Butterflies and Unicorns

I had been wondering Vivian's drawings at school would look like now that the Christmas season is long behind us.

Here is the beautiful card she made yesterday.

The front cover.

The inside shows a beautiful sun-shiny day filled with unicorns and flowers.

"One unicorn is trying to fly" she told me.

The back cover.

"It says 'Mom' and 'Dad' but the letters are squished."

Where do I begin?

I hate it when too much time goes by between blog posts. I feel this pressure to fill in all the holes and write about everything that happened.

Let's see . . . let me recap. Since I last wrote we have hosted, attended or participated in . . .

• Two days of dance recitals


• Vivian's Very Hungry Caterpillar performance followed by


• both girls dancing at Glacier Hills with the Provenzola boys and other Randazzo dancers


• Estabrook end-of-year Carnival


• Mom and Dad's Estate Auction (oh, so bittersweet)


• field trips and school parties


• last day of school


• Curt being brilliant in a show (How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying)


• cast parties and birthday parties
  

There. I feel better now.

I'm sure I'm missing something . . .

Adorable Mother's Day Card

My favorite line?

" . . . she's so close to the star of the show" followed very closely by the the very last line.

Audrey's Exercise plan

Teacher Audrey

Audrey has been very busy lately.

She has also decided that her sister isn't all that awful anymore. I'm not exactly sure what what prompted her change in attitude, but I like it. This morning when I went to wake the girls up for school, I found BOTH of them sleeping in Vivian's bed! Audrey snuggled in beside Vivian.

Upon further investigation, I learned that Audrey had a bad dream about Vivian (something about Audrey going crazy and trying to hurt her) and she woke up so upset that she wanted to be close to her. Awww. Just recalling the story brought Audrey to tears.

Two days ago, Audrey decided that she needed to teach Vivian how to read. That, combined with the fact that apparently they're learning all about Microsoft Word in school, prompted her to type up several worksheets for Vivian to work on. They are provided below.

I think Vivian lasted about 10 minutes.

And never made it past the first worksheet.

Vivian is thinking spring!

And since we all could use a little "spring" in our lives, I'm sharing these pictures that Vivian made at pre-school this week.

Enjoy this collection of bugs, birds and a rainbow!

Elvis Lives!

No . . . no . . . this is not a left-over Halloween photo.

Audrey's class celebrated their 50 days of school a few weeks ago by researching the 1950's and attending an in-class sock hop.

Audrey's assignment was to find an object from the 50's and then write a report about it discussing it's significance and how this object might be used today.

For some random reason (because that's just how Audrey rolls) she picked as her object, Elvis Presley. She even did research as you'll read in her report below. She also desperately wanted to dress up as Elvis for the sock-hop party the next day. While all the girls in the class were sporting skirts and ponytails, my daughter wanted to wear an Elvis wig and a white T-shirt.

I managed to remember to snap a pic of her before she left for school that day (mornings in our household are pretty chaotic!)

She wore the wig the entire day!

Vivian's family portrait

Vivian handed me this drawing when I picked her up at pre-school one day this week. It's a lovely picture of her family.

We appear in this order from left to right: Vivian, Mommy, Daddy and Audrey. Notice that Vivian is the largest figure. And Daddy has no hair (LOL. THAT's a laugh.)

Also floating above my head is Cookie, the kitty.

she has her phone, too

Vivian drew a picture of the two of us during pre-school yesterday. The picture includes a caption.

I guess she knows how much I love my Crackberry.

I can say that I did it!

I would be hugely remiss if I didn't blog about an overnight field trip I went on with Audrey and the entire CCC summer camp crew.

Last Wednesday, we loaded up in numerous cars and drove to Muskegon to visit the Great Lakes Naval and Memorial Museum. My small caravan of three cars arrived an hour later than everyone else due to a few (cough) detours, but I digress. Let me just say that I was not leading the pack.

The point of this 3-hour trip was not merely to visit Lake Michigan and take a tour on a boat. Oh no. This overnight trip involved sleeping on a submarine. Yes, that's right. We spent the night on the USS Silversides.

With 40 kids.

Oh joy.

We had only one casualty - a nine year old boy, Teddie, just couldn't hack it so Laurie had to sleep with him in her van. My favorite memory from the trip was during our initial tour of the sub. We worked our way down the teeny-tiny opening and the teeny-tiny staircase into the sub and landed in the first sleeping quarters (of which there are three - plus a few of private cabins). I looked around, breathed a sigh of relief and said, "well, this isn't as bad as I thought it was going to be." However, on the other side of the room (not even an arms length away) one of the mothers bemoaned, "this is much worse than I thought it was going to be."

There she is, the USS Silversides.

Tanya, Becky and Lainey discussing how crazy we all are. Lainey is the one that found things much worse than I did.

USS Silversides saw lots of action in WWII.

Looking down a torpedo shoot

The engine room.

Here's most of the group!

Our sleeping quarters.

Of course, Audrey had no interest in sleeping in the private cabins - she wanted to be where all the action was. And she wanted me to sleep right next to her.

I have my limits. I opted for a top bunk at least. We were right next to the engine room. My sleeping bag still smells like diesel.

My bunk is on the upper right. Audrey's foot is the lower left.

Audrey and Nina.

Thankfully, Nina was happy to take my place and sleep right next to Audrey.

A view down the hall.

The other direction, plus a piece of the teeny-tiny mess hall.

Audrey "posing" in front of the sub the next morning.

Another pose by Lake Michigan. She doesn't take a normal picture these days.

The next day, we all went to the beach for a few hours of play and lunch before making the trip back to Ann Arbor.

A group of us walking back from the lighthouse

It was too cold to swim for some of the kids.

Art, beer and old friends

It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that Audrey has quite a talent for art.

I'm not sure where that comes from. I guess I used to draw and paint a lot as a kid. Somewhere along the way, I threw those aspirations aside and now I can barely sketch out a simple drawing. Actually, I think it has more to do with my level of patience these days than about lack of talent. I'm just too BUSY to spend any time doodling. Right??

We kicked off Mother's Day weekend (and OH what a nice weekend it was!) by going to Depot Town in Ypsilanti on Friday night to see Audrey's artwork on display at Shankwiler's Art Gallery.

What an adorable place it is!

And how beautiful Audrey's painting was! I was so happy to see it.

She put on her usual "glam" look posing in front of her piece.


It was a beautiful night so when we left the gallery, we headed to Corner Brewery to sit in the beer garden and get a bite to eat.

And just like a true neighborhhood bar, some old friends from Curt's college days showed up and hung out with us for awhile. I love it there.

It was a great night and a great kick-off to our weekend.

Ahhhh . . . weekend. [sigh]
Gone so quickly.

Mother's Day at the preschool

For a couple of years now, Vivian's preschool has hosted a Mother's Day lunch on the Friday closest to Mother's Day. I look forward to it every year!

Not only is the food yummy (chicken grilled on the grill outside, mixed greens, fruit salad) but it's just so much fun to break up my hectic work schedule for lunch with my daughter. And visiting with other mommies is pretty cool, too.

This lunch was particularly joyful for me since I had spent the entire week putting together a proposal package that had to be hand delivered by 2:00 on Friday to our client (Consumers Energy). I fretted about whether I could push the deadline a bit so I could go to lunch at noon with Vivian. The gods (and my hard work) prevailed and I had the package completely finished by 11:45!! I tossed it to the guy who was going to drive it to the client and flew out of there. What a great relief!

All the kids made potholders for their mom's. Here's Vivian sizing up her hand.

And here's a close-up.