Getting an early start on Halloween

On Sunday afternoon, Curt and I took the girls to the UofM's Exhibit Museum of Natural History for their 15th annual Halloween Party.

I can't believe this is the first time we've ever made it there, but I have a feeling we'll be back. We only hung around for more than hour of it (it was packed and hot in there) but it was still a ton of fun and a nice addition to our Sunday afternoon.

The museum has recently been hit with controversy surrounding their Native American dioramas --which have made those exhibits more popular than ever. I'm glad I got a chance to see them one more time before they're gone.

Here are some snapshots of our visit on Sunday.

We ran into Tate and MacKenzie (and their parents) as we were coming in and they were going out.

A quick shot with Mom before we head into the dinosaur room.

Posing with Dad next to the stuffed wolverine.



The live lizard was really cool.

But the snake was even cooler!

Anything Goes!

The end of Summer is closing in on us. As a matter of fact, the weather these past few days has felt more like football season than swimming season. Although, "cool" was the norm this summer.

There are just a couple more days left of summer camp at CCC. And that means that show week has come and gone. I didn't get in here to write about it because, frankly, I didn't have time. Production week at CCC is much like production week at any other theater I've been involved with. It's all-consuming. It involves evening dress rehearsals, opening night galas, naps for everyone and a party after every show. Somehow amongst all of that, I still have to go to work!

Here's a brief recap of our exhausting but oh-so-fun week.

The show poster was designed by three different kids. It was actually three posters merged into one. I was part of the small committee that made the selection. It was a hoot to look through all of the poster designs the kids came up with.

Audrey and Brennan opened the show with a couple of lines from

"Another Openin', Another Show!"

Audrey was concerned that Brennan was singing too loudly and she couldn't be heard. Uhh . . . no need to worry, darlin'.

Kevin, Will and Bihanna were three of the leads. They were remarkable!

Hallie and Will singing their duet.

Bihanna and her "angels"

Audrey and Sophie singing downstage!

Adrianna, Grace, Audrey and Natalie during "Heaven Hop."

This was Vivian's favorite song of the show. She knows all of the words. When she came to see the show with me on Friday, she jumped out of her seat and performed along.

Audrey can't contain her enthusiasm in front of an audience!

Random cast shot.

I feel like a song is about to start . . .

Here's most of the cast partying at the Wednesday night gala event on the deck after the show. Curt is DJing in this pic but he gave Brennan a quick training session and was free for the rest of the night.

That is . . . until the rain came.

Vivian, of course, joined in on the dancing. Here she is doing the Cha Cha Slide.

A scene from the closing performance cast party after the show on Sunday.

Laurie, always gracious, hands out thank you notes to parents and staff who helped with the show, the gala event, stuff all summer long. She takes time to speak about each person. Chris is getting his speech in this shot. We love Chris!

Sara had flowers for all of the kids.

Vivian bugging me while I'm waiting to get our thank you note from Laurie.



Our bartenders for most of the weekend: Smitty and Matt

Bartender? I don't need no stinkin' bartender. I helped myself. ;-)

Vivian and Mara decorated the house on the playground with Sara's flowers.

I have many more pictures and many memories to share. It's always bittersweet when the show ends. I miss the energy around CCC, partying with the parents and staff, seeing our kids performing their hearts out (I cried every performance!) and knowing that the summer is ending and we'll all be going separate ways after this. But we're also very tired and you just can't keep up that pace forever.

Thank goodness for Facebook since I'm friends with almost all of the summer camp parents!! And of course, Vivian will still be going to preschool there. Whew. it's going to be REALLY strange when she's in kindergarten and we don't go back there in the fall.

Sniff.

What's up with the bodily functions?

Not only is pooping in pools quite common, apparently puking in pools was a big deal this weekend as well.

As noted in Mark Maynard's blog from yesterday.

I had no idea this was such a frequent occurrence. I guess we would have been SOL at our neighborhood pool as well!! No WONDER the pool when empty when we drove by!

We just want to go swimming, ya'll!

The swimming gods were against us yesterday.

After several very mild weeks of summer (yikes - months), summer hit in full force yesterday with upper 90 degree temps and high humidity. All RIGHT! This is more like it!

Don't get me wrong -- I've actually enjoyed the mildness of summer so far. However, we've barely taken the girls to the pool and we've only pulled out the sprinkler ONCE so far, let alone the slip-n-slide (which is in a crumbled pile in the garage . . . dry as a bone). And don't even get me started on the fact that we canceled our weekend camping trip in Traverse City because of the cold, rainy weather that was expected all weekend. Yeah. Don't get me started. We spent our Friday vacation day all day at home without plumbing. More on that later. Not our best weekend.

So, when I heard that Sunday was going to be rain-free and 90+ degrees, I knew a trip to the pool was in our future.

First, I took the girls to church and then we enjoyed a family lunch. I promised a trip to the water park after we completed a few house projects. Audrey's room was a MESS (due to the previous rainy day on Saturday. What else is a kid supposed to do but wreck her bedroom?) Vivian didn't have any real projects but I made up some stuff. She put my shoes away and a few random things.

Nevermind that my project was the largest. I was going to clean out the garage come hell or high water. Curt worked in our basement all day on Saturday and I felt like I hadn't done anything productive all weekend. After cleaning the garage and dripping with sweat, I think I deserved that trip to the pool more than anyone else.

After about an hour, we were ready to take off. Our sights were set for the Rolling Hills Water Park. Yay! Fun for everyone. We drive past our neighborhood pool and see that it's hardly full. Curt surmises that most folks are just going to stay inside and enjoy their AC today. We might have the park to ourselves.

I WISH he were correct. We made it to Rolling Hills and found a huge line of cars. It wasn't until we reached the gate that we could make out the sign that said, "The park is at capacity" or something along those lines. Capacity? This place is enormous! I didn't know that was possible!

Audrey was thrilled because her vote was to go to Vets Park Pool anyway. We turned around and decided to give that a go. It wasn't ideal but at least one person in the car was going to be happy.

We hike it over to Vets park, pay our fee to get in (MUCH cheaper than Rolling Hills would have been . . . so another bonus) and I take Viv to the potty while Curt and Audrey find a place for us to camp out. The pool is PACKED by the way. I heard some rumblings over the intercom and then a mention about "two hours." People are moaning and groaning and it wasn't until I found Curt that I was told that there was a bio-hazard in the pool and everyone needed to evacuate . . . for two hours! Some kid pooped in the pool! We didn't even get so much as our toe in! WTF??

We gathered quickly (which wasn't difficult since we weren't really settled) and headed to get our money back. They will only give us a credit for another pool trip. No cash. Ugh. We are still hell bent to go swimming now so we take it and head to another pool.

Next up is Fuller pool since we've never been there (it's also the next-nearest pool). We figured we had nothing to lose at this point. This place is also PACKED but they have a huge water slide and the pool is quite large. I made note that the Ann Arbor folks that frequent Fuller Pool are relatively more fit and attractive than the other places we've visited. Hmm. I guess it was a younger crowd. We see several medi-flight helicopters come and go (we're near the UofM hospital) so that was cool for the kids. Vivian spent a lot of time dragging a life jacket around the pool (in and out of the water) and pretending it was her doggie.

Ahhhhh . . . we finally got some much-needed pool time. Who knew it was going to be so difficult????

Perhaps next time we should give our little neighborhood pool a try, eh?

Summer is flyin' by!

Our family unit attended the last day of Summer Festival on Sunday. I can't believe it was the last day! It feels like our summer is already zipping past us.


This was a record-year for us to attend Top of the Park festivities. It has always been one of our favorite summer-time activities but for some reason, we made the most of it this year. We ran into more people and learned more about our daughters while attending TOP. For one thing, Audrey needs to get into violin lessons pretty soon. And Vivian is quite the dancer! She moved her hips to the live music way more than Audrey did.


While Audrey's favorite activity was whatever was going on in the kid tent, Vivian spent most of her time running to the lawn area behind the sound booth just so she could dance in an open space.


She and Curt were also spotted by an Ann Arbor News reporter in this article.


Our wedding band, George Bedard and the Kingpins, was the closing night band as they have been for years. The final event of the season was a sing-along of the film "The Sound of Music." I coaxed my family into staying for a bit over some vanilla ice cream and a Nutella crepe (they were out of bananas at 10pm. Boo.) We stayed until 11pm and got to hear "Doe a Deer" which has now been resurrected in Audrey's memory so she's singing it again.


We picked up our blanket and our space was immediately taken over by a group of teenagers who had been crunched in behind us on the lawn. I read later that the generator broke and the movie ended at 11:30 -- just halfway through.

So the question is, NOW what are we going to do the rest of the summer?

I'm sure we'll find something.

Quinn, Lucy and Ellie hanging out on our blanket.

Vivian hanging out with Adriana and Tanya.

Sophie and Audrey in the face-painting line (in the kid tent).

Vivian and Daddy

The girls!

Happy Father's Day, Mommy!

That's what Vivian kept saying to me as she handed me each Disney Princess picture she created with her AquaDoodle.

And it might as well have been Happy Father's Day to me because I had a really wonderful weekend. For the record, I believe Curt did as well.

Friday night began with a trip to the Hamburg Family Fun Fest. I met up with some other Mommy friends so Curt had a free pass and a kid-free night. And he deserved it after playing Mr. Mom for weeks on end while I was in rehearsals and performances for Kiss Me Kate. Hmmm. I should probably blog about that. I had a BLAST doing the show! Anyhoo, back to Hamburg. The girls rode a ton of rides before we got drenched with rain. No fireworks that night but we did have fun hanging out at Jayme's house for awhile.

On Saturday, I made a ton of money NOT singing! I was originally scheduled to sing two weddings that day. However, due to some scheduling snafu, I was off the hook for the noon wedding and then the 2:00 wedding shortened the service to just three songs. And since the snafu was not my fault, the music director said he'd cut a check for me anyway. DaHAM! I'll do more weddings like that any day.

This short commitment freed up most of my morning to FINALLY deal with the weeds that were taking over my yard. And since we got pummelled with rain on Friday, they were a breeze to pull! Eureka! My day continued with Sat. evening Mass (the girls were mostly good) and a trip to the nursery while Curt played disc golf. As I was putting flowers and plants in my car, I received a text that Curt was home and already cooking dinner. Yahoo! We ate dinner and drank wine on the sun porch and had a relaxing end to the day.

Father's day started out with Curt opening the gifts that the girls made and wrapped for him. From there, we hit high gear and couldn't stop: lawn mowing, flower planting, house-cleaning, grocery-shopping, laundry. We were amazing. And being productive never felt so good.

We celebrated our hard work with a nice relaxing evening at Top of the Park -- one of our favorite summertime activities. Vivian danced and made new friends, Audrey became a budding violinist and Curt and I just got to hang out on our blanket sipping our wine, uh water.

Ahhhhhhh . . .

Dance Recital!

This past weekend was dance recital weekend! And as much as I bitched about the crazy dress rehearsal schedule, all is always well that ends well.

The kids cleaned up pretty good and everyone behaved. We got to spend some time with Curt's parents, which is always a treat.

I'll let the photos document this special weekend.

Nicolas and Audrey warming up for their ballet piece at the dress rehearsal.

Nicolas and Audrey being goof balls backstage at the dress rehearsal before they're tap number. Vivian is watching "Pink Panther" and a fellow tapper is way more interested in that.

Audrey and Annika striking poses backstage at the dress rehearsal. So much pink and lace!

Getting last minute instructions at the dress rehearsal!

Delaney and Audrey are all smiles for the camera backstage! This is now recital day!

A sea of ballerinas!

Luke watched the entire show in the baby carrier with January -- running backstage and all!

The Provenzola-Dennis clan (Owen is sleeping - he doesn't care).

The Waugh men.

Vivian and Grandma! Vivian is clearly telling a fascinating story about her fruit snacks.

Vivian and Daddy!

I'm trying to pose with my girls after the recital. Vivian is very upset at this point because SHE wants to dance on the stage.

(This was after she ran up on stage and under the closed curtain. She was very upset with me for taking her out of there.)

I can't get over how old they look in this picture.


Glamour girl!