March!

I really can't believe that March has come and gone already.  We got home from Disney and I thought, "How am I ever going to fill up March with things to do?" But this past couple of days, I told Ine, "I have to blog about March yet, what exactly did we do?" and she said she didn't know.  I didn't think it could be any big deal, I thought of 2 things we did, but then as I went through my pictures for the month, I thought, "Holy Christmas, we've been so busy!  It's no wonder I don't remember!"

I'll start with the main things I do remember.  First of all, I roped Ine into teaching an origami class with me at Leah's school.  Remember how she taught us to make frogs at dinner one night?  Well, I found out there was an enrichment program at Leah's school and they needed teachers.  Since I'm passable at origami and Ine is GREAT at it, I thought it would be fun for us to teach it together.  They paid $100, so I offered Ine $50 if she would do it and she said yes.  We spent a lot of time before the class learning some new figures and practicing, and we taught the class for 4 weeks.  We had a great time!  We had 8 kids ranging in age from kindergarten to 3rd or 4th grade, and they were so fun.  On the last day we brought in all different Japanese snacks for the kids to try, and hilarity ensued.  They all decided they would probably starve if they had to live in Japan.  The organizers also gave Ine a little gift bag of candy in appreciation for her hard work.  I think it was really helpful to them that I brought my own assistant, as they were pretty short staffed.  To celebrate our great success as origami educators, I took Ine to Umi, a local Japanese restaurant for dinner.  She won't starve if she goes to Japan, but let's just say I don't see her eating much sushi.

We taught the kids to make paper hats

Ine taught the kids to make her famous frogs and then we had a frog race in the hallway

She couldn't decide what to have, so I ordered her a bento with 4 or 5 different dishes so she could try all different things.  It was very entertaining to watch.

We also had 2 events at Ine's school.  First was the winter sports awards.  I apologize that I don't have better pictures of the event itself, but Ine didn't think she was going to get anything so I didn't bring my camera.  The awards honor all the winter sports athletes, and included the swim team.  Each team was called up on stage, and each team member was recognized and awarded a certificate.  In addition to the swim team, the basketball teams were recognized (they are not co-ed, unlike swimming, so the boys and girls were recognized separately).  It was a really nice event, Ine and a boy from China were also recognized as being the international students on the team.  The kids were all dressed up nicely, and the coaches were really moved when talking about the students they coached this year.  They also recognized the most improved and the MVP.  It was pretty great.

Afterwards, the teams were sent to separate rooms and at least on the swim team, the seniors were recognized separately.  Ine got a gift bag with an FA blanket in it.  The kids had put together a slideshow of pictures from the season which was also fun to watch.  It really made me sad that swimming was over!

Afterwards, I got a picture of Ine with her coaches.  These ladies have worked so hard with all the kids, but I have been so pleased with Coach Wimble (on the right below) and how hard she has worked with Ine.  Ine is probably a stronger swimmer as a result of her participation, and the coach has been so great to continue to encourage her and allow her to swim after the season ended as well.

Also we attended the Senior Gift Dinner.  At FA each year, the senior class leaves a gift behind for the classes who are coming up.  The gift is announced at the dinner, and then the kids hit up their parents for cash to pay for it.  It was a fun evening, I got to meet some parents of other seniors and we had a nice Chinese dinner on FA's dime.

There wasn't much to take pictures of, but here is Ine eating dinner with her friends.

In other news, I'm sure we also had some snow days because I have a random picture of Ine and Leah baking.

Ine has become a great big sister to Leah.  Leah finally won the fingernail painting battle, but Ine also plays with her a lot more, tickles her, makes jokes with her, and occasionally they hang out in Ine's room.  This is a far cry from back in September when I said to Ine, "I take it you don't have much experience with small children." and Ine's deer-in-the-headlights face responded, "No!" 

For her part, Leah is so smitten, she recently got her hair done to look like Ine.

They are really so cute together.  I love both these girls!

We also had some fun times with my sister and her family this past month, as usual.  We had a day that was sunny, finally, and decently warm for March and spent the day at the National Zoo before having dinner at Judy's.  It was a fun day, kids were everywhere and we got to see the pandas.  I mean, the animals. :)

I also hosted a bra fitting party for my friends and Ine helped Judy decorate cupcakes to look like bras.  Ine sat by during the party, declining to be professionally fitted, and enjoyed the hilarity of us all going crazy over underwear.

Decorating 'bra cupcakes'

That evening we sent Leah and Dottie off to Wiggle Worms and started driving around trying to figure out what the three of us could do to have fun together.  We drove in circles around town for almost 2 hours, bombing in on my mom for a while, and just not really knowing what to do before we finally stopped at Peter Chang's for dinner.  Now that I'm writing this, it seems that we ate a lot of Asian cuisine this month!

Anyway, we laughed a lot that night.  It was really fun!  And as you can see, Ine brings out my sister's ability to make crazy faces!

We also went back to Riverside Dinner Theater to see 9 to 5 starring Sally Struthers of All in the Family fame.  I barely remember that show, but Sally makes a splash every time she comes back to F'burg, which she does once per year, so I thought it would be fun for Ine to see an Emmy Award winner in action.  The show was great, as was dinner.  We weren't able to meet Sally, but it was still a fun afternoon and we got all dressed up and looked pretty cute!

Towards the end of March, we also had a birthday party to go to.  Our little friend Fred down the street turned 4.  How is this possible!?  To put that into perspective, here is a picture of a newborn Fred with Penny:  He was literally hours old....

...And here is a picture of Fred now as Ine knows him, at his birthday party:

So we were invited to his 4th birthday party, which they held at the Fredericksburg Field House. The main draw is that for an hour, you get to jam  on one of the fields, and they put up inflatables.  Ine wasn't sure about being the only "grown up" in the inflatables, but they did look like fun, so I decided to take a crack at it.  Together, we first tackled the obstacle course.  It was hard, we kept getting knocked around, trapped, and I fell out of the stupid thing.  We were laughing so hard.  I think Ine and I had more fun than the kids did!  We also spent time on the inflatable slides, as seen in Fred's picture above.  At the end of playtime, Ine said she wanted to go down on her stomach face first, but she was scared, so I did it so she could see that it wasn't so bad.  Unfortunately, it was slightly terrifying and I screamed the whole way down, so she declined to follow my lead!

But it was so much fun. We had the best time.  I laughed so hard, and I was so exhausted by the time we were done.  It was hilarious.

And finally, at some point during the month, I took Leah and Ine to the Melting Pot for lunch because we were bored on a Saturday.  It was delicious, of course, took hours to eat, but most importantly it was fun.

So that was our March.  Of course, there was a lot of time spent on schoolwork, the weather improved and we were able to start taking walks around the neighborhood again, we've spent a lot of quiet nights doing puzzles and playing around on the computer, we started watching Fargo, all kinds of ways to fill up our hours...

My next blog will be about our Easter trip to New England.  We had three days in Rhode Island and Massachusetts--it was jam packed and I was exhausted when it was over, but we had a blast.  I have so many plans for the next 3 months.  I hope we have time for it all!