all this, and honestly? No, I'm not. I guess it's just because Megan's always been so independent, I've always figured this day was inevitable. Ask me again in a year, though, what I think.)

Caitlyn: we discovered that Caitlyn has a love of bugs. They're doing a bug unit in science this week, and she's come home all excited about the unit, and bugs in general. She especially gets animated about the whole catching and killing thing. Who knew?? In other news, she doesn't like the art teacher: she's too strict, she's not animated enough for Caitlyn, and she just isn't having a good time in that class. She also had Girl Scouts, in which they started piecing together the footage they got at the zoo and creating a movie. The hardest part is possibly the editing. And, we went to mother/daughter book group. While we didn't really like the book, it spawned a lot of discussion on boys, dating, relationships with friends, and the whole thing. It was kind of fun.

Alison: The first of her two events was that we tried out a karate class. We’re trying to find an alternative to Girl Scouts since she doesn't like her troop (and isn't really enjoying the whole program, either), and thought martial arts might be a good thing for her. She liked it, though I'm not sure she loved it. The real problem was that this studio is REALLY expensive. And so, we're going to try something else. Though, I look at the schedules, and us with only one car, and four girls (plus me!) going in four different directions, and I think how on earth can we manage this?? It'd be extremely helpful if karate, gymnastics, and a yoga class I liked were all at the same time and in the same place... *sigh* I don't want to say we need another car, but sometimes I wonder. (And then I look at the mini that's for sale in the used car lot down the street and wonder some more...) The other thing is that she managed a sleep-over at a friend's house. This doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you're as "miss-y" (her word) as Alison, it's the little things that count. It was hard to go and say good-bye (I told her that she could always call and we'd come pick her up), but when I picked her up Saturday morning, she was so excited, she didn't want to go. It's good learning this about yourself.

Kristen: spent the week counting down to her birthday. She often complains that she has nothing going on, and (unfortunately), it's true. She doesn't have anything going on. Then again, neither did any of her sisters and Kristen's age. But that's no comfort. So, when everyone was gone on Friday, we took Kristen out to dinner (she bounced around the restaurant, and didn't eat any of her food. Why do we take her out?), and then hung out with her in the evening. She had a good week at school, as well. Though really, the big deal was her birthday and her party next Saturday. She is VERY excited about that.

And I enjoyed listening to General Conference yesterday (while spring cleaning three bathrooms). While I enjoyed all the talks, It was Elder Holland's that struck me the most. I liked this little quote best, "Furthermore, envy is a mistake that just keeps on giving. Obviously, we suffer a little when some misfortune befalls us. But envy requires us to suffer all good fortune that befalls everyone we know. What a bright prospect that is! Downing another quart of pickle juice every time anyone around has a happy moment." It just struck me as a good reminder.

(The photo courtesy of this awesome shirt at Threadless.)