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Talent Show

Tonight was the talent show at the girls' school. Abby is doing a skit, and evidently they cut a lot of the skits out for the night show, so it was just Katrina reciting her poem.

It lasted an hour and a half, which was far better than the three hours I was expecting. Two kids were responsible for shooing the acts on and off the stage, and helping with setting up any necessary equipment.

Katrina did a nice job. Her poem was:

Something to Crow About

I somtimes think I'd rather crow
And be a rooster than to roost
And be a crow. But I dunno.

A rooster he can roost also,
Which don't seem fair when crows can't crow
Which may help some . Still I dunno.

Crow should be glad of one thing though;
Nobody thinks of eating crow,
While roosters they are good enough
For anyone unless they're tough.

There're lots of tough old roosters though,
And anyway a crow can't crow,
So mebby roosters stand more show,
It looks that way. But I dunno.

It was a little over the heads of her audience, though.

Some of the outstanding acts included Kaitlyn (who is on Abby's softball team) and friend, who did a tap dance, a girl who played her guitar and sang a song that she wrote, two girls who did individual acts, but both did traditional Indian dances, a girl who did an amazing job of playing the piano, and the prize for cute and quirky goes to the guy who had about fifteen different plastic cups, and stacked them up into pyramids and then took them down, all extremely quickly.

Acts I didn't like included almost every act that was a dance to a popular song. There were a couple of acts that had good choreography, and were okay, but most of the dance acts were not well thought out and just didn't work. The other type of act I didn't like was any singing that was done where the tape of the background music included the vocals. There was a surprising number of these!

The violin acts varied widely as far as quality went. The first two violin acts were really bad -- squeaky and tuneless. The last was a duet with a violin and a cello, and it was quite good. Piano acts ranged from really stunning to one-fingered playing.

My big shock of the evening was watching the 6th grade girls, and realizing that Abby will be there in only two years!

Memorial Day

Katrina's list of things we saw:

Lighthouse - square
Fragrence Garden
Persian Catmint
Catnip
Watermint Roses
Pennyroyal
Camplor Basil
Chocolate Mint
Mentha Suaveolens
Applemint
Azaela
Lavender
Cotton Fringed Wormwood
Too many stairs in tower
Barn
Swamp
Wetland bridge
Thousands of lilypads
Button camera
Scary flush
Korean Spice Vibernum
Mexican Orange Bellflower
2626 Park Drive - Grandpa, 1952
618 14th - Granny Bo
2519 Yew - Granny Bo
Large lawn
Petting zoo
Barn chickens
Big bunnies
Brown/tan floppy ears
Burrow
Black bunny
Red tower
Swingset
Orange tractor
Muddy water
Steep bank

Red, barnlike restrooms
House that nobody lives in - furnished
Garden house has tour fancy
No touching anything
Extra doors
Old-fashioned baby carriage
Grandpa, mom and Grandpa Thompson in phone book
Ladies underwear
Sewing macnhine + 2
"Saga of the Ages" - 1946
Rocker chair
Quilt
...
Cash register
Vacuum tubes in radio - 1 tube, 1 station
Monoply, Jackpot, Parchisi, horseshoes, checkers, p...
Lots of ways to wash clothes
Map of Seattle
Phone book from 1952 and 1948

A Perfect Storm

It was lovely out this morning. Sunny, warm. I finished mowing the lawn (after running out of gas as I started the back yard on Thursday!) and noticed it was a little windy, but didn't think too much of it. We left for Abby's softball game, and the sky was starting to look a little threatening. As we got out of the car, we started feeling raindrops, and by the time we got to the field, it was definitely raining.

A few weeks ago, I designated two blankets to be softball blankets, and have been keeping them in the trunk of the car. Today, we were really glad we had them! The previous game was finishing up as we arrived, and Katrina and I put one blanket down on the bleachers and the other over our heads. All the people leaving the game looked at us with lots of pity. I was glad I hadn't decided to wear shorts.

The rain was fairly steady for the first couple of innings. They called the girls in once when it was raining really hard, but while it was lighter they just had them play. Once we thought we heard thunder, but never saw any lightning. I spent some time thinking about how conductive aluminum bleachers are. I knew I should have paid more attention in physics.

The team played well -- they got 3 runs in the first inning, then finished up at 6 runs total, with 3 for the other team. The girls didn't seem too bothered by the rain. After it was all over (it got called a bit early, as the other team only had 9 players, and one had to leave at 5:30, so that was that!) and we were driving home, the sun came out.

No Skipping

Abby got a stain on her shirt this afternoon while drinking koolaid, so she took it off and sprayed it and left it on the washing machine. Then she skipped to her room to put on a different shirt.

Katrina, watching the whole thing, was horrified that Abby was skipping through the house without a shirt. I looked at her like she was insane, and told her that she did the same thing all the time, sometimes with nothing on at all! She said, "But I don't SKIP!"

Three Missing Teeth

Katrina has set a record this weekend, by losing three teeth in the last two days. She lost one on Thursday, and then two today. I'm hoping that the rate of tooth loss falls out, or she's not going to be able to eat anything more challenging than pudding by the time the weekend is over!

Friday

Today Abby had a field trip that she didn't get back from until 8:30pm. So I picked Katrina up at school at 3, and we bummed around, watched tv together (she was freaking out during a Stargate episode, while I was falling asleep to it!) and made macaroni & cheese for dinner, because Abby hates it so it seemed like a good opportunity.

Then we went to the mall, where I found a couple of really great shirts at Eddie Bauer, plus a lot of other stuff that I didn't buy! We got to school a little early, which was nice, because every single 4th grade parent was coming to pick up their child, so getting there early meant we got a parking space.

When the kids arrived, Abby was invited to spend the night at her friend Jenny's house, so, not being able to think of a good reason not to let her go, I said she could. We went home, got her some stuff, and took her back to her friend's house. Friend lives in a huge apartment complex, and we got rather lost trying to find the right building.

Right around this time, we (where we = me, after interrogating Abby) also discovered that she'd left all of her softball stuff at school. I was less worried about her gear and more worried about her uniform, as we could figure out gear for tomorrow's game, but not really the uniform. After finally finding the apartment, Katrina and I took off for the school to see if anyone was still around. The janitor was. Bless his heart!

We retrieved her bag of stuff and realized that her uniform wasn't actually in there. Uniform has now been located at her father's house and is scheduled to be dropped off in the morning.

K. and I got ice cream on the way home and I let her stay up way too late watching tv! But we had fun.

I have been working on a web page that displays a calendar of the girls' activities, and am quite pleased with it. It's rachelmarie.net/kids, and tonight, I added in color-coding for who has the girls each weekend.

New Haircuts

The girls got new haircuts today. I want Abby's cut!

Abby:

Katrina:

Them being crazy:

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