The End of 2013

It doesn't really feel like the end of 2013 for some reason.  Maybe because usually we're in Tennessee with Steve's sister.  But here we are, as I write this now, it's officially Jan. 1, 2014.  I'm old enough now that I'll probably still be writing 2013 on checks for the next six months...

Christmas this year was very different from our traditions and 'norm', and so was New Years.  Kaylee invited two friends over to spend the night with her, and go to our city's downtown festivities with her.  One of the friends decided not to come, which I think worked out just fine.  First I took Kaylee over to the local Super 8 Motel, where her one friend's family had rented a couple of rooms so the kids could go swimming.  So Kaylee went swimming with her friend for a good two hours or better, on a nice indoor heated pool, which you don't often get to do in December.  The mom dropped the two girls off at our house, and we had some hot pizza waiting for them, and then they played on the Xbox for a couple of hours.  Then we bundled everybody up and headed out to downtown Kokomo.  Now, when we arrived, it was kind of quiet, and we were wondering if we'd made a mistake.  There was supposed to be food and drinks and stuff to do, and it was quiet, with just a DJ playing and not that many people.  But I wanted the girls to have fun with it anyway, and they did get into the spirit of it.  Pretty soon there was a ton of people there, which isn't better, for the record.  ;)  The girls watched a donut eating contest, which Kaylee wanted to enter until she found out there were 24 donuts in front of people that they had to eat.  They danced a little to the music, and they did have a good time.  :)  When the time came, the pink ball didn't drop.  We thought this was kind of funny until I found out that it was a local kid school robotics group that had spent a good portion of the year designing the ball, setting up the timer, etc., and that at its big moment, it failed.  That's not so funny.  I feel bad for the kids.  It was a beautiful ball, hot pink with the little triangles on it changing colors.  After the ball...tried to drop...they had a bunch of fireworks, and those were great.  They did a nice job on the fireworks!  I had just gotten done telling Kaylee earlier that day that it's pretty normal for things to not go perfectly, that something goes wrong a lot with plans, but that you adapt and roll with it and choose to enjoy yourself anyway.  They did, they had fun, and that makes it fun for me.

We came home after the fireworks were done, I made the girls some hot chocolate to warm them back up, and they played dance games on the Xbox for almost two more hours before putting on a movie and lying down out on the pulled-out futon in the front living room, which is where they are as I write this at 2 a.m.  Steve's in bed, and I'm just staying up and making sure everything's okay up there for now.  I'm not sure if I'll outlast them or not.  I could, but not sure I need to.  ;)

We thought about going out and doing something with other adults, we thought about staying home and inviting other adults over, we thought about staying home and doing nothing but watching Dick Clark's special on TV, and then we decided for the first time to let Kaylee do something.  That ended up being slightly stressful for awhile, but once we got rolling, it was fun.  Earlier I listened to them laughing while they played.  Right now I'm listening to them laughing at the movie they are watching.  In the morning (or more likely, around noon), we will  make pancakes and have donuts and enjoy the first day of the new year.  This is good.

I was thinking about what I hoped for in 2014.  Considering how the last year or two went on some things, I decided that for 2014 I'd better just aim for staying healthy and out of trouble, and anything that got accomplished above and beyond that would just be a bonus.  ;)  I have some things I want to do before it's too late, and I hear clocks ticking in my head for some of it, not just on NY Eve, but for awhile now.  I'm restless--nothing bugs me in life more than missed chances--not even bad drivers.  ;) I'm not sure some of it's even doable, so for now I'll just go with healthy and keeping out of trouble!

So anyway, welcome to 2014.  And off we go.

 

 

 

Snapshot

Bank runs, spending $120 on two boxes of contact lenses, one for each eye, and that's at a cheap place, post office runs, house stuff, and one big nap because I went to bed late and woke up before 5 a.m. wiiiide awake and ready to go and just got up shortly after 5.  A little web research, a little black tea, a little planning, a little surfing, a little TV, and so a day goes by.

In the meantime, here's a quick 17 seconds breaking out of the clouds on my way to Missouri not too long ago...it looks nicer full screen at the end, and unless you like the sound of engines, you might want to turn down the volume...

Sunday

(Love these thought-provoking titles).

It was a great productivity day.  I got through a pretty good list of things, and Steve did too.  We also got 95% of the Christmas stuff from around the house taken down and put away.  Steve took down all the ornaments from the tree, too, and we got everything back in the garage except the lights and the fake tree itself.  Not a bad day's work.

Kaylee is spending the night at a friend's house, kind of a last minute thing that will work out okay.  She doesn't go back to school until Jan 8th! That's a long time off of school!  We decided we needed to do a few fun things with her when she has all this time off, so she'll be inviting a couple people over, we'll be going shopping, and we're going to do a New Year thing for starters.  I'll have to think about what else.

A couple of links I thought were decent:

A 13-year-old on education who has some pretty good things to say.

30 Things you need to stop doing.

I need one of these. (Pardon the language in the title).

There is still plenty to do...might as well get to some of it.

Sunny Saturday

Gorgeous day, up to 50 degrees, or close enough.  Steve flew over 4 hours, working with a guy on Commercial maneuvers, and Justin and I went up in the 172 for awhile too.  It'll probably be the nicest day we have for a long time, as the temps are dropping rapidly again.

The Aerostar is home, FrankenGumby with a beautiful panel and interior, very comfortable seats, and a bit of a special exterior paint job.  ;)  Now if the T-6 will get back together, there will be two flyable airplanes out there...hey, it's a start.

Tonight Kaylee and I were talking about Instagram.  I had an account, that I set up to follow Kaylee, just to keep an eye on things on the internet with her.  My account needed me to log back in and I hadn't kept what my username was.  Kaylee told me what it was, and then said "Mom, you don't have a profile picture, you haven't edited your profile at all.  Give me that."  She then set up my profile, added a picture, helped me follow a few other family members and friends, and basically told me what to do.  Up until now, I've always set up her stuff.  This is the first time my kid has set me up with a technology account on anything.  It made me smile and cringe all at the same time.  I could've figured it out...given a little time...  ;)

Tomorrow is Holly's birthday, so tonight we were invited to a celebratory dinner at Outback.  It's been awhile since we all went out, and it was nice.  It's always fun to have a good reason to get together and go out, and having a little Ahi Tuna and chocolate birthday cake are bonuses!

I put up two pages of Christmas photos at my home page here.  I'm way behind on other photos, but at least I got these up...

This is a poor iPhone copy of what the real sunset looked like out at the airport tonight, but it gives you an idea.  Just add darker, burnt bronze and orange, and you've got it:

Winding Down

Ernie, me and Kaylee were all three up really late, around 2 or somewhere close to there.  Those two were reading, and I was just awake.  They headed back home this morning, and we went back to work.

It was another beautiful day.  After lunch at Glenndale, I sat in an airplane for the first time in two weeks when I took a 172 out of Glenndale and over to Kokomo, then another 172 up with a student doing checkride prep.  I had left my car back at Glenndale, so I drove back over there, and it was such a beautiful afternoon, I thought that maybe I'd go fly the Champ.  I went in there, and the battery charger being on is no problem, but it was also up on blocks to protect it from the previous rains.  Well, that's okay, I can pull it down, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to get it back up on the blocks, and I hadn't looked at the weather so I wasn't sure if more rain was coming or not.  Then I looked at the fuel, and it was pretty much on empty.  I figured at this rate of my luck, I'd go to roll it off the blocks and one wheel would fall off and the other wouldn't, or the fuel pump wouldn't work after I got it dragged out there, or it would be dark before I got going, so I just walked away and drove off looking wistfully at the beautiful sun going down.

Kaylee got a text just before 1 a.m. from her friend M, who broke her arm ice skating, the same day Kaylee went ice skating.  Hopefully it was a quick-healing and not too serious break.  No fun...

I had a pretty slow year for flying, just added up my logbook from the end of December last year through today, and will just barely break 500 hours.  It won't get much better for awhile here.

I've sat here for an hour trying to find a way to either say something or wrap it up.  Since I can't figure out how to do either, I'll just leave with this photo, maybe go work on my other photos.  This one is Steve today handpropping the Luscombe that came in, after he looked over at me and I didn't jump up to do it, and the pilot didn't ask me to do it, so Steve made sure we knew he was being gentlemanly by going and doing it himself.  Such chivalry deserved a photo.  ;)

The Day After

Sorry some of these are so short, but I didn't want to be rude and sit on the compute for too long writing.  :)

We all slept in this morning--I slept like a rock, had weird dreams, and didn't get up until almost 10:30.  I guess I had some sleep to catch up on.

Kaylee had a friend pick her up at the house, and they went down to Carmel and went ice skating, for her first time experiencing that.  The rest of us went to lunch together, then the boys went one way running errands and Mom and I drove down to Carmel to watch her skate, pick her up and bring her home.  She was quiet for pretty much the rest of the evening-I think it took it out of her.  ;)  She said she only fell down twice the whole time, and one was in front of us.  While Mom and I were there, we saw a teeny tiny kid shuffling along in tiny steps wearing a full face hockey mask, which was great, and I saw one kid hit the ice so hard I heard it thud throughout the place.  He came crawling off the ice and cried on the floor for a little bit.  The place was crowded, and kids were falling all over, and a lot of faces were concentrating, not happy and grinning, though there were plenty of those, too.  But of all the places to think about donning safety gear, that seems like the place to do so, to me.  That ice is hard, man.  Kaylee was the last kid in her group standing who still wanted the skate--the others gave it up before she did, so she skated with her friend's mom for a few laps before giving it up.  I'm glad she got to have that opportunity.

Steve's mom made cheesy broccoli potato soup that we stole from them for dinner, and it was really good.  Steve kept making 'nummy' noises every time he ate.   :D  It's been so nice having real vs fast food this last week!

We went out and looked at the rest of the local light displays.  We hit Highland Park first, then went out to Greentown, which had been shut off.  It's just the day after Christmas guys, c'mon!  We sponsor a twin engine airplane light display out there, and have never seen it.  This is sad.  I was going to take a picture of it tonight, but somebody had shut all the lights off.  We thought about looking for the cord and plugging them back in for another night.  ;)  Next up we hit OKK's runway with all its pretty Christmas colors, and then on to the We Care display in Kokomo, which wins for the best display around.  Very nice.

Tonight we watched "Despicable Me 2", and we all got a kick out of it.  You have to like how they make kid movies almost more fun for grown-ups than for kids these days.  Sometimes that's filthy dirty but (hopefully) over little kids' heads, but at least this one was just...funny.  I appreciate that.  It's hard to find a good movie that you can watch with your children these days.

Somewhere around 12:30 a.m. I went to check on Kaylee.  She was still awake, lying in her bed, surrounded.  She was wearing her cousin's sweater, hugging her uncle's fuzzy pillow, under another cousin's fuzzy blanket, with her warrior cats blanket hand made by Grandma by her feet, wearing the silver bracelet that her grandma and grandpa gave her, with the light up thing I got her on the side table.  I asked her if she wanted to take off the sweater or bracelet before going to sleep, and she didn't, at all.  It made her feel close to everybody.  She's getting older, a little quieter, but she's more sensitive then some people would think.  It's good that she can be both feisty and gentle hearted.  You need both in life.

It's late, I wish I could sleep, but I must have slept too hard last night or something, because I be awake.  Oh, have you heard about wireless flash drives?  Well, I've got one.  :P  (Thanks Mom & Ernie, who are pleased with themselves for knowing something more techy than I do.  ;))  I've figured out how to use it for just about everything on the iPad.  The only thing I have to dive more into is seeing if I can use it to transfer books.  I guess a tech guy had said it was possible, but it's not intuitive, but I'll be looking into it, because if I can transfer from my iPad to Kaylee's Kindle or other people's, that would be downright handy.  Even if I can't though, it's a pretty cool thing.

Christmas is over, and all that's left is to take down all the decorations and get the house back to normal, I suppose.  But it was a lot of effort to put up everything at the last minute--I kind of want to enjoy it a little bit longer before all the work kicks back in to put it away.  And I wonder if we should do something for New  Year's.  Go somewhere?  Where?  It needs to be family friendly.  Hmm...

Day

Merry Christmas! We started off slow around here, with Kaylee being the last one out of bed.  There's something wrong with that--I asked her what happened to the kid who jumped on top of me in bed early in the morning and said "It's CHRISTMAS, Mommy, get UP!" or who used to stand by Grandma's bed early in the morning and stare at her to wake her up.  :D

We had a morning snack, then opened presents, then came back in and had another home grown breakfast.

When it got dark we drove over to Rossville and went to the big light display out there in the country for a little extra Christmas spirit.  They did an amazing job and I can't imagine how long it took to do all that.

Ann made homemade chicken and noodles, and I made homemade mashed potatoes, and we had too much to eat again.  I'd been good until today, but we have pumpkin loaf and Amish bread and chocolate fudge and peanut butter fudge and all SORTS of delicious things to eat, and many of them are baked goods that you can't let sit for a week first.  I am not wasting that good stuff.

Tomorrow afternoon some of us are going to Indy, and Kaylee gets to try her hand at ice skating for the first time.  This could be interesting.  ;)

This is short and sweet, it's late and I'm sleepy, but it was a lovely day.  I downloaded my pictures from the last couple days, and will get them up soon...

Whirlwind

It was a whirlwind 24 hours, though a lot of fun.  Everyone was up way too late last night, so we kind of dragged our way out of bed around 9 to even 10 am for some of them, slowly got ready, had a big family breakfast with pancakes, bacon, eggs, cinnamon swirl bread, fruit, I forget what else, but lots of food.   After I got that cleaned up, it was Christmas time.  We all went out on the deck and exchanged gifts and took pictures.  Back inside for a light lunch, everybody played Rock Band while I finished breakfast and lunch dishes and such, and then poof, they headed out the door and away back south.

Steve and I left, had a couple errands to run, and went out to Glenndale to pick up a pumpkin loaf and an Amish bread loaf from the Habits and Ron & Michelle out there.  They make these for their neighbors, and I feel privileged to be considered a neighbor too!  We stayed and talked a few minutes before I got a text from Kaylee that my Mom and Ernie had made it in.  :) 

Dinner was leftovers, but it was still pretty good to me, anyway.  One more clean up, and then we all pretty much sat down and hung out the rest of the evening, a little talking, a little snacking, a little TV watching.  Kaylee finished the "Divergent" series...and started it all over again.  I worked on pictures, getting them resized and adjusted a bit.  Tomorrow (well, technically right now) is Christmas.  We realized that we never made our annual Christmas cookies, either.  It's just been a seriously "off" year for traditions, that's for sure.  But nobody smashed their finger in the door, no glass was broken, the hot water heater has stayed running, everybody is healthy enough to be here, we're surrounded by friends and family, and anything else is just gravy.

(Here are the cousins, almost all grown up now, and Ricky, Morgan's boyfriend.)

Chevy Chase

Today pretty much felt like a knock off of a Chevy Chase Christmas movie, without Cousin Eddie or his Arr-Vee at least. ;)

Woke up with a headache that made me sick to my stomach, went back to bed and ended up sleeping until 2 pm.   Washed my hands and found no hot water, Steve couldn't get the hot water heater re-lit, so we had to call a service guy out here.  He did it as a favor basically, and got over here pretty quickly.  Most of our available cash later, it is temporarily fixed, but something new and more permanent is broken on it, so we get to replace our entire hot water heater, for some decent money, a heater which at any point could go out and not be able to be relit while we have lots of company over at the house.

Poor Cathy got sick, so they delayed coming up by a day on a wait and see, and then Mom said that poor Ernie got sick too, so for awhile we thought we'd have a bit of a smaller Christmas gathering.  Then Cathy got to feeling a bit better, so they made the trek up tonight, and made it around 8:30 pm or so.  Ernie's still assessing how he's doing.  What lousy timing for everyone to get sick, and it's a lot of people right now.

I had a couple of errands to run-I needed to go to Glenndale to pick up a box that was there, needed to run to the store to get more applesauce as part of dinner since Kaylee ate it all, wanted to run to Tipton for a drop off, and wanted to run to Books A Million to pick up something there that she'd liked that was inexpensive, since we didn't really get her very many gifts this year.  The parking lot at the mall was packed out into no man's land, but I took the opportunity to jog.  Yep, I jogged inside, grabbed the thing, paid, and jogged back to my car, where I had two people fighting for my spot when I tried to leave.  It's an animal kingdom out there, man!

Right when they got here, Kaylee was putting on her shoes to go run out and help them unload the van, when she braced herself with her hand against the door--which Steve closed, and the door by the hinge closed on Kaylee's little finger.  I was in the kitchen, and she ran screaming past me for her room.  We were concerned that her finger was broken.  She was in some real pain from that one.  So Steve's in with her while I'm letting everyone in the house.  I get her an ice pack, and it's getting late, so we've been getting food and the table ready.  I pull a plate off the top shelf, and someone had put a little glass bowl on top of the plate.  It slid off and hit a tall glass on the counter, sending glass shards and Diet Coke everywhere, the counter, the floor, etc.  So next we got to pick glass shards up and off of everything before sitting down to eat dinner. I'm sure we'll find little pieces of it around for awhile to come.

Kaylee stayed on her floor with her feet elevated for awhile as her finger slowly calmed down under the ice pack, and we were able to move it and see that it wasn't broken, at least.  I could just picture an ER visit tonight too.  The timing though....nine people are coming to your door Right Now, your daughter is screaming in pain in her room, your lasagna isn't cooked through yet, and you're about to get shattered splinters of glass everywhere.  And while you're at it, you hope the eight people spending the night in your house all get a hot shower okay tomorrow.  Somebody ought to make a country song out of that.

From here on out, everything went just fine, other than it's 2:30 a.m. now and I can't sleep because I had to sleep in so late today.  But we had a nice dinner and it was good visiting with everybody.  Richard and Ann have a tradition of giving out gifts the night before, where the kids pick a number then get to go in order of that number and choose available gifts on a table until they're gone.  This year was different, like many other things this year.  :)  They wrapped up an old doll or stuffed animal to give to each of the grandkids, as a memory, and also attached a gift card so the kids could pick out their own jewelry and such this year.  Everyone got a laugh remembering the old dolls that they used to play with at Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Tomorrow will come earlier than a lot of us will be ready for, but hopefully it will go a little more peacefully and smoothly than today did.  We'll have Christmas and a big brunch before the Cherry family has to hit the road and head back south again.   I'm so glad they could make it up though.  Kaylee would have really been sad to miss out on seeing her cousins this year...

Twas The Night Before,

the night before, the night before Christmas.  It's a good thing "The Perfect Christmas" isn't our main goal this year.  We didn't get our live tree, but our old fake tree looks perfectly lovely.  We don't have a place to put it in our house like normal, but it works just fine on a corner on the deck, and in fact we probably see it more often since we go in and out the door right past it every time as opposed to being up at the front of the house.  For one of the first years ever I won't need to run to the stores at the last minute to pick up gifts...Steve got most of that done on line.  Usually we go down to Tennessee, but this year they were coming up here.  The Cherrys were going to be up here today, but unfortunately Cathy and maybe also Lon are sick with what sounds like the good old fashioned flu.  They're trying to feel good enough to make it up here, but boy, I sure wouldn't want to travel if I was trying to recover from the flu.  And no hugging and lots of hand washing if they do!  :)  It's really one of the few times Kaylee would get to see all the cousins together now that two are off at college.  We'll just have to see how it goes...and hopefully they'll feel better quickly no matter what, and none of the rest of them will get it!

Kaylee has been doing a great job wrapping presents.  She enjoys that, and she's not bad at it, so she's made our lives and jobs easier by taking care of that end of things.  Today she's also been cleaning out her closet.  It's been a long time since we went through and got rid of the clothes that are too small for her.  So yesterday and today she's been going through and putting them in piles of keep, give away and throw away, and then I've been folding and bagging them up and getting them ready to give to someone else.  So far we are up to four bags of clothes.  No kidding.  She has had lots of great clothes until now.  Right now she's down to about 1 pair of shorts, 1 tank top, 1 pair of jeans that fits, and 1 dress.  So it's time to take care of some of that, but in the meantime it's nice to see the closet all thinned out and organized better.  :)

Well, if the Cherry's can't make it up here tomorrow, we are going to have a boat load of food in the house, some of it that will go bad, so if you want to come over here and help us eat fruit, veggies, and bread products, that'll be great.  ;)

Winter

Today is only the first official, actual day of winter.  I'm not sure I'm going to make it.  ;)

The three of us went to IHOP this morning for brunch.  Kaylee and I both got these egg nog pancakes, which looked quite tasty, but didn't exactly live up to what either of us were expecting.  They were also huge, so even though I ate until I was full, I still had over half of mine left, and Kaylee had 2/3rds of hers left, but none of us liked them well enough to box them up and bring them home, so that was a waste of some money. The bacon I ordered "burnt" came out floppy again too-how hard is it to cook bacon properly?  ;)  But the time out as a family was very nice, Steve liked his just fine, and that hot chocolate was most tasty too!

It's fairly warm these last few days, raining pretty constantly.  We ran around most of the day in the rain.  This is okay getting in and out of the car to go somewhere, a little more of a pain when you're going grocery shopping.  The parking lots are packed out, so you have a nice long walk in the rain.  Food for a lot of people makes for a lot of bags to unload from the cart and the car and bring in...I spent a fair amount of time drying back out this afternoon.  The store, holy cow the store was packed out.  Twenty-seven lanes were open, with people backed across the aisles and back into the store.  The wait at the deli counter to get my lunchmeat and cheese was almost 40 minutes.  The aisles were crowded and blocked.  It was...ugh.  I picked up two vegetable trays initially.  The guy at the cash register hands me a bag with one tray of veggies in it, and the corner of the veggie tray tears the plastic of the bag, the whole thing goes crashing to the floor, and vegetables go everywhere.  He called for a "clean up", but I got down there and just picked them all up myself before any manager got over there to ask what was needed, let alone someone with a broom.  I just told him to take it off my bill, and let me keep moving on.  We'll have enough vegetables with one, and I'm not holding up that line of people behind me.

Kaylee did a great job wrapping presents today.  She started in on wrapping up, and by the end of tonight she got done everything that we have.  We're waiting on a couple more presents to arrive, but for now...we're all wrapped up.  :)

Speaking of presents.  This is the tale of two people.  One, a hard working single mom trying to provide Christmas for her daughter, who was extremely excited and grateful that with a bonus she got, she was able to buy her daughter one actual new present after all, a yard badmitten set-up that the girl has wanted.  She was nothing but positive, happy, and thankful.  The other, a married couple who lives in a nice, large home, has two daughters, both parents working, one full time one part time, and they are always asking people for things, who posted on Facebook that they had told their kids that there would be no Christmas for them, no gifts at all, but then someone came up to them and told them to go buy the girls whatever they wanted for Christmas.  First, baloney on the no Christmas thing for that family.  But secondly, you can't tell me that you can't do anything, make anything, give anything.  No, really, you literally cannot tell me that.  Heck, pioneer people traveling across the country in wagons made dolls out of corn husks and had special food treats.  It may not be the latest electronic device, but you do not have to have a Christmas morning without anything under the tree, and anybody who posts on Facebook that they were going to do that with their two kids, one very young, I just find that so distasteful.  Great lesson for the kids, too.  "Make sure you publicly talk enough about what you want but don't have and somebody will come along and give it to you eventually if you can make yourself sound pathetic enough."  Class.

Ann texted Kaylee to come over, she'd been making million dollar fudge and Kaylee got to lick the bowl (me too.  ;))  It's a family recipe, and there are several stories to go along with that fudge.  We'll have to get the recipe too one of these days.  :)

Well, it was a productive and long day, and we'll be busy tomorrow and on as well.  Enjoying Jimmy Fallon and Justin Timberlake, then headed to sleep with the rest of my family...

The Big Dance

Today was the last day of final exams, and Kaylee thought she did well on three of them and not so well on one of them, but that one the one she didn't do that well on, he told them he'd be offering extra credit possibilities.  So, we'll see, but for now she's out of school for Christmas break and happy about it.

The Christmas dance was tonight, and it was a little tricky.  She didn't want to be the only one dressed up that much.  Her friends who didn't have dates all went together, and a few of them swapped photos of what dresses they were wearing via text.  She was still nervous about how fancy her dress was.  It took a lot to get dressed, hair and face done, and the house looked like a teenage tornado went through it, with hairspray and ponytail holders and brushes and cotton balls and fingernail polish and clothes and all manner of things tossed around.  But finally, after I helped avert about four different crisis's, from not being able to find the matching hand bag to getting chocolate dripped onto the skirt when a snack was mandatory after being dressed to having a fitting problem to flat hair, and a few others, we made it out of the house.

Once we got to the dance, we stayed in the car for 15 minutes watching people go in, discussing and assessing the whole situation.  Finally she was ready, and went on in alone, hoping to find her friends were already inside, and I promised her I'd stay in the parking lot for 15 minutes.  If she had any problem, or anything went wrong, she just had to come out to the parking lot, and I'd be right there.  If I didn't hear from her in 15 minutes, I'd leave, and pick her up whenever she texted me or at the end of the dance.  Fifteen minutes later, no sight of her, so off I went.

Her dad went to a flower shop, ordered and picked up a corsage that matched her dress beautifully, with a wrist strap, and gave it to her before she left, with the caveat that if she didn't want to wear it, if nobody else was wearing them, that she didn't have to, but he said that every young lady that goes to a dance should have flowers.  We ladies think that was sweet.

I thought part of my job was also to tell her about young men that might ask her to dance, how I'm okay with that as long as it's appropriate.  She was clearly disgusted at the thought of dancing with a boy, which was kind of funny, but that led me to also tell her that she was a pretty young lady, and that it might take some courage for some young man to ask her to dance, and that if one did, she should remember to be gracious and kind, and not be mean or have the look on her face like she just did when I brought it up.  ;)  Come to find out, Steve had separately had almost the exact same conversation with her, so she got it twice...but she didn't even tell me she'd already had this talk.  I thought that was funny too.  She ended up dancing with her girlfriends, no guy friends, and having a marvelous time.  There was boy/girl drama going on around her a bit, but not with her, and that made her quite happy, to not be involved with any of that stuff.  Her concern of being overdressed was unnecessary, her friends loved the dress, she looked lovely, and she had a blast.  She was so tired from the school and finals and getting worked up and the dance that she got home at 9:40 and was in bed by 10:20.  We watched a little "It's A Wonderful Life" until she couldn't keep her eyes open any more, and I carried her in to her room, which is tricky, because she's more solid than she looks.  ;)

All in all, a successful evening.  A little bit of work for all of us, but it's worth it to us that she has these good experiences starting young.

The state school testing scores came back, and Kaylee's school was the only one in the county to receive all As on their Elementary, Junior, and Senior High schools.  Top ratings for a public school.  It also listed the schools in comparison to charter and private schools.  The public schools here KILLED Charter schools, by a huge margin.  That surprised me.  The private schools beat the public schools, but not by a very large margin, which was also interesting.  Really, both the private and the public schools around here, with just a couple exceptions, are overall really good.  I know I'm really happy with Kaylee's school, and that's quite a relief.  I spent a lot of time worrying about her going over to a public school, and it seems as though there was no reason to worry after all, either spiritually, socially, or academically.  :)

So Kaylee's fish all died, right?  But she loves to sleep to the sound of the fish tank water burbling, see things swimming around in there, finds it peaceful and such.  However, we don't want any more fish.  No more cleaning that tank out or dead fish.  So Steve found the perfect solution, and I kid you not.  Plastic fish that go in the tank and "swim" around based on the water currents.  Yes, I'm serious!  We leave the water and the tank and the pump, but nothing has to be fed, cleaned, or kept actually alive.  Win/Win/WIN.  I didn't want fish in the first place.  This fish I can deal with.

Mostly my Mom is really glad right now that I don't have any flights, because instead of talking about icing levels and thunderstorms and weird FBOs and IFR approaches, I'm talking dances and plays and concerts and baking and projects.  But I would be anyway these last few weeks, because they've certainly taken the center stage of our lives in these parts.  :)  It's not good that "my" airplane is down for a long time here.  It's not good in the least, in fact.  But it is good that I've been able to be around here these last few weeks and help with all this stuff.  I'm very glad for that, since this stuff is more important than another trip to St. Louis.  (Although another paycheck would come in handy. ;))

Oh.  Before I forget.  I just want you to know that when I got Kaylee up at 6:15 this morning, I fixed her eggs for breakfast.  Over easy/medium, yolk unbroken, nothing burnt, perfect eggs.  A little brain food for tests, you know.  And a little hot chocolate to go with it for something warming and sugar filled to start the day.  Some of you out there are all "Well, yeah, I make my kids whole wheat pancakes or waffles, eggs and toast and orange juice and milk, every morning."  Well, I don't.  I pour my kid a bowl of cereal, the least sugary cereal is Honey Nut Cheerios and it goes downhill from there, and I crawl back in bed while she gets herself ready for school.  I don't have a problem with this in general, although I wish she'd eat Wheat Bran cereal and make me feel better.  But today, today I made eggs.  And I wave my Mom Flag high...

Downhill

I'm not sure who replaced my daughter with the one I had last night.  She came up to us at 7:45 p.m. and said "I'm going to bed now and get lots of rest for tomorrow."  This, the kid who we had trouble getting to sleep before midnight when she was still young enough to believe in Santa, let alone now.  I figured she'd go up to her room and listen to music or read for a few hours or something.  But at 8:30 pm when I went to check on her, she was out cold, fast asleep.  Well knock me over and call me Sally.

Kaylee went to bed early because she was tired, and because she has two days of final exams coming up.  She slept all the way through to this morning, too.  So today her three finals went fine, she thinks.  She's very confident about one of them and pretty confident about the other two.  Tomorrow she has four more tests, but two of them are easy, and two of them are hard.  She's planning on trying to go to sleep early again tonight, but I bet she can't pull off 7:45 pm again.  :)  My kid is old enough to have final exams.  Weird.

Kaylee also made up little gift bags and cards for her teachers, and the ones she saw today enjoyed her gift.  Her Spanish teacher loved the card written in Spanish and read it out loud.  Kaylee loves giving people presents.  She'd give one to everybody if she could.  :)

Tomorrow Kaylee had multiple things she could do.  Her play group was having a caroling thing at the mall, and then having their Christmas party.  She has lots of friends there and would like to do that.  But her school is also having a Christmas dance, a formal one, which "everyone" says is "the best ever", and she really wanted to go to that. Two of her good friends are both going with boys, so she didn't think she'd have anyone to go with, but she found out today that several of her other friends are all going as a girl group, dressing up and going for it, so she's happily joining in on that group and going to this dance, wearing the same formal gown she wore to the masquerade ball.  TWO uses out of one fancy dress bought at a discount shop.  Win!  I bet the girl group has more fun than the young ladies who are going with a boy. :D  I still think they are too young to pair off in dates.  Can't get past that.

Okay, I just had a flashback, I think it was 9th grade, maybe 8th, and our school had some event that sold tickets and it was one of the first year boys asked girls out, and one boy in the class asked every single girl in the class to go with him, and they all turned him down.  He was one of the most disliked kids in the whole school.  I wonder what he grew up to do...   I wore a lavender dress with pearl buttons, and I did not go with a boy.  Boys didn't like me any more than I liked them back then.  ;)

White

Steve put up the rest of our Christmas lights today, some indoors and some outdoors, so along with the 5" of snow we got, we're looking most festive around here.  It's supposed to warm up and rain, with possible flooding over the next few days.  It'll be pretty sloppy and muddy around here right around Christmas, which is too bad.  The snow is at least pretty.

Right after we got the big snow (relatively), Steve went out to the office, had his briefcase in one hand and his large sweet tea in the other hand.  He forgot there was a step there going into the office, couldn't see it under the snow, hit it wrong, and went head first into the door.  The good news: The door is undamaged, he didn't drop his sweet tea or briefcase, and he didn't get knocked out, although he thought about it for a second.  The bad news: He really smacked the snot out of the top of his head, and has a painful hematoma up there. The head is such a bad place to take a blow, especially on a spot on the top where there's no hair to help cushion the thin skin.  And no, that's not a bald joke, I'm serious!

I went back to the stores today and picked up some stuff for Kaylee's teachers, little gifts and cards.  She wrote a little personal note on all seven of her school teacher's Christmas cards, something she appreciated about each of them, even writing in Spanish for her Spanish teacher.  I told her I thought they would each appreciate the personal touch rather than just signing her name to it.

Fortunately Kaylee doesn't have any homework tonight, finally, but unfortunately that's because she has finals the next two days and into next week.

I was supposed to do a trip tomorrow, but with the weather, I couldn't promise I could legally or more importantly safely get the RG into where we were going, thanks to probable low IFR icing.  So...no trip.  The 340 is down for awhile, so that's...inconvenient, especially this time of year when instructing drops off.

A few photos from the day:

The front... 

Glenndale, under a little snow.

Alto Sax, Generation II

We were kept hopping today, preparing for the upcoming week of Christmas festivities.  I made it to multiple stores, got billing mailed out, got stuff done around the house and mostly out and about, including picking up dry cleaning that Steve had dropped off and then completely forgot about for a few weeks.  ;)

Our tree is up and shining brightly on the deck, the trees in our front yard are lit up colorfully, most of our Christmas presents are bought, and we are...close to ready.  Not quite ready, still going to need a big food run, a few more presents, and a way to keep our house clean until Sunday, which may be a very tall order.

Tonight Kaylee had her Band Christmas Program.  She told me late last night that she needs an outfit all in black.  Black dress or slacks, black shirt.  She doesn't own either one.  The malls are packed out right now, and we did not have time last night or today after school to go shopping.  However, black is one of my favorite clothing colors.  So I went hunting through my skinny clothes that I have left.  One fancy little black dress that Kaylee said wasn't long enough, even on her, to pass muster for the program.  I pulled out another not fancy black dress, straight line, linen, zipped it up on her and she said "Oh my GOSH, no WAY, this has SHOULDER PADS, this is a GOOD GRIEF this is an OLD LADY dress and I am SO not wearing this!"  Yeah, she's right, even though I was like 20 when I wore it.  ;)  Back to the drawing board.  I finally found a fancy/formal spaghetti strap black and jeweled top that I have never been able to wear because I got too chubby to get away with it, and unlike most people these days, I'm not interested in wearing tight shirts if I have a little pudge to show off.  It was too low cut for her, but I fixed that with a tank top and some safety pins, and she was wearing a black dress sweater over the top.  Next up I had several black skirts.  One of them was flowy and loose and long enough to make her band director happy, and I safety pinned that on her too.  I told her if she didn't like it to give me more than 12 hours notice next time, but that I personally thought she actually looked good.  She did, in all seriousness.

I got her safety pinned together, and then the five of us drove to Greentown to watch the program.  Kaylee's group went first, the Junior High Band, and they had three songs.  It was special, watching her walk across the stage, tall and confident and flowing clothes and I think beautiful, sitting down in the First Chair in the saxophone section, just where Steve used to play.  Pretty cool, man.  They played three songs, and did fine, and then they were allowed to come sit in the audience with us while the 6th graders, the Jazz Band, then finally the High Schoolers played.  I'm only mad about one thing: I didn't have the right camera lens with me, so I didn't get ANY good, clear shots of her up there.  Argh!!  But here are a few fuzzy ones.  *sigh*

Don't worry, I got closer than this, but I just wanted to show one from where we were sitting, you can see a portion of the audience, the whole stage, etc.  Kaylee is the girl on the far right, but don't bother looking for her here.  ;)

 

Here's a closer view of the band. Kaylee is far right, long hair.

 

Here, probably looking out at the audience searching for us.  She always seems to find us very fast!

 

Playing during the program...

 

Afterwards everyone stands up to accept applause and leave.

 

Standing and smiling at my camera

 

Walking off stage, Kaylee is right behind the grown man-band director.

 

The saxophone crew leaving stage left.

HoHoHo

I've got a story for you that I was going to keep to myself, but what are friends for if not providing them entertainment?

So I have this exercise dvd.  Don't worry, I'm not planning on going crazy here, but I thought I'd see where I was aerobically, do something different because our treadmill is blocked up a bit by Christmas stuff, at least do a little something.  This was a 30 minute fitness test.  I made it through the 10 minute warm up (yes, warm up, which in my defense included jogging and power jumping jacks among other things), and three of the 1-minute high impact exercises.  You're supposed to see how many you can do in one minute.  By the end of the warm up and the third exercise, I couldn't catch my breath, everything was going bright around me, my heart was racing like nuts, I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, and I was queasy.  That's right, I made it 13 whole minutes of going hard before almost passing out in my living room.  I can do weights fine, I can walk for miles and be fine, but it's definitely time to get a little more heart-healthy oomph in there.  ;)  My poor stupid lifelong weak lungs...it feels like you're sucking in air but nothing is actually getting in there, chest all tight.  *sigh*  This is why I was a sprinter, never a distance runner.

This evening Steve and I put up the Christmas lights outside in the trees in front of our house.  It started snowing a little, was freezing cold, and I put on Kaylee's hot pink hat with two balls on it and her little maroon gloves to go help out.  With my glasses on too, it was a lovely ensemble.  ;)  We got the tree lights up, and Steve got the extension cords hooked up so that when I brought Kaylee home from TKD, we were lit up nicely.  We still have a few lawn Christmas light things to put up, but we'll do that tomorrow.  I'm still waiting to feel festive, but that kind of helps.  ;)

Speaking of not festive, I just had someone contact me to help pay funeral expenses for an SMA child.  They sent along two separate invoices they would like paid, one for a funeral home and one for a cemetery, which is pretty standard.  I was getting ready to take care of that when I saw that the funeral home had included the cemetery costs in their own bill as well, and then someone had already paid money down on that bill.  If I'd have paid both invoices, I'd have overpaid by a lot.  Glad I caught it.

Kaylee is inundated with projects and things to do.  So she had play auditions two days last week, a play read-back day after she got in, and a choir concert.  Tomorrow night she has a band concert, in which she plays the saxophone.  She had the major project on Argentina that she just finished, including a board, paper, cooking, and a display day, has another major paper due tomorrow in another class, and they have finals coming up. She is staying up pretty late each night to do homework. 7th grade is hard!

Catching Fire?

No, not really, but catching up a little anyway.  With the weather and how we were feeling, we decided to forego the annual Christmas tree "hike and pick out a live tree" tradition, and instead put up our good old fake tree that we've had for like 15 years now.  Our living room is no longer an amenable site for a tree, due to the stuff we have up there, so this year the tree is on our deck.  So we've had a few changes this year.  I love a real tree as well as anyone, and I love the tradition usually, but this year just isn't cooperating with a few things, so we'll do something else and keep on trucking.

As everyone already knows, we had our first real snow event up here.  It's pretty enough, and not enough of a load to be incapacitating.  After Christmas it can feel free to melt, and turn into Spring.  That would be fine.

A couple of days ago our TV suddenly quit working.  We'd been getting channels, including high def channels, without a box.  Well, that ended.  Steve had to go to Comcast and pick up a box, and then we had a cluster trying to get everything working again.  The picture didn't fit on the screen right, the volume was goofed up, the high def channels were gone.  We called them and they activated the high def thing which was supposed to be but wasn't.  He spent time on the phone giving them his information four times, rather patiently if you ask me.  The fourth time they ask me for my social security number I can feel my teeth gritting.  Anyway, we still were having trouble.  He fixed the volume, but the screen size and high def...come to find out he was on the wrong channels for high def.  Well, that'll make you feel stoopid, but at least it's working, and it's good to have the TV back.  You can be totally used to the regular channels, but when that high def kicks in, it's like "KaCHOW!"  I can see pores, blades of grass, it's like getting an awesome new pair of glasses or something.  ;)

I'm getting old lady feet.  You know, when you first get up in the morning or when you sit for an extended period of time and then you go to stand up and walk and your feet hurt and you waddle for a few seconds?  I am starting to waddle now and then.  That is neither fun nor attractive. I tried to do a dutch jump rope in our kitchen barefoot, and every time I landed on my feet I killed myself, and I had to quit after like three jumps, twice in a row. That's pathetic.  This is like when I had the back/arm/neck strength problem, and just like that problem, this too must go away.  I'm sure it's activity and weight related, so I plan on adding to the exercises I did for my back and arm and upping my overall activity level and getting in a bit better shape, at least to the point where I can jump and walk and get up in the morning without hurting my feet, like a relatively normal 40 year old.  I really, actively dislike exercise, but I like feeling weak and feeble even less.

Speaking of getting in better shape, I had to make up a batch of fudgy chocolate brownies today.  I made them half the right way and half the wrong way, because Steve doesn't appreciate them the right way.  Kaylee and I had chocolate brownies with walnuts only half baked, so they're all gooey and yummy.  Steve had his brownies baked all the way through, no nuts, and no fun at all.  ;)  It had been too long since I had good chocolate.  That was downright necessary for my personal health and happiness, even though it also included the sin of corruption of a minor.

I've been reading a book of a compilation of scientific studies on exercise.  It takes a lot of former firmly held beliefs and says "Science doesn't back that up at all."  It covers a ton of areas, but one thing is in common with almost everything they are finding out: The body is an incredible self-balancing machine when you let it be, and when you listen to it, you will end up doing the right thing the majority of the time.  I can't remember them off the top of my head, but some are things like: Drink when you're thirsty, don't just cram down 120 oz of water a day.  Dulling the pain with cortisone not only doesn't heal the injury, it prevents it from healing as well as physical therapy. If your body can't feel it, it doesn't know to send resources to fix it. All those fancy running shoes?  They're causing more injuries than normal shoes.  A person's body adapts to however they normally walk or run over the years, so if you adjust that, the body tries to run like it did before, but now has the wrong things on the feet, and throws it off.  Stretching causes a reduction in performance, it doesn't help anything. Exercise alone doesn't really help with weight loss. Chocolate milk is one of the best post-workout nutrients you can take in, mixture of protein and sugars, to help rebuild muscle.   One that I can attest to--avoid injuries as best you can, because once you get them you will be more prone to getting them again.  They mentioned knees and ankles in particular, and I am ankles.  I sprained my ankle so many times, twisted it, strained it, and to this day my ankles are very weak.  Anyway, all sorts of kind of interesting things.  I read it on a recommendation, and considering my above-mentioned lack of interest in exercise, I'm surprised I'm enjoying it, but I am.

I don't think I want to hear any more about women being the emotional ones, as if they're the only ones--there are just as many (if not more) men who pout, stomp off, gripe, sulk, fly off the handle, make wildly exaggerated dramatic statements, snap at someone, etc.  A woman does it and it's an eyeroll and a mutter about "hormones".  A guy does the same thing, and it's not.  Baloney!  Face it--you men are just as hormonal, if not more so, than women are.  I think this is something most women know, but let you men get away with not realizing or admitting it.  I'm just figuring it out these last few years, and I have no problem telling you.  ;)

Kaylee and Steve have been busy getting Christmas presents ordered and on their way.  I will be doing some of that tomorrow.  We got the tree up and decorated, the decorations up in the house and deck, and the empty boxes back in the garage.  We did not get any outside lights up, but maybe tomorrow if schedules permit.   I've been pounding out laundry, and we'll have the house cleaned in a few days.  I'm still not ready for Christmas, but getting closer...

TGIF

Any more, Fridays aren't really Fridays, because we have several students who now only fly on weekends because it's dark so early during the week day.  This kind of stinketh, because you work all week even if you're not flying, and then your whole Saturday and sometimes part of Sunday are taken up with students too, and then it's back to the work and school week.  But today, today it really IS Friday, thanks to the winter storm heading our way in a few hours.  We're supposed to get 4-6" or 5-7" of snow, depending on who you ask, starting in a couple hours and going through tomorrow afternoon.  No students tomorrow, a day off to try to find a tree maybe, and relax hopefully.  Well, until we either try to go find a tree in the middle of the winter storm, or try to go to the airport Christmas party that evening.  Maybe it's not such a relaxing day to come after all.  ;)

Flew with a guy for 1.8 hours today.  He hadn't flown in almost three months, and was excited to get back up in the air, said he'd been looking forward to it all day, actually for days.  He said this was his busiest work season, and one of the reasons he loves flying is because when he is flying, that's all he is thinking about.  Nailing airspeed or perfecting a maneuver or looking at the clouds and the fields or trying to get that landing.  There's no space for other stuff, work stuff, family stuff, problems.  I told him welcome to aviation, he's definitely one of "us", for better or worse.  It's also a good reminder of what it can mean to someone else, for those days as an instructor that you don't feel like going out in the cold or the dark or the wind.

Kaylee's project went well, she thinks, and she'll get the grade next week.  Her baked goods were a hit, everybody loved them, and she had a really fun day going around to other people's projects and trying their various wares.  It's a fun school, they do a lot of neat things with the kids.

I am helping Kaylee start learning her 48 lines.  She has a tricky role, because it's mostly banter, back and forth, finishing each other's sentences, so her line may be "and that's pointless because...", and it's going to take a lot of practice for four people to get that banter down and flowing smoothly with chopped up lines.  Speaking of which, it's time for me to help her on a read-through here.  Steve's out to dinner with friends, Kaylee and I are relaxing and going over play lines, snow is moving into the area, and all is well.

Act...Consecutively

Well, I guess I am officially a Domestic goddess now.  I spent 13 hours, minus a lunch break and two hours at a mandatory play parent meeting, either cooking, prepping for cooking, or cleaning up from cooking. Actually I'm not done cleaning up yet, but I'm done for today.  And some people do this for fun.  I only burnt my hand on the oven once, so one little blister on the top of my right hand is my only battle scar.

When I got up this morning I straightened up the house for company, then went through the two pages of ingredients and pulled everything we needed out onto the counter on an organized fashion, making a list of what I didn't already have.  Broke for lunch, ran to the store and picked up what we didn't have, came home, started in on peeling, coring, and dicing green apples.  I made up a batch of empanada dough, which took awhile because it wanted you to use a food processor to blend up cold butter, cold cream cheese, etc.  I don't have a food processor.  I do have a potato masher, so I used that to try to break up the chunks, and then my bare hands, and eventually I had dough.  I picked up the girls from school, and we immediately went to work. We worked on the Empanada Filling (apples, cinnamon, dulce le leche, brown sugar and sugar, butter, etc.) and we worked on the Alfajores dough (this one wanted me to have a paddle bladed blending machine...yeah.)  We got about halfway done and I had to take Kaylee to the play read-through and my parent mandatory meeting.  Her partner M said she could stay as long as it took to get done, so she came with us, and for two hours we did that.  And then at 8:30 her mom texted her and told her to be home by 9.  Great.  So she took home the Empanada dough and filling and her and her mom are going to finish those.  I made up another batch of Alfajores, and Kaylee and I did all those, Kaylee finished the display board, and the iPad video presentation.  And finally around 10:30 or so we were done.  I've got my Alfajores (pastries with dulce le leche in the center of them, dusted with powdered sugar) done and in a sealed container so they won't go stale overnight.   Kaylee and M did all the work, with my supervision/help, until the very end, when I made a second batch myself and M's mom helped with the Empanadas.  Now I have round two of clean-up to complete, which will happen tomorrow, now that I got most of it put away, cleaned up, flour scrubbed off of everything, and ready to go.

The girls did a good job, I didn't do too bad of a job myself, and after one very long day, this Honors Language Arts project on Argentina at last is complete.

The play meeting, I was there with two other parents I know now, and I almost felt like an old-timer.  It wasn't a surprise, I wasn't lost, and it's under control.  For now.

I am kind of beat though.

Here are Kaylee and M working on the empanada filling and the display board.  Oh, that's one funny thing.  The board needed painted as the Argentinian National Flag.  I needed to do it early because it needs to dry.  I needed to do it somewhere warm that isn't inside my house (I remember the last time I spray painted a display board!) I couldn't get that done and the cooking stuff too.  So Steve took it out to Kokomo, to the maintenance hangar, and Levi spray painted it for us.  Then Steve's job was to get the board back to me by 5 pm so the girls could work on that while their dough and/or filling was chilling in the fridge.  Steve couldn't get away, Jon and Levi were gone, so Steve C. ran it to my house for me.  Steve S. owes him big time!

The one bad note for the day--the two remaining fish are dead.  At least they didn't linger, floating sideways on the bottom of the tank for a week straight before going ahead and dying.  The anti-algae stuff Steve was putting in probably ended up killing them.  Kaylee's...okay.  Moreso than expected, anyway.  Sad, but okay, and it's okay to be sad...

Acts II and III

Kaylee got a text tonight, and she got a part in the play!  :)  She got a good part!  She didn't want a major role with 100+ lines, but she didn't want a bit part either, and she got her wish.  She is a sarcastic, humorous narrator throughout the play, a "Page" for Hercules, named Bia, and she has 48 lines.  She was jumping up and down in our living room, and so very excited.  I'm relieved, because she got a part, and a couple of her friends got a part too, and she is really looking forward to this play.

After she was supposed to be in bed, she sent me a text that basically said "Hey, mom, don't go bragging about it on Facebook, because I'm 'friends' with a lot of the play people, and that would be embarrassing."  I told her I block anybody like that who is friends with me, and don't 'tag' her in any photos, so the only people who will see me brag are my own friends.  ;)

The only problem?  Tomorrow is the day we have to be baking for her school project (for a grade), and tomorrow is a mandatory script read-through and parent meeting for this play.  Er.  We have 2.5 hours before she has to be there.  We have to bake, and she has to work on her board for her presentation.  I also have to go to the store and get the ingredients for this stuff.  I'm not quite sure how we're going to go about all this just yet.  Obviously I'm going to have to take on some of this without the other kid (who is coming over to our house after school) when we get back from the play thing, or divide it up between the two girls to do on their own.  Hard to do with baking or the board.  Maybe the other kid will have to come with us to kaylee's play thing and then come back and do some more work after 8:30 p.m.  Ugh.  I don't know, but something will have to be done there.

So, tonight was Kaylee's school choir Christmas program.  Ann, if you don't want to tell Richard anything about it until he sees it on DVD, then don't let him read from here on out!  ;)

It was awesome.  The school has several singing groups of various talent levels.  The Fall program equally had time for the junior highers and the more advanced groups.  The Christmas program mostly featured the more advanced groups, and the junior highers had three numbers, but they did a really nice job with their three numbers.  Everybody was worried about the program, they did a 2-hour practice session at school today because Kaylee (and the other kids) claimed that people didn't know the words, didn't know the choreography, and that this whole thing was a "disaster".  Well, showtime came, and they all pulled it off like pros.  The first half of the Christmas program started with several numbers from the older groups, then the three numbers from the younger group, and then a few more from the older group.  Then a young lady stood up and said that following the school's Christmas tradition, it was time for the audience to participate.  So the singers lined the auditorium in the aisles, and we all sang four or five songs too, standing up for the last one or two.  Finally, the lady in charge of all this, the lady who comes up with the songs, the costumes, the props, the ideas, and the choreography, the lady who plays the piano sometimes and directs all the time, the lady who is always cheerful and energetic and happy at 60 years old, according to Kaylee, even under high stress, this lady came out and had something pretty cool to say.  She thanked her helpers, of course, by names, no notes, a pretty big speech, and then she asked the audience to hold their applause through the rest of the program, and to really focus on the true meaning of Christmas.  The older kids came back out and sang Christian songs about the coming of the King, about God's love, all of it, while a Nativity scene rose up in front and they put the Star of David on the wall in the back.  The people acting at the Nativity scene?  They were all public school teachers who volunteered.  The three wise men one at a time kneeled before the manger and Jesus and offered their gifts.  The angel held her hands out in prayer.   The kids sang...five or six, I lost track...beautiful songs of a holy Christmas while their teachers acted out the nativity scene, and after each number you could hear a pin drop as the audience honored her wishes to not make any noise or applause but to rather meditate on the meaning behind the holiday.  It was...beautiful.  It actually, and literally, brought a tear to my eye, and that's not an easy thing to accomplish on me any more.   I am...proud.  I'm proud that Kaylee can go to a public school where they thumb their nose at political correctness, at insisting on "Happy Holidays" and Rudolf only, where the school isn't afraid to stand up and have a Christmas program about...Christmas.  I don't know how much longer they'll be able to hold out--the first lawsuit will probably take care of that--but for now they have no fear letting God in their school, and that honestly is an answer to a real concern I had when the local Christian schools shut down their high schools.  I didn't want her in a public school.  I didn't have a choice unless we homeschooled, and that choice would not work out well for either her or mostly me.  And here she has a superintendent and a principal who say "God bless" in letters and phone calls, and a school that is city enough to have all the amenities (like handing out iPads to the kids and having a great drama program), while being country enough to not be afraid to be proud of morality and Christian values.  We are fortunate.

One funny part--I was trying to figure out how the video function worked on my camera.  I'd never used that part yet, I'd used a different camera for video taping.  So finally I did a no-no and in the middle of the program, before my daughter got out there, I texted Justin and asked him how to make the video part work, so I could take a clip or two.  I'm sure people around me were frowning and unhappy, but I needed to know!  Or I did until I found out they sell a DVD of the whole program and I probably didn't have to take my own clips after all.  ;)  But at least I know now, and got to test it out.

It's been a busy, filled day.  I'm very relieved at the end of today at what has gone right, and I figure tomorrow will work itself out too.  Here are a few photos from Kaylee's program tonight.  I truly enjoy watching her perform.

One of the older singing groups started off the show.

 

Followed by the senior group.

 

I didn't take a photo of the whole junior high group, because I just care about Kaylee.  ;)  See her?  Second row from the bottom, slightly left of center, arm up.

 

Singing, with her friend Grace right behind her.

 

The ladies had cowboy hats to wear for one of their numbers.

 

Kaylee's the one in the cowboy hat. Wait, in the blue shirt and black jumper dress. Er.  Second row from the bottom, middle.  ;)

 

Have a toe-tappen, yee-hawin' Christmas!

 

One of the older groups came back out to have fun with Frosty.

 

And then the serious part of the show.  The wisemen, shepherds, all the Nativity people are teachers.

 

 

Here's a view of most of them, just missing two of the wisemen off to the right. Singing and praising, and what a way to end a school program.  If anything could put me in the Christmas mood right now, which is a serious stretch, it was this.  Great job, guys.