Summary of Spring

Besides the play and Fine Arts, (and ortho appointments every other week!), these are a few of the things that have been filling up our spring calendar squares!

Here is a story I just LOVE!  Delia met a new friend named Elle at the girls' camp we went to a few weeks back.  Her family is sort of new to town.  She was at a school that was not going well-- lots of bullying and 5th grade friends who were way too mature for her mom's liking.  Well, after camp and the bond Delia quickly formed, we exchanged info and got to know Elle and her family a little better.  She then transferred to our school!!  On her first day, Delia and her friends were waiting at the gate for her and ran up with a huge hug and lots of helpful advice about how to get around.  Those sweet, friendly girls made Elle's mom cry.  Delia and this new friend have now been inseparable, going to the roller rink and visiting each other's houses.  One of Delia's greatest strengths is her friendliness.  She's been this way forever, befriending all the people at the park or pool and every person she doesn't know at VBS and girls' camp.  I love that Delia's friendliness and care changed the course for Elle and prompted her to get out of a bad school situation.

Our girls group continues to keep us busy!  Here we are working on our counted cross stitch badge with a wonderful church lady who has so much contagious passion and joy for this skill, she passed it along to my class!

 It's kind of a joke at school that the 2 week long Dinosaur unit is the least favorite one to teach.  It just seems to drag on and on (how much can you really say to 3 year olds about creatures that are long extinct?) and it concludes with 2 crazy days where each kid paints their own dinosaur shirt.  But, what kills us is the several hours we teachers must then spend embellishing and personalizing each shirt.  One of  my co-workers attempted to make dreary dino days more fun by creating these cute shirts for us.  It helped, but I'm still glad to have Dinosaurs 2018 behind us!

 One Saturday was dedicated to dance photos.  This is an opportunity to try out the hair and costume that will be worn at the recital.  I looooove this year's costume for Delia-- it can all be worn again!  In about 2 weeks Delia will dance in her recital to the song "We Go Together" from Grease.  It's her cutest, most fun dance yet!

 After a Spring with lots of rain, I have awesome roses this year!

 Ella has been doing a little babysitting.  This was actually a night in the church nursery, but it was fun to see her caring for her former babysitter's baby!  I joked on Instagram that maybe in about 13 years baby Savannah will be Ella's age and caring for her children!

   

 Ivy still gets lots of love and attention every day!

 Another whole Saturday this Spring was taken with my trip up north to an Early Childhood Educators conference.  It's hard to give up a precious weekend day, but always worth it to gain new ideas and inspiration.  This time, I loved attending a workshop about instilling an attitude of praise in my students and classroom...led by our favorite Jana Alayra!  My girls can still sing all her songs, they are so etched on their hearts from their own 3-5 year old days.  Jana was delighted when I told her this.

 Ella tried the Escape Room again with her friends.  They were not as successful as our Super Team of family members over Christmas. :)

 One night the girls and I had an impromptu, after-homework fashion show.  I pulled out my old Homecoming, prom, and wedding dresses and we all played dress up.  Seeing his little girls in these clothes may have freaked out Dave a lil bit!

 Every Spring we get together for a badminton tournament for Jetta's birthday.  Not being much of an athlete, I must confess I go mostly for the good food and laughs.  My team, "Flip Them the Birdie", did not win like last year, but we had fun trying...and posing for goofy pictures.

And yet another Saturday was spent at church for our Ladies Spring Tea.  All different women "hosted" tables and decorated them beautifully with fancy china, fresh flowers, and favors and we were all invited to wear our most special hats.  Delia was in heaven, as you can imagine!  The girls and I were the punch bowl attendants and later Ella and Delia and a few friends sang "Thy Word" as part of the entertainment.  

I actually took a picture of our April calendar, to show how it literally had no blank squares on it.  But, I won't post it because it has too much personal info. :)  I don't mind a busy season when it's all good, productive, God-glorifying stuff.  But, I also don't mind a lazy, open calendar season where we can rest and enjoy a more leisurely pace.  The countdown to summer is definitely on!

Fine Arts Festival

Another fun thing we enjoyed this season was both girls' participation in the Fine Arts Festival.  It is fun to watch both Ella and Delia find and grow their love and abilities in singing, memorizing, speaking, writing, and creating art.   The Fine Arts Festival rotates around a variety of private schools in our state.  This year our host school was in the Bay Area.  When both girls were chosen to represent our school for their performances, we decided to make a small family outing out of it.  I got a sub and Dave had a lighter load this week, so we found a fun hotel and enjoyed an afternoon and evening in the hotel pool and at a nice restaurant.

Our hotel was within walking distance of the mysterious and impressive Apple Park too, so we swung in here to check out the Visitor Center.  It was SO COOL!  The campus offices are set up in a huge circular building called "The Space Ship".  While we couldn't tour it, we could use an iPad rigged with Augmented Reality and aim it at this aluminum model of the campus.  We could then swipe around and see what was happening in each building (except the Research and Development buildings).  We saw people working out in the gym, we saw the underground Steve Jobs theater, and we saw the solar panels on top of each building converting sun rays to energy that runs 100% of the operation with left over energy to share.  And all these things we were seeing were explained by a very friendly Apple Tour Guide, walking us through this virtual tour.  Neat, huh?  Worth a stop if you ever find yourself in Cupertino!  Below shows a pretty lookout spot we enjoyed as the sun set.  The next morning, we slept long and enjoyed a fun breakfast since we didn't have hours of Bay Area traffic to battle!  This bit of quality family time was so refreshing as we feel some end of the year weariness.  Just the taste of summer we needed to recharge and conquer our last few weeks of school.

The next day was the festival and this was great too! Every representative did a wonderful job using their gifts for God's glory.  Delia sang in an ensemble.  They sang a song called "Heroes of the Faith" and Dave and I were so impressed with how legitimately GOOD it sounded.  They nailed the parts and dynamics and got a lot of good feedback from the judges.

Ella had a short story entered and a piece of art.  She also went to sing with an ensemble.  They sang "Cannon of Praise" and it was lovely.  My favorite thing she did was a memorized monologue called "When Life Gets a Bit Testy".  It starts with a line that goes something like this: "Well, it's that time of year again.  The time when your teachers want to find out what you've picked up in their classes, besides a stomach bug and two eye infections..." and goes on to tell silly jokes and stories about studying for and taking exams.  The judges said she was a natural with perfect timing and that she may have a future in stand up comedy!

Our girls don't play sports, so we spend zero hours going to games.  This was a big day, with an overnight in a hotel attached to it.  But, it was so worth it to see our girls shining in areas they have been gifted!  I can't wait to watch how these loves for writing, singing, and performing continue to grow in the future!

Junie B. Jones

We've had a BIG, BUSY Spring and I'm excited to show and tell you about some of many ways the girls have been using their gifts and making us proud this season!

What will go down as a highlight of 7th grade for Ella was her involvement in the Middle School Musical.  She landed a background part, which was initially disappointing, but quickly became something she embraced and had a ton of fun with.  The play was Junie B. Jones and it was soooo cute!  My girls never actually read these books, so many of the play's story lines were unfamiliar, but they were totally engaging and hilarious, and perfect for the elementary crowd they first performed for.  The play was about a spunky little girl learning how to survive various "crises" of first grade, like getting glasses, eating gross cafeteria lunches, finding friends on the bus, shining in the class kickball tournament, or having kids make fun of your show and tell item.  It was all set to catchy music, sung and danced by Ella and the other background players. 

(No photography during the performances, so these are pictures another mom took during a dress rehearsal and kindly shared with us all.  Open them big to find Ella. She is wearing a yellow shirt, and often a very dramatic expression!)

Ella loved getting to know the director and worked hard to impress her.  Ella hopes to have a long future in drama at our school because everything about this experience was so awesome for her!  One thing we all loved were the high school student directors. How cool is this?  These gals gave up their time to choreograph numbers and mentor the middle schoolers and they made quite the impression on them.  Ella spent her own hard earned babysitting money to buy these sweet gals flowers-- her own idea!

Ella also loved being in this play with all her friends!  The commitment was substantial and the hours were long, especially at the end.  But being with friends during all those rehearsals made it extra fun.  There was a big cast party on closing night that was a good time too.

We kept emphasizing, as did her director, that the gifts Ella, and each performer, was given were to be used for God's glory, no matter what size the part.  The cast wanted to bring joy and delight to their audiences and the Lord, and they sure did that!  You may think I'm biased, being the mom of one of the cast members and all, but we heard over and over what a superb job everyone did bringing this story to life!  It really was one of the best school plays I've ever seen!

The Best of Santa Cruz Rolled in One Day

Dave was able to take one day off this Spring Break and we did not want to waste it sitting home, so a fun beach outing was planned!  Gotta hit the beach over Spring Break, right?  Strangely, though, the beach in Northern California is a chilly place to be!  We were more freezing here than we were up in the snow in the mountains!

Santa Cruz has SO many fun options, we let everyone in the family chose a destination they for sure wanted to hit.  Dave picked the pier, where an hour long stroll affords you the view of all kinds of wildlife.  We saw otters, a whale, and these hilarious and noisy sea lions, amusing us with their attempts to haul their blubbery bodies up into the air and onto a narrow balance beam of wood under the pier.

 Ella loves fish now! Her must-do for the day was to eat some local seafood.  We had lunch at a lovely restaurant and were even brave enough to eat outdoors-- under one of the blasting heaters. :)

My choice was beach and hiking.  By visiting Natural Bridges State Park, we were able to do both.  This is such an iconic beach with the dramatic rock arch right off shore.

We loved hiking all sorts of terrain here-- from the rocky shoreline to the fragrant Eucalyptus groves to the forresty swamps.

After an afternoon stop at the world's best ice cream shop, Marianne's, (which was ALL of our choice!), we concluded our super fun Santa Cruz day with Delia's pick-- the always fun pirate mini-golf on the Boardwalk.  We all played a great 18 holes and this picture captures the intensity of Dave tallying up the within points of each other final scores!

We have a few days left in our break and a few more plans to get together with different people, but probably nothing I'll blog about.  It's been a good mixture of relaxing, playing with school and church friends, and adventuring on fun outings this break.  Just what we needed to recharge for that final push till the end of this school year-- 6 weeks, 3 and a half days (not that we're counting or anything!)

Spring Break Snow Day

It's officially Spring Break!  However, with Dave having to work and Ella having play practices still, we're a bit limited in our Spring Break outing options this week.  The girls and I did have an empty square on yesterday's calendar and were excited to spend it hunting down some snow.  We were even more excited to learn that my friend and co-worker, Joy, who has kids the same age as mine, also had a busy working husband and the exact same idea!  We coordinated a Snow Day getaway with them and the six us had a fantastic time!

We found a great place, a little over 7000 feet up in the mountains that still had a load of snow and rented tubes for a day of play on the hills.  

 Tubing was SO fun, but even running starts, racing each other, and making trains got a little old.  We spiced things up by starting this "tube surfing" down the hill.  Trying to make it all the way down without falling was a challenge and had us laughing a lot.

Joy and I spent a good amount of time just sitting in our tubes by this beautiful snow-bordered creek talking about school.  She and I have never actually been paired to teach together, but we get along great because we're very like-minded in our approach.  While we had this lovely, long chat, our kids kept busy building snowmen and jumping their tubes off huge snow-covered boulders.

Snow in California is SO AWESOME!  We wore shorts on Easter and the very next day, after just a bit of drive, were sporting snow pants.  While we needed the layers to keep dry, we certainly didn't need them to keep warm!  The day was sunny and gorgeous and multiple hikes up the steep sledding hill had us quickly sweating and shedding layers.  Every one of us even came home with a bit of sunburn!

We're so thankful to get to know Joy and her kids even better in this super-fun, amazingly scenic setting.  It was a wonderful Spring Break day.

Happy Easter!

Easter 2018 was another time to bask in the joy and celebration of Christ's love, sacrifice, and power over sin and death.  We spent the day doing the things that make Easter a favorite holiday: going to church, eating ham, hunting for eggs, and playing with friends.  

 We had a beautiful Easter service, full of all the best songs and preaching!

Then we headed over to Phil and Jetta's.  Their bunny just had babies, so loading up our arms with the 6 TOTALLY ADORABLE baby bunnies had us all squealing with delight.

After a delicious ham dinner enjoyed in the warm, outdoor sunshine, the kids embarked on a crazy egg hunt.  Everyone is getting older now, so none of this "just toss the eggs on the lawn" business.  These kids had to WORK for their chocolate-- climbing trees, searching the chicken coop and pool fountain, digging in the sandbox, even dragging ladders out to retrieve the eggs hidden in the gutters!

We stayed 6 hours at our friends' house, visiting, laughing, playing badminton, and getting a kick out the creative fun our big bunch of kids always cooks up when they're together (this time acting out the entire Peter Pan play-- complete with a goat on a leash playing the part of Nana!). 

We obviously know that Easter is not about the bunnies, eggs, ham, or even fellowship with friends.  But all these wonderful pleasures sure enhance our celebration of Jesus' Victory!