Stake Dance

Just a note that a few nights ago in a last-ditch effort to get the kids' attention (because they were being unruly, naturally), Andrew hollered, "Yo! Listen up!"

And because sometimes my children's mother is sometimes equally unruly, I belted out: "Here's the story about a little guy that lives in a blue world, and all day and all night, and everything he sees is just blue—like him!—inside and outside."

Andrew gave up and joined in as the kids' jaws dropped open in amazement:

"Blue's his house with his blue little window, and a blue corvette, and everything is blue for him, and himself, and everybody around, cause he ain't got nobody to listen...."

This is about where the kids lost it, because by this time Andrew and I were jumping around the living room singing, "I'm blue, da ba dee da ba di, da ba dee da ba di, da ba dee da ba di..."

Rachel was like, "No way is this happening. This is not a real song. These are not my real parents..."

But alas, it was happening, it is a real song, and we are her parents. 

"Pretty impressive, really," Andrew and Rachel agreed. "Considering it's not a polka song."

My repertoire knows no bounds.

Glow Stick Dance

My sister Kelli sent us a huge box of glow sticks and challenged us to put on a stickman dance show for her. How can you say no to that?!

Yesterday was our big day. We started putting together our costumes while Andrew was out on his biweekly shopping trip (and I mean the "every two weeks" sense of the word, not "twice a week" (that would be insane)). I thought it would take only a few minutes since I'd seen tutorials online claiming it to be a 15 or 20 minute project. They weren't wrong, I suppose, until you multiply that by six. It took us nearly two hours to make our costumes and we made the very unfortunate decision to put Alexander in his costume first so he had to sit in his costume for nearly two hours while we got everyone else ready.

He was a pretty good sport about it, but having glow sticks attached to your body isn't exactly as comfortable as it sounds (does it sound comfortable?) and they do impede your movement quite a bit.

Daddy-Daughter Dance

Last night there was a daddy-daughter dance at the elementary school. Evidently it was a lot more formal than I understood it to be and when my friends started putting up pictures of their daughters —dressed in beautiful, billowy gowns, hair carefully coiffed,  their dates dressed in stately suits, elaborately knotted neckties gracing their throats—I realized that I completely underestimated this dance. 

We're in the south so I should have known: Southern Belles gonna belle.

But not us, no.

We arrived home from ukulele practice at 5:30 and the kids rushed into the house with me barking at them to, "Eat a bowl of cereal! You have to leave in fifteen minutes! Go! Go! Go!"

Miriam made a bit of an effort to dress up. She put on a skirt and tights and sparkly shoes. 

Rachel only agreed to go to the dance in the first place if she could wear pants. Fine. 

I was actually surprised when Andrew changed out of jeans and a t-shirt and put on Sunday pants and a dress shirt. He looked nice.

I wanted to take a picture of the trio before they left for the dance, but we ran out of time. I was still scrambling to feed the little ones when they left. So while my friends have pictures like this: 

Dancing (until you see stars)

I don't audition well.

I know this because my ballroom coach once told me so. She still put me on the team because she'd been my teacher the year before and knew I'd polish up well. And because, she once pulled me aside to say after I'd suffered a disappointment, she also doesn't audition well.

And that's fine, because, frankly, I'm okay with not ever being the star of the show. And I'm fine with not being a professional ballroom dancer today (though maybe that looked like fun to me once). Sometimes, though, it would be nice to show what I can actually do at an audition rather than looking like an idiot.

I lectured the girls about this before we tried out for the musical. I told them that they were to give it their all. They were to sing with gusto, and if the casting director told them to jump, they'd say, "how high?"

And then we all three went up on stage and looked like idiots.

Seriously.

Because apparently looking like an idiot is genetic.

The casting director was like, "Can you bark for me?"

Miriam said, "No," and was not cast as a puppy.

Rachel said, "Arf?" and surprisingly was cast as a puppy (because she seriously just said, "Arf?" it didn't sound like a dog at all; she just forced those phonemes out in a row and smacked a question mark on the end. "Arf?" I suppose they thought they could work with that).

I was put in the easiest dance sequence, which was a little depressing because I can dance.

Old news is good news

Not this past Saturday but the Saturday before, the girls had their last ballet lesson of the school year.

Everyone in the studio is constantly raving about Miriam, who apparently has beautiful feet and "lines" (which I think refers to her "poses"). She's certainly got a little ballerina in her. She lived Saturday to Saturday this last semester, always looking forward to her next ballet lesson.

Peter Pan 2013

Phew! Peter Pan is finished!

The end of a show always elicits such mixed emotions from me. On the one hand—huzzah for no more rehearsals, no more late nights, no more panic about fundraising or being late or running tights. On the other hand—no more thrill, no more anticipation, no more friendship-forming/costume-building pow-wows in the lobby. I'm sure the girls will continue to play Peter Pan and Flower Fairies for some time to come. Just this morning they turned their bunk bed into a theatre and dangled stuffed animals from the top bunk after tying ribbons to their limbs. The stuffed animals were "doing aerial dancing!" It was pretty cute.

Anyway, here are a few pictures from the dress rehearsal on Thursday night.

Books and Ballet

We finished reading the last book in the Little House series on Thursday night. Andrew insists that we read Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban next in preparation for some adventures this summer. There is still so much of the wizarding world that Rachel has yet to discover—like Hogsmeade—because through books one and two our heroic trio are stuck on Hogwart's campus. We've been so focused on Little House, however, that we felt we could all use a refresher course so this weekend we watched both Harry Potter 1 and 2 (over two evenings).

Yesterday we told the girls they had to clean up before they could watch the movie and they had the entire house spick and span before I'd even finished nursing Benjamin. We let them eat dinner in front of the TV, which they always find exciting.

This evening they were disappointed when we announced that dinner would be held at the table but they got over their disappointment in time to watch the movie. It was hard for both of them to stay awake—Miriam actually had to go to bed before the movie was over—because they'd had such a long day!

They went to ballet in the morning and had had a rough time there. Miriam was having trouble listening and at the end of the lesson Rachel told her teacher that she didn't really like ballet—she was just doing it for Miriam.

We talked about it (both listening to our teacher and also about Rachel's uncommitted attitude about ballet) when they got home. Miriam's was a fairly easy conversation—just listen and obey, m'kay? Rachel's conversation was a little more complicated. See, I knew when we signed her up for ballet that she's really been wanting to try gymnastics. However, it was Rachel who found a ballet teacher. It was Rachel who asked the ballet teacher to teach her (and her sister) ballet. It was Rachel who begged to be allowed to audition for the performing company in addition to taking her class (while her parents were on the fence about it and her sister was clueless).

"What don't you like about ballet?" I asked.

"Tap," she sniffed.

Ballet

Two weeks ago the girls started ballet. They've been begging for lessons for a while and we've been hunting around for a studio but everything seemed so out of our league. Then Rachel came home from school saying that her kindergarten teacher was also a ballet teacher and she said that she'd give Rachel lessons and her first class would be on Saturday.

I didn't hear anything from her teacher, though, and so I passed it off as the ramblings of a five-year-old.

The next day I was surprised to find a flyer for a dance studio (with a 15% off coupon for the first month!) stuck in Rachel's homework folder. Her kindergarten teacher was indeed a ballet teacher and she'd just invited us to check out her studio.

We toured it over Christmas break and it was just lovely. We met the owner, who is so kind and wonderful. She took time out to meet us and struck me as a very genuine person—she reminded me of my old gymnastics coach Darlene (that will give at least my mom an idea of what she's like) and, frankly, we could use a Darlene in our life. The studio is rather small and the beginner classes in particular are struggling.

Both Miriam and Rachel have Rachel's kindergarten teacher for their ballet instructor but they meet in separate classes. Miriam meets with her first and is the only one in her class. They both do 45 minutes of ballet and then 15 minutes of tap.

She's a dancing star! She loves to twirl all day!

Yesterday morning the girls got all decked out to play Angelina Ballerina; it was Rachel's idea and I was thrilled about that because this one time I praised Miriam as being "a natural" dancer and Rachel overheard me. She assumed that I meant that Miriam was a good dancer and Rachel was not. For the past few months whenever anyone's mentioned dancing Rachel has answered with something like, "Oh, I'm not a very good dancer, but Miriam is!"

It hasn't seemed to matter how many times I've told her since then that she's a fine dancer, she's refused to dance. So you can imagine my relief when it was she who suggested that they play Angelina Ballerina.

Luau? Lu-wow!

Leli really outdid herself with this party. It was awesome! Leli is Tongan so she threw a luau for the closing social and she pulled all the strings she could. Her dad is Mr. Fotu (who teaches at the local junior high school; it kind of weirded Andrew out to see him at the party) and he's best friends with this guy whose wife runs a dance school. We had our own private show after a wonderful Polynesian dinner catered by Ken (another Polynesian in the program) and his family.

The party-crew had spent all day decorating the cultural hall with palm trees and sand and shells. It was like walking into a beach.

Easter Eve

We've had such a busy weekend so far. Last night Andrew and I went to the Marriott School closing banquet—he had to go because he was nominated for the Bateman award—and we didn't get home until nearly eleven o'clock (after a quick stop on the way home to get some Easter things...because we didn't put that off at all). We were a little tired, then, when the girls ran into our room early in the morning, wondering if the Easter bunny had been here. We didn't tell them when the Easter bunny was coming but I guess Grandma, who had put them to bed for us last night, suggested that he might come on Saturday instead of Sunday because he knows that we're so busy with church on Sunday.

I just realized I used the word "we" up there. What I meant to say is that I was a little tired when the girls ran into our room—Andrew somehow slept through both of them climbing into bed and talking loudly about the Easter bunny and Star Wars (which they had watched last night before bed).

They ran out to the living room to check for baskets as soon as they heard noise in the kitchen (the noise was Grandma getting things ready to head to Manti for a ward temple trip of sorts).

They were thrilled and a little dazed. Miriam kept saying, "Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!" It's her way of expressing disbelief. "Bubbles? Whoa! Candy? Whoa! Barrettes? Whoa!"

Tari Saman

Here are two different videos of our Tari Saman performance yesterday. The first is from my own camera (again, I am fifth from the left (in pink)):

A Taste of Asia at SLCC

This morning my mom swung by our house in a BYU van full of BYU students to pick me and the girls up to take us to Salt Lake. Today was the day we performed the Tari Saman at Salt Lake Community College and we had to be there by 10:00 so the Gamelan group could practice and get their instruments set up. At around 9:20 I got a phone call from my mom's phone.

"Hello?" I said.

"Hello," said a male voice. "This is Myrna."

Laughter erupted in my ears. My mom had given the phone to a student (because she was driving) to tell me they were just about at hour house. Apparently everyone in the van thought this was very funny. It kind of was, really.

The girls were excited to get to ride in a big van with a bunch of big kids and were so good on the way up and the entire time we were there. I felt like I brought half the house with me because I wasn't sure what we'd be experiencing while we were away—I brought extra outfits and baby wipes and tylenol and a thermometer and favourite blankets and coats and hats and gloves and lunch and water bottles...

It ended up being too much hud because Miriam was just fine the entire time. She didn't have any accidents and her fever stayed away and she was as cheerful as could be, though lugging those favourite blankets with us proved to be a bonus because they helped the girls behave.

Rachel was very angry when we first arrived and I couldn't figure out what was wrong. When I demanded that she tell me what was wrong or just get over it already she pointed out that they had decorated the stage in Slytherin's house colours—gold and green. I told her that, first of all, Slytherin's colours are silver and green and, second of all, it wasn't a big deal because this wasn't a Harry Potter party—it was "A Taste of Asia" party—so their colour choices in no way reflected their loyalty to Gryffindor. Sheesh.

Tiding lahandingheum

Today Miriam came up to me and said, "Watch this, Mom!" Then she kneeled down on the floor and started clapping her hands and singing what at once sounded familiar and foreign. It took me a minute to realize why—it was because it was both familiar and foreign. She's singing a line from the Tari Saman I'm learning with my sister and mom.

I told Miriam it was very cute and then asked her if she'd do it again for the camera. She agreed to.

She sings, "Tiding lahandingheum!" twice. Then she says, "That is very cute!" before singing "Tiding lahandingheum" once more.

I have no idea what "Tiding lahandingheum" means but neither do the Indonesians in our group—it's in a dialect of Aceh, which is only spoken on the island of Aceh, which is where the Tari Saman comes from. I've been writing a post about Tari Saman but I'm not ready to post it yet. I want to wait until I have a video of our performance because I want it to be a surprise...because I know you're all so excited, right?

*crickets chirping*

Anyway, here is my baby girl performing a segment of a Tari Saman:

17 weeks and a busy day

Today I'm 17 weeks & 3 days along, I believe, so I figured it was time for a belly shot. My first belly shot with Miriam was around 17 weeks. My first belly shot with Rachel was at 18 weeks and I had nothing to show for it, really...I had nothing to show, really, until late in March and even then it wasn't anything much.



I think my tummy's poking out about as much as it was when I was this far along with Miriam, perhaps a little more so but I was rather exhausted when this picture was taken and my stomach seems to poke out more the more tired I get because I get too tired to pay attention to my posture, I suppose.

I thought about changing into the blue shirt I wore with Miriam's 17 week shot but then I realized that would involve standing up. I am just tired enough that standing up sounds dreadful.

I'm a pirate!

On Saturday Rachel game with me for the dance practice my mom, sister, and I had. She was asking a lot of questions about it in the car on the way to BYU. We gave her the brief rundown:

It's called Saman. It's a dance from the Indonesian island of Aceh. It's kind of related to Gamelan, which is music from the Indonesian island of Bali. 

Rachel might be one of only a few North American four-year-olds who knows what Gamelan is so she didn't ask for more of an explanation about that. Instead she asked what an island was.

February so far

Last night Andrew and I used the movie tickets my mom gave to Andrew for his birthday (five months ago). We went out to see Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which was a terrible idea because I cried the whole time but a wonderful idea because it was such a great story. It follows the life of a little boy who lost his father in the World Trade Center on 9/11 for about a year or so and was absolutely heart wrenching.

My parents watched the girls for us and they got to watch a movie at home. Rachel's always excited when I leave because she thinks other adults will always "definitely say yes" to a movie. She picked out "the all the birds of a feather movie," which the general public refers to as Rio. After that my mom spoiled the girls by reading a full chapter and a half of Harry Potter. Usually one chapter is my limit for a night.

We have a visitor from North Carolina right now—he's visiting his daughter, who is at BYU, on his way home from a business trip. He arrived last night just as we were sitting down to play a game of Ticket to Ride. We never did get our game in but we did get to listen to Reid and Karen and our visitor reminisce about North Carolina. They speak so fondly of it that it nearly makes me nostalgic and I've never lived there—the closest I've been to North Carolina was a short stay in Atlanta, Georgia, with my dad's cousin.

I don't think I would mind if we ended up heading out to Durham for school.

BYU Traditions Ball 2011

Last night we went to the ball. It took a little bit of effort on my part to convince Andrew that he could neglect statistics for three hours in order to focus on me. Not that I'm high-maintenance but, seriously, how many hours has he neglected me in favour of statistics? A whole lotta hours, that's how many. I realize that he is slugging through school so that he can (one day) be a good provider for our family but, let's be honest, grad school is a real drag. 

He really is hard-working and high-achieving, though, and I really appreciate that. Rachel said to me one day, "My daddy sure is a long-worker because he works for so long! But that's okay because if he works lotsa time then we will get lotsa money."

And then I told her that we were paying lots of money to have him work lots of time. She was like, "What? That doesn't make sense!" But that's grad school for you. 

Anyway, we went to the ball and had a great time.

Rachel said I looked like Cinderella, and although I don't really agree with that (Cinderella dressed in black?) I will admit that I felt a lot more glamorous than I have in a long time, thanks to the help of Sarah and Jody and everyone else who was so excited for us to go. 

I ended up borrowing one of Sarah's formal dresses from a high school dance. 

Happy 2011!

It's the New Year, obviously. Today in church the opening hymn was Ring Out, Wild Bells and if that isn't a clear sign it's a new year I don't know what is. The lyrics aren't half bad but the melody is really quite a dirge. I realize the song talks about the year dying, but it also talks a lot about "happy bells across the snow," and "ring out the false, ring in the new," and "ring in the Christ that is to be." Shouldn't that mean the song is a little happier than a funeral march? Sorry, Crawford Gates, I suppose I just don't understand what you were going for, though we were grateful the song took so long to sing because, due to a mechanical error (the alarm on the iPod didn't go off) and to a baby who was up all night screaming (Miriam), we didn't wake up until 8:10 this morning so it was rush, rush, rush until we walked into the chapel during the final strains of the first verse of your song. 

If it had been any other song we would have been more notably late, I'm positive. It worked out well enough and we still got to sing for what seemed like five years before the opening prayer.

To ring in the New Year we went to a "friend's" dance party. I say "friend" because, frankly, I don't think I know the guy, but he worked for my mom when he went to BYU and now he lives up in Canada and he knows my cousin Beth.

Librarian Luau

A few days before Auntie Sarah got married we went to Andrew’s work party, which was also my mom’s work party, and my brother’s work party (but he didn’t come). We joke that the library is a family affair—Andrew’s dad and uncle worked there during their undergrad; I worked there as a student as an actual staff member; my brother David took over my old job after he graduated and I quit to have Rachel, he also worked there as a student; Patrick works there; Emily works there; Andrew worked there while he was an undergrad student and now he’s working there again as a quasi-staffer. As you can see, staggering numbers of people in our family have worked there. It’s just the place to be.