Homecoming

In case Gentle Reader is unaware: High School Football in Texas is a BIG deal. The annual Homecoming Football Game and Dance are an even bigger deal--- even for those who aren't particularly enthralled with the score board. Middle Child rarely misses a game, but eclipsing her enthusiasm for the Friday Night Lights is the topic on many of the high schoolers' minds over the last few weeks: who has a date and who doesn't for the Homecoming events.

Middle Child planned initially to go with a group of friends, but that plan was out the window when she was asked to be Comedy's Homecoming date. Middle Child and Comedy exchanged the traditional mum and garter on Thursday night. They wore their Homecoming Bling to school on Friday and to the Varsity game Friday night. Saturday followed with a dance at the high school. Comedy scored big points for the little things like opening the car door and bigger things like confirming the time Middle Child was expected home.

That's a friendly arm around Middle Child. MC suspects the boy was trying to avoid touching skin in front of the 'rents. I suspect that is quite probable.

Comedy walked Middle Child to the door after the dance. (I made enough noise from my perch on the sofa for it to be extra-obvious that I was waiting up just in case there was any question in their minds.) While they were out, the mister and I had ordered prints of the pre-dance photos and picked up copies for Comedy to share with his family. He took his photos, and away he went.
Middle Child proceeded to describe every aspect of her first "real" dance. (The ones in middle school involved herds of girls dressing up in theme outfits. That's not quite the same.) It's probably better that I didn't know before she left that kids at her school are "known for grinding". (*Choke. Gag...* Do I dare ask?! Wondering is probably worse than knowing.) She doesn't see the expression on Mom's face, which is likely turning a very unflattering shade of horrified, because she's rummaging through the fridge. As her one-sided conversation continues, Middle Child mentions that she didn't grind. (OhholyhallelujahthankyouJesus.) She sounds genuinely disgusted with the practice while also fascinated that the teachers didn't do anything about it besides looking embarrassed. She did mention that, "Comedy kept wanting to slow dance." And she was fine with slow dancing, but she really liked the fast dancing because it was so much fun with all her friends. (And I'm feeling really okay with slow dancing after the near-trauma of even hearing the word, "grinding," pass over the lips of my daughter. I don't particularly care if the fast dancing comment was possibly for my benefit.) It sounds like a good night without anything that would make a mother cringe. Whew.

Metamorphosis

Erin spent the summer months at the ice rink. Not so little anymore, she's continued the metamorphosis from shy Little Bit into the more outgoing Skater Girl. Her self-confidence has grown along with her increasing skills level on the ice. She placed well in her first competition in July bringing home medals for a 2nd place finish in her compulsories and 5th place for her musical program from "Finding Nemo".

The decision to compete again in September saw a flurry of activity through the late Summer as new music was chosen for the program and choreography determined. That led to a new competition dress to fit the "DragonHeart" program and many hours practicing both on and off ice. The new program and compulsories brought third place finishes in both events. Skater Girl performed very well, and she's already looking forward to the next competition in November just after the close of her first year skating.

Teeter Totter

After avoiding the procedures for a couple of years, both knees were partially replaced in July. A few weeks were blocked out for the recovery period. It turns out that the recovery period is more like several months. It's literally been baby steps from waking up post-op to discover that getting out of bed was going to be a Herculean task. In the past week or so, the final "assistive device" has been put aside almost all of the time. Without that cane, my gait is sometimes a bit off.
The mister says I look like I'm trying to sneak around. Assuming that the standard for, "sneaking around," is on par with a Scooby Doo cartoon villain that creeps about slowly with arms raised, he's pretty close in that assessment. Adding to the oddity, occasionally balance is lost and the creeping takes on a wheeling quality not unlike a small child playing at imitating an airplane or bird. Completing the picture, when tired, there's a lovely lurching gait when moving from place to place; otherwise, I just teeter a bit.

The family has taken to announcing that, "She's had both knees replaced recently." They figure this will prevent people from beginning to whisper that I drink. All the time. Because that's pretty much the appearance. When the Homecoming Date came in to meet us before taking Middle Child out for ice cream, he was informed twice because everyone wanted to make a good impression. As part of the rehab process, I've taken to walking a mile circuit through the neighborhood. Toward the end, not one, but two neighbor ladies were doing double-takes as I careened through the final two-tenths of the mile this morning. Awesome.

Tragedy and Comedy

Middle Child started high school this Fall. She whined and complained about taking Technical Theatre, but she will need a fine art credit for graduation, so she was stuck in the class. The first day MC came home and recounted with horror that Tech Theatre was a whole class of guys, a mute girl, our girl, and a Queen Bee mean girl. Two weeks later, our whiny girl is gushing about her favorite class of the whole day: Technical Theatre. There are the funniest boys in there. Hahahaha. Mmmhmm. There are two names repeated often, but we'll just call them Tragedy and Comedy.

She spends a weekend texting back and forth with Tragedy relating selected texts to me, and we end up in a department store because the topic of the texts is homecoming. She's going to need a dress for the dance if she has a, gulp, date, and she will still need a dress if she goes as planned with a group of friends. She tries on the first dress, but it's ho-hum at best. The second one is cute, but it's a little snug on her so Mom dutifully goes out and returns with the next size up. The dress is perfect on her. She inserts in her message to the boy that she just got her dress. Tragedy asks if she would say, "Yes!" if Comedy asked her to homecoming. Eh?
Before she responds, I explain that Tragedy may have been chatting her up to pave the way for his friend. (It happens. No one likes to be shot down, but, on the other hand, it would stink to go to one of the big events of the school year with someone who would just as soon go with someone else.) I then ask if she would be interested in going to homecoming specifically with Tragedy, or if she might want to go with Comedy. (I also warn her that this could be a trick question, so she waits a moment to answer him while considering the many possibilities.) She gives a careful, noncommittal response that leaves either avenue open without sounding like jerk.
That same night, Tragedy nearly causes a fire in his kitchen trying to get a homecoming invite into a fortune cookie. This seems significant because the week before, Middle Child had posted her fortune from another cookie on her Facebook page. (Facebook would be one of the easiest places to get clues about her for a guy who has had limited opportunity to figure out her likes and dislikes.) He specifically asked her if she liked fortune cookies in the intervening days, so it's looking increasingly likely that a homecoming invitation from Tragedy is forthcoming. She will probably say, "Yes." Even though she has heard that Comedy likes her, he has not been texting as much as Tragedy.

Monday dawns, and she (Well, we... I hope I'm not one of those creepy moms who is way too into her kids' lives...) anticipates that the day will bring a homecoming invitation. It doesn't because Tragedy gives what may well have been a custom invite for our girl to another girl with the same name two class periods before he sees our girl. His thin explanation is that he, "...freaked out, and [he] thought, she'd shoot him down." Really?! Tragedy is now marked, "Clearly Unworthy" after this disappointment. Comedy was absent, but it gives Middle Child a day to think about whether she just wants to go to the game and dance with her friends, or if perhaps Comedy is going to ask her.
The next day, in the Drama Room, Comedy delivers a note asking if Middle Child will go to homecoming with him. (He manages to give the note intended for her to her, so he's already looking pretty good in Mom's book.) She accepts. Butting in, I also mention to her that it would be wise to simply rewrite Tragedy's plans assuming that he gave his invitation to the girl he really liked. In accepting Comedy's invitation, she needs to be sure she's not even a little moony-eyed over Tragedy. She appears to have accepted this advice along with the date. So, now it's on with the show.

Golden

The 4th Graders from Pleasant Suburban Elementary have found a golden ticket! Well, a whole host of golden tickets. To go along with Roald Dahls' Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator reading (and an obvious movie tie-in as the school year winds down...), the teachers granted all of their students a "golden ticket" much as the group of lucky winners in the story's contest received. Like Charlie and company's golden tickets, the ones received will also grant admittance for to visit a purveyor of all things sweet.
Of course, this particular field trip will also tie in nicely to this year's study of Texas History as the location of the family-owned Mary of Puddin Hill was granted to the original Mary's family after theTexas Revolutionary War. Can I just say again that I LOVE these teachers?! Doubly so as the iconic sweet shop will close its doors in a few days for good making these students amongst the last customers to visit, and, of course, anything that brings literature and history to life is a winner in my book... as are the chocolate covered oreos.

Robes



Little Bit and Middle Child 2007

My mother-in-law saved the Mister's and his sister's robes, honor cords, and the caps worn for their high school graduations in the 90's. In 2007, my father-in-law earned his Master's degree after retiring from his lifelong career as an engineer. We loaded up the offspring and drove across Texas to attend Papa's graduation. The girls were impressed with Papa's robes, so Gram broke out their Daddy and Aunt's high school graduation gear for a little dress-up fun.
Little Bit dancing around her solemnly posed sister was pretty standard as our youngest gladly filled the clown role in her pre-K days. She planted the secondary cap upside down on Katie's head and proceeded to twirl and prance around and around her big sister. That big sister is currently looking for a dress to wear to cross a stage indicating the passage from middle school into her own high school days. It will likely be all too soon that the offspring will be receiving their own robes and posing for just these sorts of pictures again. I wonder if Little Bit will grace those future photos with her Happy Dance?

Plate

Busy seems to be the order of the day. Everyday. A blue plate special of heaping helpings of assorted appointments, meetings, commitments, and tasks. This is the norm for our household in the Spring, but this year the potential for lighter fare come June has been exchanged for a buffet including a year-round Cross Country schedule, a skater preparing for her first competition (despite the occasional tell-tale "Do-I-have-to..." laments of Spring Fever), the Mister's increasing craziness with work and a church plant launching in three months, the Boy's ongoing saga... and I am heading to Honduras in two weeks. I think it's time to get a bigger plate...

RSVP

The simple art of responding properly to an invitation has been lost. Fortunately, Little Bit's teacher is British. (Well, she's a U.S. citizen as of last month, but she got to keep her awesome British accent.) She has invited the whole fourth grade glass to dress smartly and attend a tea party in honor of Prince William and Kate Middleton's wedding tomorrow. The class's homework assignment was to write an appropriate R.S.V.P. for the party tomorrow. Love it.
Now to get back to watching Charles and Di get married over and over again on TLC. I cannot work the DVR, but the girls can so we will now be able to endlessly watch Di's bridesmaids attempt to get her 26 foot train into the church and speculate on Kate's dress. My mister finds it funny that there's an awful lot of sighing and, er, squealing coming from the living room. Anywho... I must get back to the countdown on t.v. that I'm watching with my youngest child who is wearing ice skates (blade guards on in the house, of course) to practice her arabesques while we watch our fill of fairy tale wedding while mostly ignoring the unfortunate end to the nightmare marriage in anticipation of tomorrow morning's festivities.

Backward

Deborah's Sponsors with their gift

It sounded backward. Laura messaged that the Alastero kids had gifts for their sponsors. After all, the sponsors give to the kids--- not the other way around. Still, the generosity of the kids really should come as no surprise. I have seen repeatedly how a child receiving candy, stickers, school supplies, or hair accessories in gift packs from a sponsor immediately begins to share out their treasures and treats with the other children on every trip. There is a generosity in the children's giving from their "poverty" that highlights the reality of my own poverty. I see how little I give in comparison to what I have, and it makes the reality of their giving to one another precious. Yet, it is not only to one another that the children give.

When the Waits family arrived in Texas to visit, they brought letters for each sponsor family and handmade bowls crafted from recycled chip bags from each sponsored child. These bowls are characteristic of not only generosity, but also of ingenuity. The Alastero kids gather discarded chip bags to recycle into baskets and similar vessels to sell for income. They can also use the same technique to create pine needle baskets. I prefer the rustic look of the pine needles, but both types of baskets are works of art. There is hope that the kids will be willing to teach Artist and I how to make the baskets during our trip to Honduras in a few weeks. It may be a challenge to communicate that we do not wish to infringe on their livelihood, but that we simply to wish to learn from them and to join in the continued development of ever more creative basket weaving. It is also my hope that the task will be a means by which to build more of a relationship with these remarkable young people.

A small pine needle basket

Picture Post: Steps

Six months ago... Intro to Skating

Three months ago... working one on one with Alyssa

Learning her final Beginner Skills...Three-turns

Mohawks

More three-turns

Practicing her Waltz and Half Flip Jumps

Spirals

Her first skating dress

Tidbits: Mom

 Tidbits are all there's been time for lately. Between the normal schedule, friends and family from out of town, Easter, and Middle Child's Birthday, sitting down at the computer to type or edit photos has been far down the To Do List.

• Little Bit's twinkie skating dress came in last week. She tried it on, and. I. squealed. like. a. little. girl. It was sparkly and floaty, and she obviously felt pretty in the thing. She endured a couple of quick snapshots before heading upstairs to roll her eyes at Mom's delight in seeing either of my typically jeans-and-t-shirt clad daughters dressed in something foo-foo. Middle Child informed her younger sister, "You know you just made Mom's whole life, right?" Which is precisely the reason why the kid tolerated the squee moment and the camera.
• Both sets of grandparents were here and gone over the weekend. I think there are some pictures of the grands that are worth a little extra time spent editing. They have interesting faces. Or maybe I find them interesting because of those hints of genetics that trickled down to form the Offspring?
• Middle Child turned fourteen on Easter Sunday. Wow. That was fast. How can it be that the weight of her at a year old perched on my hip can feel so familiar when she is growing ever further from being the Mama's Girl who cried any time I put her down in that long first twelve months? She was completely spoiled. And if I had it to do again--- I might not put her down at all.
• Tomorrow will mark six months since Little Bit stepped on the ice for an introductory figure skating class. Sounds like a picture post waiting to happen.
• Apparently our property values and the professional credibility of our teachers are directly linked to the test scores earned by herds of public school students. The e-mail bombing by far perkier mothers regarding the necessity of grapes, cheese cubes, goldfish/pretzels, and bottled water to ensure the success of the 4th graders on their TAKS tests have been clear that we have an opportunity to help. In order to not cause a new bottom in suburban real estate, I'd best get off the computer and get back in the kitchen to bag up the snacks that will surely prevent the dreaded Brain Drain from sucking our students' future success (not to mention our property values...*rolls eyes*) into an educational Vortex of Doom.

Wrestling

The pocket book and the calendar remain key clues to the state of one's heart, mind, and perhaps soul. Asked to "wrestle with God," over opportunities to give to various projects, forward surged the urge to justify where both time and money are spent. From "mapping" potential income in relation to planned giving, the mister and I also looked at where we spend our time. If considering our family's projected giving over the coming year, it is not only the cost in U.S. Dollars, Polish Zloty, or Honduran Lempira that needs counting, but also the hours, days, and weeks to take into consideration. Our time is finite while the finances are fluid- dependant on everything from price fluctuation to job status.
Despite hearts for ministry in Poland and Honduras, there is no calling to go live in either country, but instead to stay in our Pleasant Suburb. ShelleyinPoland keeps prayer requests coming across the internet and updates on the fledgling church plant in Gdansk while the countdown ticks away toward the next visit to the La Moskitia region of Honduras. Not only that trip, but also a flurry of activity surrounding the Waits Family during their current furlough between personal time and ministry-related events reveal dedication to God's provision for the often marginalized people in remote Puerto Lempira. Gathering for Worship services at our family's church, an evening spent in the front yard for an ice cream social with our neighbors, meeting in small groups or one on one, sitting alongside Little Bit as we share the task of helping kids with homework at an after school program, a fledgling prison support ministry, loving on preschoolers who have been placed in protective custody at the local shelter, playing bass and directing the church band... The list of places where, individually and as a family, we are called and enabled to serve God and our neighbors next door or across town goes on and on even while there are seeds sown in far away places. Pleasant Suburb is the place where this family been planted, and our roots are deep here.
In addition to time, we are privileged to be part of funding ministry and charity in those places thousands of miles away where seeds can be planted out of sight, but not out of mind. We give regularly to share in the day-to-day operations of our local church. These aspects of financial giving and our times to worship and serve are all budgeted and scheduled just like the mortgage is paid and appointments are kept. Our calendar is often full. Our pocket book is not typically empty. More importantly, our lives and hearts are often overflowing. The time crunch of the often over-committed is keenly felt some days, and it is necessary to skip or delay some purchases to stretch our available funds. Those conservation activities feel worthwhile because what we have to give is not running down the drain but accumulating like so many drops in the proverbial bucket.
The places where we must scrimp on spending time or money are so often to allow for word of God's saving grace or demonstrations of His provision to be shared with someone or allocated in some place beyond our means and availability. This is possible because of the multiplication of many giving from personal resources to provide enough for all. Without gifts from the many people choosing to put concrete valuations on faith and charity by volunteering, donating, and simply putting the needs of others in a place of worth documented in calendars and financial records, the whole world would surely be a poorer place.

I wonder, Gentle Reader, what calls to you? Where do you find joy and satisfaction in sacrifice? Because giving seems a choice between self and others... and it is fascinating to see how personal needs and wants can be put aside in the interest and love of others. What does your calendar and pocket book reveal?