Wicked Weekend in the City

Knowing how important quality time is for Dave, I gave him the gift of a fancy date in the city for his birthday back in December.  We went on this date last weekend and it was wonderful!  

  

We stayed at our first 5 star hotel, the Fairmont.  It was fun to explore all the luxury and history this SF landmark had to offer, but we realized we are definitely Best Western kind of people! :)  When we called ahead to inquire about parking, they told us that since we were guests, they'd be happy to valet park our car...for a mere $98 a night!  We found an overnight parking garage a few blocks away that was willing to provide this same service (minus the valet) for $30.  Score 1 for the cheap, Dutch couple. 

On the rooftop garden, it was cool to watch the cable cars rumbling up and down the street.  And in the hotel's hallways it was fun to take in rows and rows of photographs showing all the presidents, world leaders, and movie stars who have stayed at the Fairmont.  I snagged the below pic of a favorite singer, Ella Fitzgerald, for our oldest daughter. 

The highlight of this weekend was the show I booked us tickets for back in November-- Wicked!  I have only ever heard great things about this musical and even still our expectations were exceeded!  The music was fantastic.  The performers were amazing.  I do believe this is even the Broadway cast on tour.  The sets and production blew us away.  Seeing it in another historical landmark, the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco, was pretty neat too.

 (This is the ornate ceiling at the Orpheum.)

With our car tucked away in an over-night garage, we limited our outings to ones we could walk to.  So, the morning after Wicked, we spent some time wandering around the nearby Grace Cathedral.  With features like these gold doors depicting Bible scenes, this place was beautiful!  We spent a lovely morning sipping coffee in the cathedral's prayer garden, talking and listing to the cable cars clang up and down the street right beside us.

Friends from work gave me tons of suggestions of favorite places to eat.  On Friday night was had a fabulous, authentic Italian dinner at an intimate cafe that had about 10 tables in it, and a line out the door by the time we left.  On our way home Saturday we stopped for lunch at the American Grilled Cheese Kitchen and gobbled up fancy grilled cheese sandwiches and a bowl of crispy maple brussels sprouts.  It was DELICIOUS!  Definitely recommend!

Ella was at a church camp for the weekend and Delia spent the night with some friends.  We're so thankful for even this small window of time to reconnect and do special and super fun things together.  Life has been busy and our schedules often have us just passing each other.  Dave and I probably talked more in these 2 days than we have in a month.  I'll always remember our fancy weekend in the city, and already have my kids singing all the Wicked Soundtrack songs!

Ella the Actress

As you may remember from a post I wrote last year, the 4th and 5th grades traditionally put on a huge stage production at our school.  The 4th graders serve as the choir and the 5th graders get the acting parts.  Ella has known about and looked forward to this for years and was excited to be given the role of Mary, Tom's cousin, in the musical Tom Sawyer.  Totally on her own, she even picked up and read the Mark Twain book to better understand the story and her part!  Ella has loved every piece of this process-- the try outs, the practices, the lines (which she memorized effortlessly and with zero help from us at home), the solos, the costume, the make-up!, and the 3 performances they've done for our elementary school, the neighbor school, and all the parents, over the past 2 days.

 Mary, Aunt Polly and Sydney taking turns singing their frustrations out in the song "What Do You Do with A Boy Like That?"

 Mary watching her cousin get in trouble yet again in the classroom.

Rousing her mischievous cousin from bed after his late night in the grave yard.

 Mary reading her aunt and brother the note Tom left before going on his big rafting adventure with the boys.

 Sobbing at Tom and Huck's funeral, when the town thought they had drown in the river.

 She's REALLY upset. :)

Singing "Hallelujah" with the choir when it is realized the boys are alive!

 Tom and Becky have fallen in love, the bank robbers have been caught, and all is well in Hannibal, MO.  A reprisal of the big opening number closes the show out.

 Curtain Call!  Ella said hearing the big applause and cheers from the audience was always her favorite part.  I think she's hooked! 

 With her buddy, Emma, who played Aunt Polly.

 The whole 5th grade cast.

 Friends and flowers!

And some frozen yogurt with the family to celebrate a job very well done.

I totally get that I only contributed half of Ella's genes and I am so happy to see that Dave's love for the spot light seems to have trumped my stage-fright in the genetic make up of our daughter.  But, I am still SO delighted and proud to see my girl doing something I could and would never do.  Singing solos and speaking on stage in front of a packed auditorium!  And doing it perfectly and with no nerves!  How awesome when our kids surprise us like this.  What other amazing things are these girls going to do?!  I can't wait to find out!

Phone's "Available Storage" Boosted! (A Catch-Up Post)

 Time to clean out my phone and dump a bunch of random photos on the blog! :)  I've been okay about keeping our big outings and events recorded, but here are some of the smaller moments and memories from Winter turning into Spring 2016...

Every Thursday, while Ella does her piano lesson, I get to play with these cuties!

 Ella had to read a biography and make a diorama about its subject for school.  She chose Corrie Ten Boom and was deeply impacted, as anyone who reads her story is, by Corrie's faith and testimony.  Thanks to Uncle Kyle, for gifting her with the book!  I thought her diorama, which she did 100% by herself, was great!

 The new craze here is Kendama.  This is an old-school ball in cup/yo-yo toy that surprisingly consumes a great deal of time!  Delia was given an old Kendama by a friend and when it broke, she wanted a new one ASAP.  The kids are SO into this trend, Delia gave me an entire Saturday of yard work and week pulling, just to earn a new one!  It is cute to see all the kids at recess standing in groups working on mastering the tricks.

Every year we look forward to Almond Blossom and its reminder that Spring comes early here in the Central Valley.  You already saw our blossom pics (plus this one more off my phone, below), but here are a few peeks at how we celebrated at the Almond Blossom Festival this year.  We went to $1 Ride Night at the carnival for the first time and had a blast running into so many students and friends.  The girls also continued to amuse and confuse us with their passion for spinny rides.  At the parade a few days later, the girls ditched their old mom and dad to sit with some friends.  We're moving into a new, more grown-up stage of life for sure!  Still figuring out how I feel about it. ;)

 Almost-Spring weather is different every day.  Some days it can't make up its mind and gives us both sunshine and rain.  It seems like we've had LOTS of rainbows lately.  This is a picture of one Ella snapped on the way to school one morning.

And this week I taught one of my favorite units, using snail activities to get the kids excited about the two topics "Signs of Spring" and "Patience".  A highlight is always the snail painting, and this year's class looooved it more than any other!  Most of my kids used their full free play time to just hang out in the art center watching, laughing at, and squealing over these slimy friends leaving colorful paint trails all over the art papers.  And the snails Ella and Delia wrangled from our garden were a hardy bunch this year, they all survived and earned prettier, more decorated shells, for their artistic efforts! How fun is my job?!