Charlie Brown Opening Night

The director commented after dress rehearsal that she'd like stripes on Peppermint Patty's shirt, so Friday afternoon included running to JoAnn for Wright Iron-on Hem Tape, which we laid out on the shirt



ironed on while on the table with a towel underneath (I'm not including the step where the cat repeatedly got up and moved the stripes around)


and then quickly sew down the edges to make absolutely sure that they didn't come off during the performance.


So that's a quick look at how to make a Peppermint Patty shirt out of a man's large golf shirt from Walmart. Finished product:



And some other highlights of opening night:



which included some iconic moments from the strip



Edgar Allan Poe (which is actually from Snoopy, the Musical)
Please don't let her call on me today, please
Mentally I'm begging on my knees, please


Cake pops at the concessions!


And time spent with good friends


Another show again tonight at 7 at DeSmet. I was asking Thaiia who she had invited, and realized yesterday afternoon that she had been sort of lax about emailing and phoning people to let them know the showtimes. Sigh. So, sincere apologies if we didn't get the message to you.

Rat News

Emily recently figured out that sometimes I set a book bag on the floor in the kitchen, and if she gets in it to rummage around she might find TREASURE




which can be dragged back to the cage.


But, alas, a cruel human (Annabeth) took the granola bar away. The rats now get a bit of it in the evening at bedtime.

In other busy-ness, they've been doing quite a bit of redecorating. Note that most of their cubes now have the new backdoor feature:



But, you know, that cube is so last year, so time for a new color scheme for hammocks



and cube



Sort of bland looking and utilitarian right now, but they'll get it peed on and ripped up into a homey little rat's nest in no time.

This Was Going to be a Post With Pictures

Except the camera is missing. It was last seen with Annabeth, who probably left it upstairs somewhere after taking pictures of Thalia dying her hair red with Jazzing (using one of the somewhat normal colors -- she's going for the Peppermint Patty look for the moment). I checked the bathroom, but don't see it. Maybe it's in her room. Or maybe she left it outside. Who knows.

Okay, so if there were pictures you'd see stuff I'm sewing. I'm sewing stuff in an effort to clean up the dining room, and I thought I'd sew my way through some of the projects laying around it. We're cleaning the dining room because we have house guests coming tomorrow. They were going to come today, but then we realized that we're not going to be home much today, since we have various things that will involve taking pictures with the CAMERA.

Anyway, they're coming to see Thalia be Peppermint Patty in You're a Good Man Charlie Brown, which will be Friday and Saturday at 7pm at DeSmet (will need the camera for that, too!).

Between now and then we have Girl Scout Court of Awards (just finished making brownies for that), piano lesson, dress rehearsal, need to go to the grocery, finish pants, clean house, finish laundry, prepare meals early so we can get to the theatre on time, and FIND THE FLIPPIN' CAMERA!

Homeschool Prom

The prom dress. It was actually purple.



Sorry for the bizarro lighting, but this picture was taken at midnight, and I was TIRED. The picture was taken at midnight because the MO of homeschool prom is to go over to a friend's house to get ready, and carpool to the event, so I didn't actually see her prom-ready until after the event.

As a bonus, the skirt of the dress could come up as a hood,



so you could sing Mary Did You Know or otherwise act out dramas



And the black plastic glasses rims



were from punching out the lenses on the sunglasses given out as favors for the Splash of Color theme



I think the tendency to go with groups of friends rather than dates adds up to a more relaxing, fun evening. You can act sort of dorky, as someone claimed they did here:



(I countered that it wasn't that dorky, but my definition of dorky would've been more along the lines of wearing belts with their light sabers attached, so I apparently have a pretty high standard for these things)


get your picture taken with one of the waiters



and commemorate the restrooms.



If you've ever wondered what a homeschool prom would be like, now you know.

Knitting and Crochet Class Finale

Our co-op had its Spring Open House, and is Officially Over. Our class once again had a display table at the Open House, this time highlighting crochet:



from which you can see the fascination with the amigurumi bunny egg cozies (free pattern on the Lion Brand site, but you must sign up for a password to access it). Some of the kids made DOZENS of these, putting them over plastic Easter eggs with little treats in them, then distributing them for Easter. Then, one of the girls (the one with the largest army of bunnies) developed a sudden fascination with the crocheted roses at PlanetJune, and suddenly EVERYONE was crocheting roses.

Many items had been given away in the course of the year, and some of the kids opted to not display their stuff for whatever reason (given that Annabeth's amigurumi hamster wandered off in the course of the evening, probably in the clutches of some little kid, you can understand the reluctance to display some of the really cool stuff)(we eventually found the hamster in the lost-and-found).

The one suggestion I'd make if you're teaching middle-to-high school kids crochet or knitting -- besides bringing in magazines and books for project inspiration, take along a laptop or tablet and connect them with Ravelry or somesuch so they can browse free patterns. Given some of the content on Ravelry, you might want to browse with them to steer them away from some of the weirder stuff (for example, don't type in "american girl" and expect to only get innocuous pictures of stuff for dolls -- the phrase is used for other things, too). That's how the student ended up on PlanetJune -- she'd been looking through the author's book, saw the site address, looked it up online to see if the author had a pattern for a llama (she does, but it isn't free), and ended up finding the free pattern for roses.

By the way, the Totoros in the pictures were mine. I'd taken them along in case we didn't have much to put on the table -- I never know what the kids will think to bring, or if several will forget to bring anything at all. Another tip: lots of times they forgot their projects when they came to class, so it was good to have extra yarn and hooks so they could make some little something (roses! bunnies!) during the class time.

So, I'm glad that's over. Really, I've always thought I would loathe being a middle school teacher, and although I liked the kids in the class, I still feel that way. Too much drama.

We thought this would be the end of our co-op experience, but we've decided to sign up for a couple of classes next year. Thalia will be taking Kinetic Physics there -- the teacher is a mom who was a mechanical engineer and is an excellent instructor. Annabeth wants to take the Shepherd's Life Science -- I've no clue about the program, but she thinks it will be grand. And when I asked what they wanted me to do, get this -- they want me to teach 3rd-5th grade science! YES -- the same grades as the Junior Girl Scout badge book! AND they have no preconceived notions of curriculum, so I have carte blanche, sort of.

Seriously, talking to the other moms, I think we're going to do Physical Science and maybe a little Botany. And the emphasis will be on things that are too messy, too smelly, too BIG to do at home. In other words, we're going to be throwing Mentos in diet coke, making Ooblek, cooking red cabbage for a pH indicator, and generally having a weekly science camp. If you have any gotta-try-it ideas, let me know.

Easter Weekend 2011

Good Friday

Shopped for prom dress. I took along the Kindle so I could read drivel while Thalia tried on dresses. This also kept me from having to listen to weird people in the dressing rooms having weird conversations, although I was still aware enough of my surroundings to observe that if you're old enough to be going to the prom you shouldn't have to ask your mom to zip and unzip every. single. dress. including the ones with side zippers -- sheesh, most 6 year olds do a better job of dressing themselves. Thalia was stunned by the vapidity of the conversations this person was having in the dressing room. Anyway, we found a dress. Thalia can zip and unzip it ALL BY HERSELF LIKE A BIG GIRL. We felt pretty good about that.

Friday night we skipped Good Friday services because the weather looked crappy -- we decided to stay home and watch Chronicle of Narnia 1 instead, figuring it had much the same plotline. As we noticed all the tornado warnings cropping up we moved the party to the basement, which is carpeted plus has a television and microwave. We added popcorn, etc., and had something resembling a slumber party. No tornadoes in our neighborhood, thankfully, although I followed the airport saga on Twitter -- it was like watching a train wreck.

Saturday

Thalia's first in-car driving lesson. Also, I traced a cut out a Burda pattern for an Easter dress for me. Then I decided I could zip it together OR I could have a sane weekend featuring things like sleep. I opted for plan B. Spent Saturday evening watching Chronicles of Narnia 2.

Sunday

Early church, then home to clown around taking pictures. The Get Smart pose"



The "Hey, look, we're all mixy-matchy in our homemade pink/green/black outfits" pose:

(Annabeth's dress is one I made for her last summer for a wedding, and my skirt is one I made years ago before Eunice Farmer closed taking with it all of its cool fabric like this dotted stuff)

Also, an indoor Easter egg hunt since it was too wet to do it outside. But since it was inside we could have a soundtrack playing, specifically music from Narnia, particularly the overwrought stuff like "Arrival at Aslan's How". The Official Song of the Day was Regina Spektor's "The Call" which we all kept singing in falsettos, often changing the words.

Then over to relatives for the traditional Easter meal featuring the traditional peep cake:


and also lots of squirty whipped cream (always a necessity wherever we go):


We took our copy of Chronicles of Narnia 3, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, along, since Aunt Linda and Uncle Mark had never seen it. I think they might've preferred seeing it without us, since the one scene reminds all of us waaaaaay too much of Ghostbusters and we're apparently incapable of watching it without yelling out, "not the Stay-Puft marshmallow man!" Overall, though, a good movie, and we're particularly grateful Ben Barnes lost the dorky hair extensions and accent. It was fun to watch all 3 in a row on 3 successive nights.

Then the traditional game of Cranium. And home late.

Fun weekend.

Horse Fan Badge

Annabeth earned her Horse Fan badge last year after her troop went to Trout Lodge for the weekend and spent part of the time riding horseback -- we figured out what parts of the badge had already been covered in that adventure, she added in some research and reading, and she was done with the badge.

A new year brought new horse-loving girls into the troop, though, AND a mom who has owned horses all of her life and currently has 3 on her farm. So we did Horse Fan as a group. And, honestly, I think Annabeth would be fine working on this badge every single year, she enjoys it so much.

At the first meeting the mom brought in her saddle, crop, hay, bedding, etc., and talked to the girls. For the 2nd meeting on the badge, she arranged for us to come out to the farm when her farrier came to replace a couple of horse shoes.

I gotta tell you, this guy was fantastic. He showed how he cleaned and prepped the hooves, how he measured them, and then, yes, actually made the horse shoes while we watched.



He mentioned that you could get preformed shoes, but it's not nearly as cool to watch.

Fitting them on the hoof while they're still hot --simply watching on youtube would never do this justice, as you'd miss the smell:


He kept quizzing the girls on the parts of the foot and the horse in a genial manner, making sure they were actually learning about the horses and the process.





Definitely one of those events that leave you thinking, "Yeah, THIS is why we're in Scouts!"