And, of course, there was a costume to make.

Wrapping up OTSL Spring Training, for the little recital on the final day the kids were divided into groups and asked to stage a scene from The Mikado.  Annabeth ended up with the geekier set, and they chose to stage it as The Avengers.  Annabeth decided to portray Peter Parker -- she's fascinated with Andrew Garfield's portrayal of the role, and has spent quite a bit of time analyzing his character choices and movement patterns.

The kids whipped up some simple costumes for the occasion.  Annabeth had visions of making a stencil and painting an old sweatshirt, but what actually worked was printing out a picture of the logo, applying shiny red Duck Tape to the back of the printout, cutting it out, and then gluing it to the sweatshirt.

Here she is with some of her fellow Avengers.  The guy playing Iron Man found an app that looked like an arc reactor, and taped his phone to his chest under a tshirt -- very creative.

It was a cute performance.  Interestingly, they had the less talented group overall (which isn't to say they weren't talented -- it's just that the other group had some kids who were off-the-charts AMAZING) but their rendition held together better as a story.  The other group set the scene in a school, had fine characterizations, wonderful singing, but somehow didn't manage to convey the story as well.  (Annabeth and I discussed how this is rather like  theater groups who attract talented people but have crappy directing that leave the whole less than the sum of the parts. Not that we're admitting we know any groups like that.  Ahem.)

Everyone also sang a solo.  As I mentioned, there were some performances that were absolutely stunning.  Annabeth had a falling out with her voice coach by that point, which said person probably didn't even realize had occurred. Her performance was ... interesting ....  I don't think I've ever seen her sing an entire song with that "I'm smiling while I'm thinking about how I'd like to murder someone" expression on her face.  There's a good chance Annabeth will refuse to attend another of the OTSL camps in the future due to preference of not dealing with that person again.  Oh well.

Final bento -- tiny twice baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, grapes and blueberries:

So the Annabeth's singing camp is done.  Still to come for her are a dance camp and and theater camp.

First Summer Camp 2014

Annabeth is in her first summer camp of 2014 this week, Spring Training with Opera Theater St. Louis.

She's just doing this week, which is a four day week due to the Memorial Day holiday.  The camp runs for 2 weeks, and campers have the option of taking either or both weeks.  The price in incredibly reasonable for a camp of this type and length, especially considering it includes a ticket to an opera performance.

This is a new experience for us.  A mom from a theater group said her daughter really liked the camp, so that was part of the impetus (her daughter has an amazing voice).  Also, attending a performance of The Magic Flute was part of the deal, so that was pretty attractive.  Annabeth used to listen to the CD version for young children just about every day when she was a toddler -- we all had it memorized.  It's pretty much the soundtrack of her childhood.

So far Annabeth has found the people running the workshops to be excellent, BUT she feels like there's too much "dead" time -- in her view they could've tightened up the schedule and made the camp shorter each day.  I pointed out that maybe public school kids are used to more lulls in the day (plus, honestly, she is too, but she chooses for herself when to do those more mindless things). 

After 2 days I could hear a difference in her singing (she had a voice lesson with her regular teacher after the camp yesterday ... also hours of dance lessons in the evenings, which is pretty much a dumb thing to do during a camp like this, for the record, and probably adds to her feeling that they should cut the days short).  At the camp they have private voice lessons during the day, and she's really enjoyed having a different perspective from the teacher there.  They've also had acting lessons, which, frankly, she was disappointed in -- she said the instructor was really good, but she'd already learned or figured out everything they covered.  The movement classes were pretty simple, too, due to all of her dancing.

So, some of the bits have been sort of "meh". However, last night's OTSL performance of The Magic Flute was AMAZING!  I can't emphasize that enough.  It was the best thing I've seen live on stage in ages and ages.  That thing we do around the house with our voices that's sort of musical?  It bears no relation to the singing we heard last night.  The costuming was fabulous, the blocking was great, the casting was inspired.  I would love to go see it again.  

Every day she takes a lunch, so I've been making bento boxes.  One of the uses of my blog is to have a record of these for myself so that during a future camp I can easily whip these off.  This is what we've served so far this week:  

Tiny burgers from the recipe in The Just Bento Cookbook, cheese slices, cucumber carrots, blueberries and raspberries, and totally amazing mini corn muffins from the recipe I pinned (I only made 24 of them so I didn't have them hanging around, and I deeply regret that decision since I want to eat a dozen right now).

Saffron Road chicken nuggets, blueberries, carrots, Amy's mac and cheese, Marzetti Ranch dip.  With a fork and spoon since mac and cheese with chopsticks seemed dicey.

Almond butter and jelly sandwiches on the super thin Pepperidge Farm bread, cut into butterflies, celery, carrots, and cucumber, grapes and blueberries, tiny cheese cubes.

Tomorrow will be miniature baked potatoes with bacon and cheese slices, and ... something or other.

Bento Fail

This sounded like an okay idea on the surface:  Trader Joe's orange chicken, rice, some orange pepper and green onion, diced apples, Goldfish for Annabeth and some sort of Hapi sesame crackers for Thalia. Thalia and I had nori faces on our pumpkins full of rice; Annabeth had a little heart shape (which looks like a belly button).  Lots of seasonal interest, right?

But, alas, the food markers wouldn't draw on the orange pepper I'd cut out in pumpkin shapes.  I'm about ready to give up on the Wilton food markers, as this is week 2 of disappointing results.  And I was out of sushi rice so I used regular white rice which, since each grain was separate, sort of swirled around all over the bentos as the boxes were jostled in transport; my jack-o-lantern face ended up stuck to the inside top of the box by lunchtime, and I had rice in the apple chunks.  And the sesame crackers ended up soggy from the apple chunks and flying rice, although they turned out to be stale and disgusting anyway.

Ick.

Weekend

-- Rick got a couple of tickets to Friday night's playoff game.  His sister drove over from Kansas City to go with him.  They had a fantastic time -- the weather was gorgeous, the crowd was fun, the Cardinals won.  

-- Up early Saturday to have people over.  Then Donna stayed the day to help put up the bathroom light.  During which Rick whacked his head into the nails in the attic ceiling (I was taking Thalia to ballet when the cell phone rang:  "Daddy would like to know how to get blood out of clothing" -- not a phone call you like to get, if you know what I mean).

-- Also, open shop for backstage crew for upcoming Snow White ballet.  Which meant the kids were gone most of the day.

-- Thalia was supposed to go to the SLUH Fall Formal with the guy whose mom makes him go to dances. Only this time he managed to convince his mom that none of his friends were going to that particular dance so he shouldn't have to; she acquiesced on the condition that he take a female to dinner and a movie.  So now Thalia and friend have practiced how-to-have-a-dinner-and-movie-date.  Actually, I think they had pretty much fun.

-- In the meantime, I realized that what my life was missing was Halloween-themed silicon baking cups, mini-cookie cutters, and plastic picks.  I found some picks in our box of Halloween decor; the baking cups and cookie cutters were 40% off at Hobby Lobby.  And the sun shone in the window on the bento I was making, and life was good:

Corn muffins, orange slices in a pumpkin shaped baking cup, 2-bite brownie, twice-baked new potatoes, steamed broccoli, and slices of cheese.

Except the food markers don't really want to draw nicely on Monterey Jack cheese, so that was a little blotch on my bento euphoria.

-- Up early on Sunday so Thalia's choir could sing.  Then all the usual Sunday fal-de-ral.  It was sunny and in the 80s, so Rick was trying to get the last few tiles cut for the bathroom (using a tile saw tends to be a rather soggy experience).  And sliced open his finger.  Second injury this weekend.

-- On my way to pick up kids from their activities I saw one of their friends walking through the neighborhood, which was surprising since this friend doesn't live around here.  I stopped the car and rolled down the window.

"Hey, what are you doing over here?"

"We're coming to ding-dong-ditch you."

I sat in the car staring at him for a moment.

"Um, isn't that supposed to be a surprise?  Anyway, nobody's home right now."

Really, the kids (ours) thought it was hilarious -- we discussed calling him when we got home to let him know that it was okay to come over to ding-dong-ditch.  Rick said it was like setting an appointment to TP someone's house.

-- Overall, a weekend filled with laughter, friends, family, fun.

Lunch at Co-op

Annabeth announced that she didn't want to have to deal with a bento for lunch and that she'd rather just take a sandwich. So I used her bento box myself.



Vegetable egg rolls from Whole Foods (the dipping sauce was put in a little container to the side -- I didn't trust their little plastic carrying cup to stay together in a bento), chopped red and yellow pepper (the yellow pepper was the garnish WF used for the egg rolls), rice, chopped apple dipped in lemon water. I took a fork to eat it with (pink plastic Hello Kitty fork -- matched the bento box nicely, I thought); Thalia took the exact same thing with her usual chopsticks.

More Lunches

The kids are in the midst of a 3 week Musical Theater camp. It was originally scheduled for MWF, but then was announced that kids ages 11 and up could come to work days on TTh to help build sets (I'm pretty sure the age was set at 11 to accommodate Annabeth). So, of course, they're going 5 days a week now. And also talking about how much they want to take a class in technical theater during the school year.

Anyway, on MWF they'e been taking bento boxes, and on TTh just taking something fairly light since they've been working in triple-digit heat out on the asphalt behind the building. And I've discovered that it's really, really handy to have pictures of all of these lunches, since then I don't have to think about how to arrange them in boxes. I'm going back and tagging all the old posts on the subject so they're easier for me to find.

So here are a couple more lunches for my future reference:



Hotdog tulips with cucumber leaves set on lettuce leaves, mac-and-cheese balls from Trader Joe's frozen food section, some raw broccoli, extra hotdog slices in case Holly stays for lunch and tries to take some of Annabeth's lunch (Holly will be starring as Toto -- she and Annabeth hang out together MWF mornings, and hotdogs are one of her favorite foods), assorted fruit.

And lunch #2 is rice, orange slices, red pepper slices, teriyaki beef from the Trader Joe's beef skewer packs (also in the frozen food section -- the skewers didn't fit in the bento, so we got rid of them), snipped green onion. I think it probably needed more to give it some "pop", but at this point we're all sort of tired and just trying to get through the day.


One more week to go. Also, much sewing to accomplish before then. Eek!

More Lunches

Okay, right now I'm peeved at an insurance company (Allstate), so I'm going to breathe slowly and think about something bland, like what we've packed in the bento boxes the past couple of days.

The kids were really impressed with the look of the Chicken Kijiyaki Bento in The Just Bento Cookbook, but I wasn't really inclined to actually MAKE Chicken Kijiyaki. We decided that it bore a strong visual resemblance to chicken drummies, so we decided to use the package of frozen crispy, spicy chicken wings we had from Trader Joe's (I don't recall the actual name of the wings and have thrown out the package).

Thalia also wanted the cucumber and turnip salad with yuza, except I've no clue where to find yuza around here and wasn't interested in running all over town looking, so I used lime instead since we usually have plenty of limes in the house. Also note that I figured the kids wouldn't want the sliced pan-steamed sweet potato, so I used the stash of mini-muffins. And for fruit we used raspberries and blueberries, mostly because they're in season.



For Annabeth I just chopped up baby cucumbers, since she thinks these salad-type things Thalia is trying are weird.



Then today was the quick-and-easy Orange Mandarin Chicken from Trader Joe's.

Sliced red peppers and chopped green onions for garnish on the chicken, rice, and some chopped up apple for a fruit.

Okay, I'm fairly sure my head isn't going to actually explode as long as no one says the word "Allstate", particularly if I can find something else to distract me, like, say, vigorous, vengeful housecleaning. Thus we move ahead through our days....

Lunches

B: So, is your mom Japanese?
My kids: Uh, no ... and you've met our mom before, remember?
B: Well, she keeps making all these bentos, so I just wondered.

Monday the kids each took basically the same thing -- mini-burgers, cheese flowers, veggies, grapes plus blueberries (on sale for a really good price last week), rice.



The rice has a face because when I asked Thalia what she wanted in a bento (as opposed to a plain ol' sack lunch) she said, "food with faces on it." Which certainly wasn't the answer I was expecting.

The mini-burgers were based on the Idea from The Just Bento Cookbook by Makiko Itoh, which suggested that they be made more like little meatloafs, with bread crumbs and egg, since that way they wouldn't be so tough and dry when they were served room temperature. She also suggested that they could be wrapped in bacon and fried up that way, so we tried that for Annabeth's:


She said it was really sort of disturbing when it came time to eat them. But it was pretty easy to just take the bacon off and eat the burger plain. Both kids had a side container of Ranch dip.

On Tuesdays they are allowed to bring peanuts and tree nuts into the building (those are outlawed on MWF due to allergies of another student in the building those days). Annabeth wanted an almond-butter-and-jelly sandwich, so I made a couple out of thin sliced bread, then cut them into butterflies. Down below on the "ground" are tulips made out of hotdogs, skewered with cucumber leaves, and a couple of apple-slice bunnies nestled in lettuce leaves. Some grapes and grape tomatoes fill in some of the gaps. A garden theme.


Thalia wanted something more exotic, so she selected a box pretty much straight out of the Just Bento cookbook:



Soba noodles with nori strip garnish; also toasted sesame seeds and snipped green onion for garnish (I put these in Saran wrap because I didn't have any appropriate little containers). A hardboiled egg -- first time I tried cutting one so fancy, which was sort of fun (she was supposed to do it herself this morning, but by the time everyone got showered and dressed I'd already done it -- Annabeth was covered in paint from painting sets yesterday, and it's held up to repeated showers and scrubbing). Slaw of cabbage and crab. Grape tomatoes. An extra apple bunny (I wrapped this in Saran wrap also since I didn't trust the slaw to keep to itself during travel). A side container of dipping sauce made from dashi stock and kaeshi. THIS was the type of thing I expected her to ask for -- she's more adventurous about food than Annabeth. But they're both trying new things this week, so that's great.

Weekend

Sleeping in to the decadently late time of 6:30am Saturday morning, I awoke with a start when Rick asked, "Is that the tornado siren?" I couldn't tell over the sound of the storm outside and the sound of the fan inside, so I went a window to listen. No siren. But I decided to check the weather maps since the tour bus was driving through the night to get home that morning, and I wondered if they were in the wicked weather. (Side note: they drove through the night partially in order to save money on a hotel stay, partially to get home earlier.)

Let's see, their estimated time of arrival is 10am, so they should be just east of Kansas City now ... the map shows KC is clear, so they must be on the west side of the storm ... the worst of it should be past us by the time they get here.

About 5 minutes later the phone rang. "Hey, Mom? We're passing the mall now, just to let you know. We'll need to unload stuff when we get to the church, though, so no big rush."

Apparently the tour leader likes to pad her trip estimates quite a bit (her daughter was chastising her about this, saying she does this every single time they drive home from Colorado. "But we had to change bus drivers this time, so I added more time." "Mom, it doesn't take 2 hours to change a bus driver!")

Anyway, the kids were all home safely. They had slept some on the bus overnight, so Thalia was reasonably coherent. And after she unpacked and we started laundry we took a trip to Animeggroll to get bento supplies. Thalia had been wanting to go there, and this was the only time we could go that they were actually open in about a 3 week span.

In addition to a beach towel from a favorite manga, she selected a bento set:



bento box, chopsticks, and bag. I know I've seen this one on Amazon.com because I remember the reviews commenting on the mysterious wording on the top:



Lube Sheep? Really? Boggles the mind.

And Annabeth got a new 2 tiered box that matches her old box and bag, plus we found the matching chopsticks:


which has the more sensible phrase of


on it. We also saw this one on Amazon.com, but would rather support a local merchant. Plus it was cheaper at Animeggroll, plus that instant gratification thing. So, a big win.

Then, having satisfied our bento "needs", the kids sort of hung around the rest of the day while we go usual Saturday stuff done, although no yardwork due to all the rain and storms.

That night I took Thalia, Annabeth, and a friend to the park in St. Charles to see Much Ado About Nothing.



Pretty good crowd, thousands upon thousands of mosquitoes, and, wow, it was insanely muddy -- standing water in spots. But we enjoyed the show. Dogberry and the watchmen were FANTASTIC -- definitely our favorites of the evening.

I'd forgotten how angsty the play gets in spots. Sheesh. Scene from Hero's wedding and supposed death:



The last time we saw this particular play was a high school dress rehearsal for a Shakespeare-in-a-week performance, and we were struck by the fact that 1. it's much more fun to watch when everyone remembers their lines, as they did this weekend (which I should've said more loudly in earshot of Antipholus of Syracuse, who was with us and will undoubtably forget his lines during Comedy of Errors next week), and 2. we actually thought the high school Benedick was better in the part, interestingly.

Then up the next morning for the final performance of the 2011 choir tour


which was also the final performance ever for this director, who is now moving on to other things. The performance was fantastic, reflecting that the kids had been on the road with it for a week -- it had that amazing energy you get at the end of a good run of a show. And was followed by a reception for the director.

Father's Day was spent relaxing, playing Stratego, and going to the pool. Good weekend overall, but many complaints of tiredness and sleepiness this Monday morning. Woops.

Friday's Lunch

When we remodeled the kitchen a couple of years ago I streamlined what I put back insofar as gadgets, pots and pans were concerned. And I apparently got rid of the mini-muffin pans, little realizing that less than 2 years later I'd be baking batches of them while thinking about how much easier my life would be if I had a bunch of nori punches and silicon baran tucked away in the drawers. So much for streamlining.

But I found a fairly cheap new muffin pan at Walmart, and have moved ahead. Another of Annabeth's favorite foods is cornbread. So, why not tiny little corn muffins? And, while we're at it, why not some little banana mini-chocolate chip mini-muffins?

So today we have 2 of each kind of muffin -- the brighter yellow are the corn muffins, which have been carefully split and spread with butter, then reassembled (by Annabeth).


Also, celery sticks, a hotdog cut in half and made into 2 octopi (only eyes for a face per her request), grapes and blueberries, and a couple of monty jack stars. I offered a side container of dips -- ranch for the celery or ketchup/mustard for the hotdog -- but she declined.

I froze the muffins for use as the weather heats back up (that would be today and tomorrow) but she ate a ton of them anyway, giving them a quick thaw in the microwave. Wow, mini-muffins are so fun to eat. What was I thinking when I got rid of those pans?

Prissy Food

We're now in the midst of Shakespeare camp, which meets all day MWF this week, then daily next week. This means the kids (or this week "the kid" since Thalia is currently in Denver where she sings somewhere at noon, then goes to Estes Park to perform tonight) need to pack a lunch, which is sort of a novelty for homeschoolers.

Another novelty this week -- cooler weather. We're talking a high of 78F, which is about 20 degrees cooler than last week. That means we can use the oven without worrying about how much we're heating up the house.

So I decided to prep some things for Annabeth's lunches this week. Given that her favorite foods are potatoes, cheese, and bacon, I had the inspiration to make some miniature twice baked potatoes out of size B red potatoes.


I based this loosely on the directions here except I didn't bother slicing anything off of the bottoms -- my potatoes were pretty flat. And I simply stuffed them with things I knew Annabeth would use on her own potatoes -- she prefers Monterey Jack, for example, and feels any sort of onion or chives are an abomination. Also, bacon makes everything better in our household. And all the proportions were eyeballed.

I didn't tell her about this until this morning when I packed it all up in the Bento box:


Also appearing with the 3 potato halves: blanched broccoli, stars cut out of Monterey Jack, and grapes (which are actually the most astounding part of the lunch considering the U.S. grapes aren't in the stores yet and I usually don't buy imported fruit).

She ate one of the potatoes for breakfast, and gave it a thumbs up, saying she couldn't wait until lunch. I'll freeze the rest of the potatoes for future lunches.

Coming up: whatever happened to those mini-muffin pans we used to have?