Ordinary Time

This past weekend was so full that I'm going to take a couple of days to write about it. I showed you Sunday's doings all ready, so now we'll head back to Saturday night.  As you know, we're reading through A Suitable Boy this year at teatime. (We're on page 985 out of 1349 for those keeping track. Maybe we'll finish it by fall.) A small subplot is that a couple of the characters are in their university's production of Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare. I did a brief synopsis for everyone at that point in the story, but also realized that this half of my children aren't nearly as familiar with Shakespeare's plays as the older half were. I had a brief moment of being sad about this.  You need this back story to understand why, when I saw an advertisement from a local theater company that they were opening a production of Twelfth Night last weekend that I immediately went and bought eight adult prices tickets. (Sadly, no student rate, which is proba...

Today was the first day where it was warm enough to be pleasant, I had an empty calendar, and it wasn't going to plunge back into the 40's the next day. This made it the perfect occasion to start cleaning out flower beds and doing other spring tasks. It was good to just be outside and working. The current state of the news can become overwhelming.  The vegetable seeds that were planted last month are doing well. We have sugar snap peas, baby bok choy, leeks (they're the grass like plants with a couple stray bok choy plants mixed in), and arugula. I'm just now realizing we haven't started any radishes. I guess we'll start those tomorrow. Chuck the tractor was brought out of his winter hibernation. (I bet you didn't know that small tractors hibernate, did you?) All sorts of plants are budding out,  and I found the fritillary! It has doubled in size this year, which makes me happy. And I got the flower bed along the drive nearly cleaned up from winter. And as a...

You know how I mentioned last Friday how J. and I had been taking turns being out of town all spring. Well, we had one more trip I didn't mention because I don't like to publicly share we'll be gone. Yesterday morning J. and I hopped in the car all by ourselves and headed to Ohio. (I think it's been close to eight years since J. and I have gone somewhere overnight without some variety of children with us.) We were going to see D. in his university's spring musical, 9 to 5, that he had a part in. With P. currently living at home, we figured they could all manage and we were correct. Even R. did okay.  Since D.  graduates next month, I was thrilled to be able to catch him in one last show and get a chance to visit with him at school. The production of the show was great, and the three young women who were the leads were fantastic. But really, best of all was getting to spend time with D.  He had done his research presentation last Thursday, but we weren't able to...

Well, for me and J. that is, and it wasn't even something that was on our list. Welcome to adulting. J. got the new parts on the range installed, but it turns out that it was an electrical component which was sparking at odd random times and generally not working. He thought he got it fixed enough to limp through the holidays, but after a couple of dozen pumpkin muffins went in the oven, it never got hotter than 175 degrees. (Pro tip, even at 175, things will bake if you give them long enough, over an hour for muffins.)  So, having repaired enough appliances over the years, we have learned (sometimes the hard way) that there are certain repairs that are not worth financing. This one seemed to have reached this category. J. went to the store today and brought home this. Gas stove and oven (because it seems that while it would be a very simple thing to make dual fuel ranges, they are considered a high-end feature, you know because the average person can't have nice things... yes,...

It's funny, but J. and I have noticed that ever since we moved, we've seen a lot more theater productions than when we lived closer to Chicago. It's kind of the opposite of what one would expect. We used to go to quite a bit of theater. Heck, we were the people who took a three year old and a five year old to see A Midsummer Night's Dream at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. It seemed sane at the time because both M. and B. were excellent audience members. (Would I ever even consider again? Probably not.) By that time they were both experienced theater goers , having seen their aunt perform in As You Like It at a Shakespeare festival. Well, M. did. B. was an infant. It was an outdoor theater and the three adults took turns pacing with him far behind the audience. Anyway, we've all seen a lot of theater. And then we had a lot of children, and didn't see so much theater. Time... money...  you know the drill. So, it's nice to be back at a time of life when it ...

Well, the weekend was a bit of a whirlwind, as is usual. But I did manage to get most things caught back up after my two weeks of craziness. The first cool thing about the weekend is that friends invited us (J. and I) to go see Cabaret with them at the Paramount Theater in Aurora. I had never seen the show before, and found it really interesting. The show was great, by the way, but if you aren't familiar with it, definitely a bit PG-13. What I found most interesting was the historical aspect of it. Even though the musical was written in 1966, it felt extremely modern, which is a bit surprising since it is set in 1931 Berlin, at the beginning of the rise of the Nazis. It was both incredibly interesting and incredibly disturbing all at the same time. I'm glad I got a chance to see it. The other cool thing about the weekend is that after months of searching, we finally found an affordable reading chair for our bedroom, thanks to our church's garage sale group. No more havi...

I know you were all thinking, "Boy, now that the move is over and everything is unpacked, things must be pretty dull in the Big Ugly Barn." Never fear. We don't really do dull around here, and always seem to have some little bit of craziness going on to keep all of you entertained. A. is responsible for this new little bit of excitement. She had been trolling Great Dane breeders for months, and eventually won over her father and me to getting one. Yesterday was the big pick-up day, so A. and P. drove to Indiana to bring home a puppy. Meet Olive. I'm kind of liking this way of having a puppy around. Olive is so cute and so little and so cuddly... and I don't have to do anything except enjoy her puppiness. A., on the other hand, was up the entire night because it seems that Olive is not yet terribly happy about her crate. J. and I slept very well. Here are some more pictures from yesterday. Considering her parents are both about 100 pounds, she is a ti...

As I had mentioned, D. was in a performance of The Miracle Worker this past weekend. Everyone did a fine job and it was a good production. This is the second time I have watched one (or more) of my children in this particular play. The first time was over ten years ago when my oldest children were still in grade school. What interested me most about this whole thing was my personal emotional reaction to the play separated by the years and the children I have at home. I have to say, I appreciated this play to a degree that I didn't expect this time around, mainly due to the character, Annie Sullivan. I cannot tell you how strongly I identify with Annie. In fact, often throughout the play, I would be watching what was going on on stage, and just feel tired. It wasn't so much as watching something unfamiliar, but more like watching my day to day life. I know I do not parent a child who cannot hear or see, but I do parent a child who is so locked up inside herself as to be a va...

Hey, Chicago, what d'ya say? The Cubs won the World Series for the first time in 108 years! Go Cubs! Can you tell we are a wee bit excited over here? It was a nail-biter of a game. It couldn't have been more dramatic if it had been scripted. Shakespeare couldn't have done it better. (Notice the fantastic segue here.) And since we are all a little giddy from excitement and lack of sleep, we're going to talk about theater, theater bios to be exact. You know, those little blurbs in the back of the program where you can read about what other shows the actors in a performance have been in. I know a few things about bios, having helped many children write them over the years, and then reading my college age children's bios, and now I have even advanced to adult children who are still in theater. It's a lot of bios. As you know, M. does a lot of prop design, which often also becomes prop acquisition. We are often being asked if we have this or that so it can be bor...

L. got a bee in her bonnet that it was show time again. As she gets older, what constitutes a show becomes more elaborate. When we put things away to have the third floor redone , the costumes were part of the things put into storage. Up until now, I have avoided getting out the three (!) bags, thinking that at age 7, we were heading out of the dress-up phase of life.  I wasn't counting on genetics. My mother-in-law, who was the actress and loved (adored, lived, breathed) all things theater, kept a costume closet until the day she died. If something was good, having a costume for it made it all the better. Many of my children have inherited this love of costumes and theater, M. being the most notable, so when L. decided that she needed, really needed costumes for her latest production, I shouldn't have been surprised. I think I just have to resign myself to the fact that for my family, there is no such thing as growing out of costumes. (Can you tell that I do not seem to s...

Well, except for me and a couple of my other children. The rest? Well, many of them live and breath theater. J.'s parents were actors. J. acted in college and did improv after college. Many of J.'s siblings are actors or did large amounts of theater. M. was a theater major and B. has done many shows in college. L.'s whole life is dramatic theater. And D.? D. loves theater... and musicals... and magic. He is never so happy as when he is on stage. Which is why he has been so happy this week, because he has spent all day, every day in the theater for tech for The Music Man. D. is playing the lead and loving every minute of it. You really need to click on the link and see the cast in action. I tried and tried to embed it in this post, but the technology was beyond me. So humor me and take the time and effort to click on the link. Once you're on the Thin Ice Theater Facebook page , you will need to scroll down to the video to watch it. (I know, it's a lot of effort.) ...

A.'s 18th birthday was Saturday and we celebrated yesterday. Everyone was able to make it but B., who sadly had to work. It was quite the extravaganza. L. got it into her head that what was needed was a show produced in A.'s honor, so that is what she organized. The day before, she wrote "scripts" and passed them out to younger family members and then spent a good bulk of Saturday rehearsing with her cast. There was much carting around of the scripts and talk along the lines of, "I have to learn my lines!" and "Have you learned your lines yet?"  Ultimately, due to attrition, L. ended up with just Y. and K. in her cast. G. decided her life's goal was not to play the pizza delivery boy and opted for audience member and H. decided she would rather run lights. R. made an excellent audience member. Finally, A. and friends arrived and the show could be put on. Tickets were created and held and the Will Call window and seats were arranged. (You k...

Tonight is the opening for Thin Ice Theater 's production of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. D. is playing Willy Wonka and he is very, very excited about it. (Even better, his grandparents have flown in to see him.) He even got to color his hair purple for the part, though I don't think he ever takes off his hat so that the audience can admire it. Here are some pictures from the dress rehearsal. You can also see some of the red doors that M. created... before the little bout of appendicitis. That was one of the frustrations about the whole thing, was that she was supposed to finish making and painting the set. C'est la vie.

Evidently it is spelled, A-P-P-R-O-V-A-L. I feel like a new person. I have slept well for two nights in a row... something that had not been happening and I don't do well with enough sleep. I feel as though I can tackle the bills piling up on my desk, though I'm not looking forward to it. There is a good chance I might actually get to the loads and loads of unfolded laundry in my bedroom. And, I don't have to spend the majority of my day forcing myself to do my regular activities or reminding myself to relax my shoulders. (I tend to carry all my stress in shoulders as I find they get tenser and tenser and rise higher and higher when I am stressed.) I can breath and it feels good. I would like to publicly thank a few people. First, I would like to thank Sen. Mark Kirk and his extremely responsive and kind office staff for advocating for us and our daughter. I would also like to thank our two agencies, Adoption Link (our home study agency) and CCAI (our placement agency)...

Direct from Happy Bloggy Land, I present to you... Rainbows... and happy trees. Because my children are always up for a craft even if its sole purpose to provide blog fodder for their mother. Cheery aren't they? Raise your hand if you know what children's book the title of this post references? It's from Russel Hoban's A Birthday for Frances . I think the Frances books are part of my short list of required picture books for children. Mr. Hoban managed to capture how children think and what they feel without it being cutesy or pandering. The other thing I love about these books is that the parents are actually parents. They are neither extraneous nor are they buffoons. Frances' mother and father are caring and loving. They allow their children to have adventures yet are always there to help out. And they are sometimes baffled... just like real parents.  The quote comes from the conversation between Frances and her little sister, G...

This post is really directed at anyone who happens to live near me. A. is in her final show with Thin Ice Theater this weekend (she will be graduating high school early) and is appearing as one of the Dromios in The Comedy of Errors . I took some children last night to the opening and it is a terrific show. Funny, well done, easily understood, funny, and has a terrific set (more on that in a minute). You should go see it. Really. I'll show you some pictures from it. (Now, I admit that the ones I've bothered to upload all have A. in them... there really are other people in the cast. If you want to see all 76 show photos, you can go to the Thin Ice Theater facebook page and take a look.) Do you know the plot? It's a little silly. Two sets of twins were born, one set to a wealthy woman, one set to a poor woman. The poor woman's children (the Dromios) were given to the rich woman to be servants/companions to the rich boys (the Ant...