Abracadabra Kalamazoo!

The other night, Dave dug his big black box of magic tricks out of the game closet.  Since Dave has always cracked his family up with his amazing (and cheesy) magic skills, Kris gave Dave this kit as a gift years ago.  The girls were completely blown away as Daddy made cards disappear, guessed which colored ball was sealed in the box, pulled quarters out of ponytails, made his wand float and poured milk into a paper funnel.  Ella begged for explanations while Delia just made her own hasty magic.  She'd stop her trick to visibly hide a piece and when we'd call her out, she'd yell at us, "NO! YOU DIDN'T SEE THAT!"  Other laughs came from Ella switching Dave's magic words, "Abracadabra Kalamazoo!" to "Abracadabra Grand Rapids!"  She was excited to bring the one trick Dave revealed to school for her show and tell.

 

The girls already thought their Daddy was pretty cool.  They didn't know he could do magic too!  Now that the secret's out, we've had to pull the big black box out almost every night!

After the Almond Blossom

Each March I force you to appreciate the beauty of our Almond Blossom.  I take pictures of the girls strolling through the orchard, I brag about our warm sunshine.  But what happens after the bloom?  I thought this year I'd finally record the weeks following the gorgeous Almond Blossom.  As the white almond flowers age, they start to fall.  Strangely, this feels a little like winter.  Light breezes fill the air with floating petals and the ground is colored white where they collect.  The trees turn from white to green and my girls are bummed.  However, it's right about this time that we start noticing PINK!  The Peach Blossom starts right as the Almond Blossom fades.  While the almond orchards outnumber the peach orchards around here, we still have plenty of peaches to admire.  Long rows of pink trees (all different shades, depending on the variety of peach), stretch our spring out even longer and seem to take the edge off our Bye-Bye Almond Blossom Blues

"Shhhh!" (Just Practicing!)

Everyone has their "thing."  Some are masters of sports and can rattle off every past and present football player and coach.  Some are intrigued by politics and wake up each morning headed right to their news page to read about all the Washington bigwigs.  Some are students of entertainment and live for Hollywood's award season, knowing all the brightest actors, writers and directors.

Me?  I love Children's Literature.  I guarantee I know more than most about authors, their work and the prestigious awards they've won.  This passion makes one of my favorite things a perusal of the Borders Young Adult section, on the hunt for familiar names with new titles.  This interest means the 2011 Newberry award winners are already on hold for me at the public library.  This knowledge allows me to answer questions from my husband like, "Who are the two illustrators who've won the Caldecott three times?" after he reads the jacket of one of our daughters' books (David Weisner and Marcia Brown, by the way).

This morning I got a new little job I'm pretty excited about.  The library at Ella's school is run by a small group of volunteers.  When one of the volunteers needed to step down because of health issues, she left a Thursday morning opening.  With Delia in preschool at that exact time, I too have a Thursday morning opening in my schedule.  So, guess who's the newest librarian at our school?  With my love for Children's Lit and kids, I've always felt like a school library would be the perfect place for me to land professionally when I was ready to go back to work.  I'm thinking this will be a good run-through.  My little job will entail doing lessons and read alouds with 3 classes (one of them being Ella's kindergarten!), checking out and shelving the students' books and helping the volunteer who does the budget and buying know which books to add to the library.  I get trained on Monday and start next week!

It's just a one-morning-a-week, non-paying job, but I still just have to say it: YAAAAY! :)

Sweet Messages

Super Kid

This week is Ella's week to be her kindergarten class's Super Kid.  This means she's been spoiled!  One task was to make a poster displaying pictures of her growing up and listing favorites to show off in the classroom.  She enjoyed putting this together, choosing these pictures from the big stack I gave her.  She also wrote out all her answers herself and took charge of sponge painting the letters in her name.

As a treat for Ella, her teacher asked me to be the parent helper when the class made Green Eggs and Ham for Dr. Seuss's birthday yesterday.  We were encouraged to think of another something special Ella could share with her class this week.  Ella chose to have her Daddy go to kindergarten and read aloud her favorite story. She'd also hand out a snack we made together.

Since her favorite story, Just Plain Fancy, is about two Amish sisters who get a shock when one of their chicken eggs hatches into a fancy peacock, the snack we made was bird nests with jellybean eggs.

Though Ella came down with a long-lasting fever on Sunday morning and actually missed the first two days of her Super Kid week, she still felt special.  Dave and I also enjoyed the ways we got to participate!

Looking Back

Tonight I entertained myself by looking back at pictures of the girls in the blooms from years past.  If you are an immediate family member or kinda bored, I thought you may enjoy it too:

Blossoms 2010
Blossoms 2009
Blossoms 2008
Blossoms 2007

Fun to see how they've grown, right?  And will I continue to make them walk down the aisle of trees holding hands even when they're teenagers?  Yeah, probably.

"Bwooms!"

Don't be fooled by how grown-up the girls look in this year's almond blossom pictures.  Ella was still scared of the bees humming and needed lots of comfort and reassurance that they were busy doing their job and not interested in attacking her.  And Delia still can't properly pronounce the word "blooms."  Though, her inability to say the letter "L" is so endearing.  A big part of why I'm loving this year's blossom is her constant excited cheer from the backseat, "Wook at the beautiful bwooms, Mommy!"

That Time Again

I think we've experienced the Almond Blossom Festival is every type of weather now.  We've been when it's hot and sunny and come home with a touch of sunburn.  We've been on gorgeous, just perfect spring days.  We've sat through it under an umbrella in the rain.  And today we bundled up and shivered through what has been the coldest we've been all year (temp this morning was 30 something).  No matter!  You know we always enjoy this festival regardless of the weather.

Once again, Dave ran in the Almond Blossom Race.  This year he did both the mile and the 8K.  The above picture shows Dave, far left in white, about to cross the 8K finish line with a final time of 42:53.  After the half-marathon, he decided to switch things up and focus more on speed rather than length in his runs.  His goal for the mile run was to place...

And he did!  He came in 6th overall and 2nd in his age group, earning a silver medal at the awards ceremony!  I'm impressed that he sprinted a mile in record time (6:17) and then ran the 8K just 20 minutes later.  The girls brought their hand bells and cheerfully rang each of the runners in on the home stretch.  This year it was fun to cheer on our good friend Arend, who was running his first race ever.  He killed it, coming in 4 whole minutes ahead of his goal!

We were feeling kinda frozen, but the hike along the parade route, some warm drinks, a spot in the sun and the company of friends warmed us up.  Nothing really new to report about this year's parade.  Ella's favorite was the princesses, Delia liked the horses. 

Coming soon...pictures of the girls in the blossoms!

Yesterday's Gift

It's known to all who caught my posts over Christmas, that when Anna and Heather were here, we had a fabulous time together.  You don't know that Anna had just gotten a new Flip camera and took several hours of footage of our fun times, though.  Yesterday I laughed and cried when I viewed, for the first time, the clip compilation Anna edited together for us.  Isn't she talented?  You're familiar with my crazy need to preserve our family's memories; I don't think I could have received a greater gift! 

  

I'm excited to share and show off the video, so watch and enjoy!  A few warnings: It does have sound (in case you're watching at work). When I plopped it on the blog, it lost a lot of its quality, especially if you open it in full screen.  It takes up a fair amount of space, so I may not leave it up here forever.  And it may make you covet my awesome family! :)   

Going Bananas

For today's day off, we had promised the girls a fun family day.  We decided to go to one of those bouncy house places.  We knew this would be a super treat for Ella, but we also knew it would be a source of fear for Delia, who has yet to warm up to these large and loud monsters.  Sure enough, as soon as we walked in, Ella took off and Delia clung to Dave, shaking and refusing to try anything.  Jumping, bouncing, climbing and acting like a monkey are Delia's passions, we've never understood this fear!  Dave gently coaxed Delia to just bounce on the side, holding his hands.

Then he convinced Delia to just peek inside one of the bouncy houses to watch Ella.  She protested, but after getting just her head inside, decided to go all the way.  Once inside, she knocked us over with surprise when she quickly declared, "I like it now!"  For the next 2 hours she ran to each bouncy house and, indeed, went bananas.  Nothing was too big and scary for her-- not the obstacle course, not the giant slide, not the ball pit, not even the king-of-the-mountain.  At home, she keeps asking me when we can go back and saying, "I loved it! I loved it! I loved it!"

The girls wore themselves out.  Dave and I had hoped to show at least Ella a good time on her day off.  We would have never dreamed Delia's life-long fear of bouncy houses would be cured just like that today!