Starring Delia!

Okay!  Finally the post that forced me to get caught up on the blog!

Last year our school changed the format of our 4th/5th grade performance a bit.  Instead of casting a play with just a few big parts, they now do more of program that allows every student to do a little something.  So, though she did have a speaking part, solo, and dance number, Delia was in no way the actual star.  The title of this post reflects what was in her mind! :)  You see, this little performer of ours has been auditioning for her big moment on the stage for the past 10 years of her life.  Her resume includes probably 200 living room performances-- everything from the dramatic, to dance, to comedy, to musical.   This program will be the highlight of her 5th grade year.  She's been talking about it for the past 2 months and we were thrilled to finally see every single one of the details she's been sharing with us unfold in real life tonight!  One of those many details being the map of the auditorium Delia kindly drew me, with a big circle around the seats she thought we'd enjoy the best view of her from. :)

Their program was called Go West! and featured a series of songs and speakers explaining the many reasons (gold, railroads, etc.) that settlers moved to and stayed on our lovely West Coast. 

  

 Singing her heart out.

 Singing her solo!

 Her favorite part: the dance number to "Steamboatin'"  The costume changes may have been the best part of this whole thing for Delia.  How she loved her fringy flapper girl and silky blue towns-person dresses!

This cracked us up.  While other kids recited lines and acted out a race scene, Delia just stood in the very front center of the stage smiling.  I kept expecting her to say something or sing, but she never did!  When I asked her about it, her reply was "Oh, I just wanted to be in Scene 5, so I asked my teacher if I could be a decoration and she said, 'Okay'"!

There are a million reasons we LOVE Delia's teacher this year and here is one of them.  Before she came back to teaching, she was a professional photographer.  Yesterday, after the dress rehearsal, she took all these darling posed pictures of the kids and then gave us the code to download them off her photography website!  You can imagine how thoughtful and awesome a picture nut like me finds this to be!!

   

A little after the curtain call fun with Delia's BFF-- serous and silly pictures.

I've written before about how amazing it is watching your kids surprise you by doing things you could and would never do.  It makes me smile huge seeing yet another daughter following in her dad's stage-loving path.  Though Delia did not do any more than any other kid tonight, there was something in her, an exuberance, that did have her shining on that stage.  And many others noticed it and complimented us on it afterwards too.  I love seeing her do something she loves so much and hearing the joy it brings to others as well.

They Indulged Me in Blossom Pictures!

Last year the girls said they were feeling a little old for almond blossom pictures and I respected that.  Then I felt sad that I had none, so this year I asked again if I could take JUST A FEW of them REALLY QUICK in the neighborhood orchard one Sunday after church.  

They are such good sports! :)

Long Weekend Outings

February also contained a long weekend that we tried to take full advantage of.  A wedding and an orthodontist appointment kept us from any overnight travel, but we managed to get a couple day trips in.

Delia requested that one outing be to a zoo.  We've actually already been to several world class zoos (San Diego, Chicago) this year, but I did realized there was one not too far from us that we've heard good things about, but had never visited.  It did not disappoint!  The zoo was smaller than others that we've recently explored, but it featured a lot more hands on, up close experiences with the animals!  For example, there were no cages in the monkey house. When walking through it, the monkeys were jumping all around us!  Same with the kangaroos, we could stroll right through their enclosure and get close to them.

 Ella saw her favorite, the sloths, doing the oh-so-exciting trick of taking a nap-- and doing it every time we went to check on them throughout the day!

We fed and petted sting rays, which was MY favorite, but not so much Delia's.  It was a very strange sensation to have them put their mouths around your fist to suck up that little fish!

 And the zoo had this beautiful new Africa exhibit, where wildebeests, giraffes, elephants, rhinos, and lions seemed to live together. (I know there was probably some sort of tricky separation guests could not see, but it seemed very natural.)  Here a highlight was watching the mama, papa and baby rhino together.  He was nursing with mom and sparring/wrestling with dad.  Quite the show!

Another morning of this long weekend, the girls and I headed to the trampoline park.  We snagged the first jump time of the day and had it pretty much to ourselves, which is how Ella ended up spending nearly the entire time on the climbing wall with no lines.  She started asking me to time how long it took her to get to the top.  Thirteen seconds was her record!

Much of February in One Convenient Post!

Remember when I used to post almost every day and a month like February would easily have 20+ entries?  Well, here you go-- our whole month captured in 6 pictures! :)

 We made Valentines.  Though they're old enough that this is now optional, I love my girls' desire to continue giving Valentines. And not just give them, but HAND craft them each year!  Ella did drawings of cute little animals.  Delia did emojis with chocolate heart eyes.

 We battled that nasty flu.  Thank you, Lord, that it only took down Ella.  But she had it bad-- 5 days of misery and several weeks until her energy level and appetite returned to normal.

 We celebrated surviving a rough week with a GNO at the fancy seat theater.  We saw "The Greatest Showman" and have had the soundtrack on a pretty much continuous playing loop in the car ever since!

And Dave took his annual trip to Guatemala.  They had one of their best times ever this year, with a big, energetic group and Dave feeling the healthiest he's ever felt.  Investments in relationships were continued, a family prayer partnership program was established, and funds for another new school building were delivered. 

Our February also contained an Honor Band concert Ella was selected to perform in with schools from all over our area.  She was one of only a few from our school picked for this and played second chair saxophone in the huge group.  We were proud! No pictures and my videos of it are too long for the blog, but they actually sounded awesome for a middle school band!

Babysitters, Meatballs, and Prayer Boxes (Intrigued? Keep Reading!)

Hello, Faithful Blog Readers (or just me in a year feeling nostalgic and scrolling through old posts)!  Tonight Delia was in a very fun school performance, in which her extreme enthusiasm for being on stage had her glowing.  I'm excited to post about that so far away family who could not be at the program can still get a glimpse...

BUT before I can do that, I need to go all the way back to January and write about the other things we've been up to.  It has to be in order, sorry, blame my OCD. :)

One thing keeping us busy this winter has been our involvement with the girls' group at church.  In January we hosted a CPR and Safe Sitter Certification Class for our girls.  We hired a teacher to come to church and spend the day training our girls to be the best babysitters ever!  Seriously, the class was so thorough, Ella now knows how to handle everything from a bee sting to cardiac arrest!

 Practicing the Heimlich Maneuver on each other.

 A whole crowd of certified Safe Sitters!

Then our group hosted the annual Soup Supper,  Ella actually had some oral surgery related to her braces the weekend of the Soup Supper, so she was unable to attend and serve.  She still helped out by making many many pounds of meatballs for the Dutch Soup in advance with me.  This may have been torture for the pup.

And recently, Delia's class, the one I teach, finished the Prayer Badge.  I always like to reward my girls with some fun project after they've read and discussed a bunch Bible passages and thought about and written answers for a bunch of pages of questions.  We made these sweet little prayer boxes!  The inside says "When your head starts to worry and your mind just can't rest, put your prayers down on paper and let God do the rest".  My girls really enjoyed creatively crafting these at our last meeting.  Special thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for collecting and mailing us all the Altoid boxes!

Christmas Break, By the Numbers

Our second week of Christmas Break was just as eventful and fun as our first week was!  Tomorrow we return to the routine and I feel good about it.  We had lots of adventure and lots of time to relax this past week.  And now it is time to jump back in and rock our second semester!

To chronicle the happenings of the second half of Christmas Break, I thought I'd do a by-the-number breakdown.

Number of fresh Olie-Bollen eaten on New Year's Eve: about 12!

Number of hours spent playing Capture the Flag in our friends' yard and pasture: 2

You know how I like to organize the New Year's Eve activities.  This year's NYE, theme was "The Great Outdoors".  Friends were told to come with warm clothes, flashlights, and shoes they could run in.  We kicked off the night of outdoor games by stuffing ourselves with warm, fresh-out-the-fryer, Olie-Bollen and Apple Flappen (two traditional Dutch dishes made on New Year's).  Jetta's oldest girls were our chefs and they did awesome!  When it was time to run off all the fried treats, we divided into teams of Parents vs. Kids and played the LONGEST GAME OF CAPTURE THE FLAG EVER.  The kids totally outnumbered us, so though we parents were strategic, we just could not keep ourselves out of their jail.  The game was super fun and eventually (after 11 pm!) we located our kids' hidden flag and ended the game with a Parents Victory.  I had a bunch of other outside group games ready to go, but we didn't even need them!

Number of books read (by Jen): 4
Number of new movies watched: 3
Number of hours spent playing Wii games: too many to count!  (Unplugging and getting back on schedule is one of the reasons we need to go back to school!)

No pictures, but a highlight of our second week of break was seeing The Last Jedi in the theater.  It took some convincing to get the girls to go since they were so distraught at the loss of characters in the last 2 new Star Wars movies, but we talked them into it and we all ended up loving it!

Number of delicious meals eaten in restaurants: 2

A sweet and generous couple from church gives us a gift certificate to a fancy restaurant we'd never try on our own for Christmas each year.  Dave and I got all dressed up and enjoyed an elegant dinner one night over break.  The steak I ordered was the best one I've ever eaten in my life.  It was also about $50!  Another night we loved taking the church staff and their spouses out for dinner.  Dave opened our meal by saying what a blessing it is to work with people who are good friends.  We stayed late at that restaurant talking and laughing with our partners in the church ministry.

Number of days spent in the company of friends: 3

One day our girls spent an entire day playing at their good friends' house (giving me time to work in my classroom and then go on that date with Dave).  Then we were excited to have Dorina and her girls join us for a day!  We took them to our local ice rink and were totally impressed as, by the end of the session, our 5 girls were ice skating strong and independently!  Some time to catch up on all the ways God has been working in their lives over a big pot of Dutch Meatball Soup and a tray of Dutch goodies took us into evening with these dear friends.

Again, no pictures, but another day we loved having Jeff, Amy, and their kids over for some smoked ribs, brownie sundaes, and game-playing.  These are some of our inner circle people and sharing/hearing about each others' lives, challenges, and dreams while our kids played great together was an honor and another highlight of the break!

Average number of hours slept each night (for me and the girls, at least): 10-12! 

We are in for a world of hurt this week as our lazy, sloth selves must again get used to doing more than sleeping, watching movies, reading books, eating yummy food, and hanging with friends!  But...

Number of ways we've been blessed by our work and loved ones this year: Countless!

We trust this new year and second semester will bring our family another abundant share of adventure and joy, and God's guidance and presence in the tough times too.

Christmas Adventures at Home

We did keep busy kayaking, escaping, touring, and hiking, but there was plenty of down time at home too over our week with family!

Since we open our gifts on Christmas Eve, I am always challenged to find an activity that will keep the kids busy while they wait out their present-opening anticipation.  This year we decorated ugly sweater cookies with Auntie Heather and Uncle Andrew!  So fun to hear them try to outdo one another with insults for these truly ugly cookies: "Whoa, that is atrocious!" or "Your cookie is horrifying!"  Their ugly artistry is pretty impressive!

I'm gonna say I was trying to be PRESENT during PRESENT opening and that is why I have so few pictures.  That sounds good, huh?  I did get this sister hug captured, as well as Delia's victorious smile when she figured out that Auntie Heather was actually thrilled to build all her LEGO sets for her! :)  In seriousness, our aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents were once again outrageously generous and absolutely every gift was LOVED and has been used many times already.  Thank you!

We also watched lots of movies at night!  The girls were introduced to some Christmas and 80's classics.  After a busy day of activity, nothing was better than jammies, a fire, and a movie we all fell asleep to! 

Heather got lots of time with our pets!

Kayaking was Heather's fave, the Escape Room was Dave's...this impromptu dance party night was mine!  We started with a game of Just Dance (a gift from Grandma-- thanks!), and it turned into a late night, glow stick dance party, complete with costumes for the 80's songs.  We were laughing (and sweating!) SO hard!

This wasn't taken at home, but close to it.  Another day we took Auntie Heather to our favorite indoor roller rink for a couple hours of rollerblading.  Just because I suspect we did not wear our company out enough already! (I don't know about Heather, but when I returned from dropping her off at the airport, I crashed on the couch for several hours!)

What a wonderful first week of break!  We're so thankful Heather and Andrew took the time and effort to share Christmas and so many amazing outings with us!  Lots of laughs were had and lots of forever memories made.