Pizza, jazz and wine

Thursday was a fun night - Genia and John invited us to watch the Valencia High jazz band play at Vincenzo's, our favorite pizza joint.

John is the band director, and it was their final show of the year.

It was a really enjoyable night - good friends, good food and good music.

Being the old, boring parent-types, we don't get to see John do his music thing very often. Hopefully we can see more, this summer, now that Violet is older.

After the show, my dad watched the girls and Stace and I went to a new little winery in old (but revitalized) Newhall. We tasted a number of wines and ended up buying a delicious bottle of white.

We drank just enough that our sleep was weird and disjointed - I'm not used to drinking any more, that's for sure! But it was great to get out together for a date night. It had been a while since we did something date-like on a date night (i.e., not involving Home Depot or Lowe's.)

Week in Review

On Monday, we met up with some friends at Chick-Fil-A for lunch. Here are the "big kids," Elyz, Lucas and Cora...
...and here are the baby sisters - Violet, Liana and Daniela. It happened to be Liana's first birthday!

On Tuesday, we had our final MOPS meeting of the year. Here is my table - I served as "table leader" this semester, after our prior table leader had to leave MOPS to go back to work. I was nervous about taking on the role, but in the end it worked out well. We had a number of midweek playdates, and supported each other through new babies, new pregnancies, and even a wedding! One of the women organized a frozen-meal swapping group that I'm taking part in - five of us will get together monthly and bring homemade, frozen meals for the others. Cooking four meals at once is a challenge, but going home with ready-made meals for the upcoming weeks is such a blessing!

On Wednesday, Cora had her last Skipper Club meeting, ever! In the fall, Cora will move up to the Scooters in Pioneer Club. Here, her teacher Mrs. Rachael gives Cora her final badges and parting gift.
On Friday night, Colleen, Rigo, Lucas and Liana came over for dinner. It was great - they came to us, and provided dinner and dessert! Colleen is also part of my meal-swap group, and she mentioned that she hadn't been able to make her own family the lasagna she made for everyone else. Knowing that most trays of lasagna will feed at least four families, I suggested we eat it together. We all had a nice time together, as always. Here, silly Cora entertains Liana.

In between the fun, Stace worked on finishing up kitchen odds and ends. More on that soon, I promise!

Uh Oh

I heard a tap-tap-tap noise, and looked in to find this.

Our (frequent) instructions to keep all writing implements up on the
high table, out of Violet's reach, aren't always listened to. (Along with the rule about
keeping caps on markers.)
Needless to say, all the markers are now in a cupboard in the kitchen.
And the Magic Eraser is my new best friend!

How could I even be upset, though? Look at that big grin!

Mother's Day 2011

So my Mother's Day morning started out bright and early - really early - with a teething baby with a fever. Awww, well, all in a mom's day's work.

The morning got much better, when Cora and Stace prepared a lovely ham, cheese and tomato omelet and served it in bed!

We then relaxed and watched some videotaped coverage of the royal wedding. Cora really enjoyed it, and asked if she would ever get to meet Princess Kate.

For lunch, we went to see Auntie Mel in her new role - as a waitress at Macaroni Grille! She still is at Starbucks, and she still is doing the children's theater. My mom also has three part-time jobs at the moment - busy ladies!

We had a really nice lunch with my mom, Mel, her boyfriend, our friend Christine and the Adams family. I forgot my camera, so pretend you are seeing a photo of the happy event. At some point, when I get the pictures from Linda, I'll edit this post and add them in.

In the evening, after naps all around, we took a family walk. It was superb. I've missed our family walks the past few kitchen-crazy months!

Silly Cora

Cora makes me laugh. Every day.

She hides from Stace every day when he comes home from work, and he has to find her.

Do you see her?

This hiding spot was a good one!
So was this one, other than the visible feet.

During one nap, Cora tucked in all her mini dolls.

They look snug, don't they?
She might be dressing up like a princess more often, and talking about looking pretty...

...but she still has her tomboy tendencies.

Big shoes to fill.

Mother/Daughter Hats

When I looked at the photos of Cora wearing her Easter bonnet, I had a deja vu moment, remembering a similar photo of myself, also at the age of 4. My preschool classmates and I had made bonnets, too, and it was "hat day" at school.
The memory is burned into my head because I had spent the night at my grandparents and had forgotten a dress. All the other little girls wore dresses with their pretty hats. You can see why this has stayed with me all these years ... despite the thousands of dollars and years of therapy.

A little bit of a resemblance, no?

LOVE

Kitchen Update 73

That big sigh of relief you heard a few days ago?

That was from me.

The me who now has a functional kitchen sink and a working dishwasher, to boot!

Stace hooked up the plumbing last week on both, and what an amazing difference it is to again be able to rinse fruit, fill the coffeemaker and drain pasta, all within the kitchen.

And, for the first time in my life, I have a new, shiny dishwasher that I plan to use regularly. Stace and I both grew up in homes where dishes were washed by hand, and we kept that going. Mainly because in our early marriage we didn't dirty enough dishes to wait to do a load, and the dishwashers in our condo and house were very old, and/or not working.

But, now, in my life as a homemaker who is usually home for three meals a day, and with two more people dirtying things, I am thrilled about this new appliance!

Another fun new appliance we hooked up - a splurge, really - is the small faucet/tap next to the main one. It dispenses filtered cold water with one lever, and near-boiling water with the other.

Stace has been busy the last few days putting in the decorative backsplash tile.

And then comes the toe kick panels at the bottom of the cabinets, and some baseboard on the small amount of exposed wall.

Then, you'll be able to hear a much louder sigh of relief, one that will echo across the States, and Atlantic Ocean and back.

Feeding the Masses

This Sunday, we were blessed to take part in a beautiful thing.

Churches across Santa Clarita came together to put into action Jesus's words in Matthew's Gospel, "For I was hungry and you gave me food."
I'm so pleased to say that Real Life Church spearheaded the effort to package one million meals, following our church's successful 105,000-meal-event last year. Things like this are just one of the reasons we love this church! Normal people transformed by Jesus, doing things to improve our community and change the world.
Inside the sanctuary, we got our instructions and heard from the leadership of Children of the Nations, the missions group who will distribute the meals on the ground. We were introduced to a former Haitian orphan who, through the organization's services and God's help, has become a doctor and works in his own village.

Then we went out to the packaging area. Above is our Table 10, packing for Ugandan orphans. The one million meals are destined for Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Uganda and Malawi.

We packed the meals in an assembly line. One person would hold the bag under the funnel, another would scoop in lentils, then another would scoop in rice, and then a spoon of spices and a spoon of chicken powder. The meals, which a shelf life of seven years, are created by adding boiling water and any available spices or meats at the feeding centers.
In our Land O' Plenty, it felt great to spend a bit of time doing something good for hungry children. And, of course, it gave us a ready-made "teachable moment" with Cora.
I was the Lentil Lady, Cora was the Chicken Powder Chick, and Stace was Measure Man, making sure our bags were all around 400 grams.

Cora, playing her elastic instrument

I was able to load the video from the Cowboy Festival with Cora making her own music during the Hot Club of Cowtown performance...

Cowboy Festival

The Cowboy Festival is back in town! After missing it the last couple of years, it was great fun to attend again, and show Cora all the fun.

Another photo-heavy post, so I'm running them small and you can click to enlarge, as you wish...

In the top pic, we took Skippy, the Skipper Club mascot who goes home with a Skipper each week. The last time he came to our house, the most exciting thing he did was go to preschool and Lowes. This time we definitely gave him some fun!

Cora enjoyed the street performances. The gunslinger who came to our church in October was there, as were a couple of lasso experts. You can see Cora and another little girl jumping out of the rope after they were "caught."

Then, we inspected the jail, before heading into one of the music performances.

We really enjoyed a particular Western Swing band the last time we were at the festival, and Hot Club of Cowtown put on a great show again. The trio will be all over the UK in November, including a Bristol show on Nov. 10.

Both girls loved the music; Cora was dancing in the aisle and playing a new instrument she found. She stretched outward the elastic waist-tightener from inside her jeans, and was pretending it was a double bass. The various button holes made it louder or quieter, she said.


We had her reenact once we got outside.

Then, we had some cowboy cuisine - the legendary peach cobbler, a brisket sandwich and a chili dog. No photos because it was super windy, and it was all we could manage to keep the girls settled, feed ourselves and keep the blowing dirt and leaves out of our food.

We finished just in time to see another favorite act, the Messick Family Singers, though Violet missed their act as she finally dropped off for a nap.

Then it was over to the children's exhibits, where Cora panned for gold, washed clothes and ground corn into cornmeal.

Unfortunately, our fantastic family day out ended as they sometimes do, with Cora melting down.

She had hoped to make a leather necklace, but she was being impatient about waiting her turn. Stace warned her about being patient and not being rude, but she didn't listen. We told her she wouldn't be making one, and that resulted in 15 or 20 minutes of crying.
Oh well, we keep strong and carry on.

All in all, our Cowboy Festival day was brilliant, and a great break for us together as a family.