The Wizard of Oz!

One of the neat things about doing musical theatre is how much my kids get out of it.

Last week I was in three performances of "The Wizard of Oz" at a local high school. I played the piano, along with 8-9 other musicians in a mini-orchestra.

Rebecca simply demanded to come to the last rehearsal. (I think it was because she was missing me a lot.) It was a four-hour rehearsal (with a half hour pizza break), but she sat through the whole thing and had a wonderful time.


Danielle, the lovely young woman who played Glinda the Good Witch, gave Rebecca a tour backstage, let her wear the crown and carry the wand and carry the wand, put makeup on her, and even let her sing into the mic for a moment. Rebecca was absolutely in heaven.


Rebecca also made a "Flying Monkey Friend" who she liked a lot.



Rachael made about six cards for me to bring to the lead actors for the opening night show, wishing them luck. Even was a little different and related to the character they played.

The show was very good, despite a lot of outside factors working against it, which shows how amazing the people involved were. The kids were masters art the art of ad libbing; for example when a piece of scenery crashed over during one performance, and when the Tin Man's pants tore in another performance.



Also, the costumes and sets were amazing. They actually had a house that rocked and spun during the tornado sequence (not that I could see it, since I was playing and had my back to the stage.)



Now I have a total of three musicals for my resume -- Annie Jr, Godspell, and The Wizard of Oz.
And hopefully there will be many more in the future!

Mock Slumber Party

Every now and then I do something smart, and one of those was combining the girls' birthday parties this year. (Their birthdays are less than a month apart. Rachael turned nine, and Rebecca turned seven.)

They really wanted a slumber party, and fortunately my friend Heather gave me the idea for a "Mock Slumber Party": They come in PJs and bring pillows and slumber bags and stuffed animals. They eat pizza and do their nails and tell stories.

Then at 9:30 pm everybody goes home and goes to bed.
Yay.

So that's what we did.


Here's the gang, soon after they all arrived. Notice Lammie is in her nightgown as well.



Here's everyone having pizza. The girls set up the table themselves, including making the little candle centerpiece.


Robert took Benjamin shopping for trucks when the party began. When Benjamin came back, he happily sat in the roped-off side of the playroom and enjoyed his pizza.



I really think the main reason the girls wanted a slumber party was so they could have pillow fights.



Yup. I'm pretty sure that was the reason.

Another annual trip to Scottish Rite

Many of you know that our oldest daughter Rachael was an inch from death for about three weeks in December 2005/January 2006. She was in the ICU at Scottish Rite with a sudden and severe case of a rare blood disease called Hemolytic Anemia.

Many of you also know that 1) She is completely back to normal now; and 2) Every year in January we go back to visit the ICU, to bring lunch and talk with other families in the waiting room.

We went a few weeks ago, and here are the latest photos.

This is Rachael and Rebecca in the hallway between the actual PICU and the PICU waiting room. The big doors behind them lead to the "sleep room," where we spent many nights -- and, often, parts of the day, because we were up half the night.



This is the ICU, taken from the hallway. Her old room was the glass doors looking straight ahead.

I don't have much to say about this other than what I've already said here and here. So please go read those as well.

World of Coca-Cola trip

About a week ago I decided we needed to break out of our routine and do something fun and different.

When you're homeschooling, the term used for that is a "Field Trip."

The local children's museum was having a Curious George exhibit, and we decided to go first thing Friday morning.

I printed out directions. I packed a lunch. I got the kids excited.

Then on Friday morning, Robert said, "I just realized ... it's flu season ... the children's musuem is going to be a huge germfest. I don't think you should go."

And so much sobbing and shrieking and sulking and angry faces were heard and seen over breakfast.

However, I had a Good Mom Moment, and was able to think on my feet and come up with a Plan B:

We would visit the World of Coca-Cola Museum.

Even better -- we would ride MARTA to get there!




It turned out to be quite fun. Embarrassingly, I have only ridden MARTA once or twice before, and I rarely go downtown, so it was an experience for me as well. We arrived at one station, and then went home via a different station, so we got to pretend we were City People and did a fair amount of walking. We ate our lunch in the Olympic Park, near the fountain. It was fun.

Oh yeah, and then there was the Coke Museum ...

It was not bad. The kids enjoyed things like seeing the Coke Bear, the 4-D movie (well, it scared Benjamin, but the girls liked it), and the gift shop ... oh, and of course tasting all the different Cokes.

My favorite part (what a surprise) was watching all the commercials. Rebecca eventually -- and literally -- dragged me out of there.

And when flu season is over, we'll make plans to go to the children's museum.

Benjamin, the red-nosed Tigger

The girls were putting on one of their shows, and made red noses for themselves while singing "Rudolph."

When they were done, Rebecca put the red nose on Benjamin, and Robert was smart enough to go get the camera.






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Sleeping kids

On Saturday, Robert and I went to a Christmas Party with people from Robert's office. We were out til about midnight, which is late for us!

When we got home, Robert went into the kids' bedrooms and took pictures of them.


Here's Rebecca, fast asleep ...



... and a sleeping Rachael ....



... and here's ... well, Benjamin not sleeping!

Homemade igloos

Remember when I said my goal was to do something "hands on" for every Five in a Row unit we do?

Well, we are just finished up The Very Last First Time, about an Inuit girl in the Arctic, and we made igloos!


Here's 6 year old Rebecca starting hers ...

This was pretty cool in its simplicity. We used those "Magic Nuudles," I think they're called. If I had planned ahead or was more of a packrat, we could have used regular packing peanuts. All you do is press each one against a wet paper towel, and then they stick together.



Even three year old Benjamin got in on it (although he had trouble making an actual igloo).


Here's 8 year old Rachael working intently ...


And the girls with their finished products!

Kids in the Leaves

Robert spend several hours yesterday cleaning up the leaves, and of course the kids had to get in on it.






I guess I didn't have my camera on the best setting, but they're cute pictures nonetheless.



When Benjamin saw what was going on, he ran toward the pile, going, "Me too! Me too!"

Misc Disney Photos

Last set of Disney photos ... then I'm off to start putting together that scrapbook!



Here's Benjamin and I at the aquariums in-between The Living Seas with Nemo and Turtle Talk with Crush, at Epcot. That was a lot of fun. I loved Epcot. There's so much to do there.




The kids -- especially the younger two -- had a lot of fun with the water sprays in Adventureland in the Magic Kingdom.



Speaking of Adventureland, I had heard that a Pineapple Dole Whip Float was one of the best snacks in all of Disney. I would second that notion.



The Kilimanjaro Safari at Animal Kingdom is a lot of fun. I took a lot of pictures, but didn't want to bore you with too many. And yes, they are real animals. Some people who've never been there aren't sure about that, what with it being Disney and all.




In the Magic Kingdom, one neat thing that Robert suggested was taking the raft to Tom Sawyer's Island. This was a nice little break and a change of pace from standing in line to ride Dumbo and Peter Pan. Here's the girls playing checkers before we took the raft ride back.

Hope you enjoyed these! :)
Feel free to ask me any Disney questions -- I feel like a semi-expert now!

Our friends at the Animal Kingdom

Is anyone getting bored with these Disney posts? I haven't heard any comments ...

Either which way, I'll post one more after this, and then move on to Bigger and Better Things.

On our last day, we went to Animal Kingdom. I know a lot of people don't like Animal Kingdom, but we liked it quite a bit. For one thing, it was shadier and cooler than the other parks. Robert particularly liked that it wasn't as crowded.

And the lines to see the characters were much shorter (and cooler).



Here's the girls with Pluto, looking at their autograph book. They had to wait in line for less than four minutes.




We took the train to Rafiki's Planet Watch, and inside were Pocohantas, Rafiki, and Jiminy Cricket. There were literally no lines -- maybe just one person in front of us for each.



At Camp Minnie-Mickey, there are about five lines for different characters -- Minnie and Mickey, of course, being among them.



I'm not sure what this was all about, but when we went up to see Goofy, he started "kissing" me repeatedly. [Robert was over at "It's Tough to be a Bug," so I guess Goofy thought I was available.]

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that.

Rebecca was just giggling about that the other day. "Mommy, I think Goofy wishes he could marry you!"



Chip and Dale were also at Camp Minnie-Mickey. One of the Cast Members told us you can tell who's who because one of them has a nose like a chocolate "chip." Ah-ha! :)

Fun at the Magic Kingdom

My goal (no, seriously!) is to get all these Disney photos in a scrapbook album within the next 6 days.

Maybe I'm setting myself up for failure for saying this, but it's true.

I have the hard copies of the photos, and I have the Creative Memories Disney scrapbook and paper kits. All I have to do -- hopefully tomorrow -- is open it all up and begin.

And really, as much as I love digital cameras .... I haaaaate how people hardly ever hard copies of photos anymore. I'm sorry, but seeing a few photos on Facebook just isn't the same as being able to sit and hold an album that tells you a little bit about the pictures.

I'm sad that the photo album/scrapbook seems to be dying, and I'm trying to at resurrect it a little at my house.

Now, on to digital photos ...


Rebecca always did love Minnie Mouse. When she was two and a half, she had a Minnie costume that she wore almost every day for about two months.


The girls had fun in the little shop outside Pirates of the Caribbean. Um, where is Rebecca's shoe...?


And here's Rachael, still wearing the hat that her grandparents bought her when she was four and we all went to Disney World together. (Well ... I don't mean that she's been wearing it for four years ... you know ...)


Not surprisingly, Rebecca particularly liked dressing up as a Girl Pirate.



I figured people might be wondering when I was going to post a picture of myself.

Benjamin loves Pooh and Tigger, but his face here basically sums up how un-interested he was in actually meeting any characters.

Disney Photos -- Characters at Epcot

On our first Disney trip, when we went to Epcot, Robert rode Mission:Space and was sick the rest of the day, so we didn't get to do much else.

On our second Disney trip, Rebecca started throwing up in our hotel room about 30 minutes before we were about to go to the Princess Lunch in Norway at Epcot. So not much got done on that day, either.

So I was really glad that we finally got to Epcot and actually do things and enjoy it!





In the UK, we sat on a bench and ate fish and chips, and the girls spotted both Alice ...


... and Mary Poppins.


What was kind of neat is that, about 10-15 minutes later, we passed Mary Poppins while walking through the UK, and she smiled at the girls and said, "Fancy seeing you two again!"



We were told late that Daisy Duck was a "hard gal to find," but we had already spotted her at the Epcot entrance.


I waited in line with the girls while Robert and Benjamin rode Spaceship Earth (that big golf ball thing). It was very hot waiting in line. If that's what Disney in late September is like, remind me to never ever go there in July.

More Disney photos -- trains in Epcot

I didn't realize until I had started this post that I was doing two in a row featuring Benjamin and vehicles.

Oh well. It just means I'll have to write another Disney post tomorrow.

In the World Showcase at Epcot -- I think in, or next to, Germany -- there was a train set, which of course Benjamin was fascinated with. He watched it for quite a while as the girls got settled in with their "Kim Possible Kimmunicators" to start their Germany mission.

[If you're not familiar with the Kim Possible Missions in Epcot (it's pretty new), it's a high-tech sort of scavenger hunt in a World Showcase country. It involves finding clues within that country, and watching short video clips on the screen of a special cell phone they give you, until you finish help Kim Possible get the bad guy. It was pretty cool. Rachael, especially, loved it. The girls did one in Germany, and another in the UK.]



Robert got some good pictures of the trains.





And then a couple pictures of Rachael and Benjamin watching them.





BTW, right after these were taken, we had lunch at the Biergarten in Germany. (I didn't get any pictures of that.) I would highly recommend it, not only for the food, but also the entertainment.