April

It's been another busy month in our house, and to the best of my knowledge, there's nothing so exciting coming up today or tomorrow that I can't blog about April now...

We got back from spring break and things were heating up for me.  I am a 2/3 time graduate student via distance learning and April is when projects and reports are due, plus we had a birthday party coming up for Leah, we had my nephew's birthday party, events at church, meetings, work, and more.  It was an exhausting and stress-filled month for me, but we powered through!

I like to take pictures of Ine biting things.

On Saturday after we got back, we went to my nephew Winston's 2nd birthday.  Ine helped construct a giant 2 out of cupcakes, but also it was important to Winston that she was there because he is madly in love with her.  He walks up to her and just grins at her all the time.  It's hilarious and adorable.  He was very pleased that his 'girlfriend' was there to celebrate.  And Ine was a big help in getting the party organized.  Birthday parties are a TON of work for parents, and every bit of extra hands helps.  Ine was no exception, pitching in to organize food, corral children, arrange cupcakes, and whatever was needed. 

A giant cupake 2!!

Ine and my mom, who calls her "our family's exchange student"--she definitely is a member of the whole family, not just mine and Leah's!

The birthday boy!

We left for home pretty early, even before the party was fully over, because that night was the service auction at the UU where I am a member.  I had never been to the service auction and thought I wouldn't make this one either because we would be out of town, but ultimately I found I could make it.  The service auction is a time when you offer your services of some sort to the members of the church to bid on.  For instance, this year I donated holiday gift wrapping services.  Anyway, there were a couple of items I REALLY wanted this year, and so we dropped Leah off at the babysitting they had in the church and Ine decided she would come with me to the auction. I told her not to let me go totally crazy bidding on things, but one thing I did go totally crazy on was a 4 pack of piano lessons for her.  We have been talking lately about bucket lists and doing things to give yourself the richest, fullest live possible, living without regret and fear, those kinds of heavy issues, and one thing Ine mentioned she really wanted to be able to do was to learn to play an instrument, and especially a piano.  The accompanist that plays when I sing with the choir offered lessons, so I got them for Ine.  She was beaming!  We will get them set up for after school lets out.

It was a fun night--there was a lot of food and laughter.  We won some great stuff, not only for while Ine is here but throughout the year as well--bonfires, caroling parties, 4th of July fireworks, choral singing, all kinds of good stuff.

For Leah's birthday every year, I like to get portraits taken at Picture People, also in the mall.  This year, I wanted to do a portrait of the two girls together as well so I would have something for my desk.  There was a dress up day at Ine's school for some reason and so since I was able to get them both looking good, we went over and had portraits done. I was so impressed by the quality of the portraits this year that I went and bought a framed picture for the living room that is just gorgeous, as well as portraits for my desk.  I seriously could have bought all the portraits there were, they were just amazing!  I have the nicest desk in my office now. :-)

The following Sunday was Leah's birthday party, so we had a lot to do for that, but we also had to prepare for Ine's prom, which was the weekend after the birthday party.  Consequently, there were a LOT of trips to the mall and on one such trip with my mom, I discovered that actor Corey Feldman was coming to the mall to do an autograph signing the next day.  I quickly texted Ine and told her, "Hey, we're going to meet Corey Feldman!" and she texted me back, "Awesome!"  For those who don't know who Corey Feldman is, he was a famous child/teen actor back in the 1980's.  He was in one of my favorite movies when I was a teenager, The 'Burbs, which also starred Tom Hanks, and even now when I order pizza, in my head I think "I'm calling the pizza dude!"  In fact, the first movie Ine and I watched together when she arrived back in September was The 'Burbs, which I'm pretty sure she thought was stupid.  But it all came full circle.  So on April 18th, I dropped Leah off with my sister for the day and Ine and I headed to the mall.  We got to there around 10, because the radio station running the whole thing said they would cut the line off early if there was a big crowd.  So even though Corey wasn't due to arrive till noon, we were there EARLY.  And we were about 15th or so in line.  I got us Starbucks breakfast and the time passed very quickly as we met up with some fellow autograph hunting addicts behind us and had fun chatting.  Of course, Corey was late, but he finally arrived.  I asked Ine if she wanted to go up and meet him alone, but she absolutely, positively did NOT, so we went up together.  I debated whether or not I should hug Corey, but eventually I decided to do it.  So yes, I hugged Corey Feldman.  This has become a bit of a joke in our house--whenever there's a lull in the conversation, I say to Ine, "Hey, did you know I hugged Corey Feldman?" and she rolls her eyes and sighs and laughs.  Which only makes me want to do it more.  So I got my copy of The Burbs autographed, and the radio station was handing out photos, so Ine got one of those and got that autographed.  He wrote "To Ine, all my love, Corey Feldman" on it.  He and I talked about The Burbs just a bit, and we posed for a photo.  It was so much fun!

Afterwards, we went to Five Guys so Ine could complete her taste test of the burgers of Fredericksburg, and she liked it there a lot.  Then it was time to go home and get cracking on Leah's birthday cake.

They call her "The Leveler"

Leah initially had a vision of a mermaid party in her head, but upon inviting several boys, she decided to make it a mermaids and pirates party.  I was trying to think of some kind of unisex cake I could make because Walmart was out of Little Mermaid cake kits and I didn't feel like driving all over town ordering cakes, so finally I went on Pinterest and decided to make a sandcastle cake.  It took me 2 days of baking, but then I decided to let Ine learn the fundamentals of cake decorating and how to construct a tiered cake.  She was not too keen on the idea, as it made her nervous to try her hand at leveling cakes and such, but I showed her that cake is very forgiving, and once she got the hang of it, she did a great job.

Making a frosting boundary so filling doesn't leak out

She was a huge help again in organizing the party and helping me get everything put together.  The next day we went out to the pool where the party was being held and Ine got to hold the cake in her lap on the way over there, just as she had for my mother's wedding cake.  Again, happily, no incident occurred.  She did a great job, and even smiled while doing it!

Ok, we were still sitting in the driveway when this picture was taken, but I drove super slowly all the way to the pool, and apart from hitting one bump which caused the top of the cake to slide off (she caught it), we had no hiccups whatsoever.  When we got to the pool and put the cake together and put the decorations on, it was a sensation.

It was really a beautiful cake and very simple to make.  I was thrilled with it, as was the birthday girl, and Ine was a huge part in its success...

At some point, we went shopping for Ine's prom dress.  For a while she was debating whether or not to even go to prom, but I told her it was the type of experience she needed to have.  They don't have prom in Belgium, just a graduation dance which apparently involves alcohol being spilled so the floor is sticky (this is the full extent of the report I got from Ine about this), so the prom is something new.  I knew of exactly one prom dress store in Fredericksburg, so we went over to the mall and started looking around.  Prom dresses have gotten EXPENSIVE since I went to the prom.  I had the 1990's price of $150 in my head, but when I told the woman who worked at the store this, she just started to laugh.  And I could see why . We found dresses that cost more than my wedding dress for goodness sake!  Since we hadn't asked Ine's parents for money towards this, I agreed to pay for it and told her to try to keep it to about $300, while inwardly calculating eating rice for a month. haha

So she couldn't decide what she wanted to wear.  Eventually Leah and I just started throwing dresses her way, and she finally found one that was "OK". It was purple and strapless--she wanted something with straps, but it had a sash type thing that could turn into sleeves.  I honestly didn't think it looked so great on her, but it was the best of a bad bunch, so I told her she could have it if she wanted to, choked down the $320 price tag, and told her to get dressed.  But as I was chasing Leah through the rows of dresses, I happened upon a beautiful blue dress, with straps, bling, and it looked like something Princess Grace would have worn.  I told Ine to get undressed and try this last dress on.  And when she did, it was a smash sensation.  Even before it was zipped, I was like "Oh my God, Ine!" and she was grinning ear to ear.  We both just knew it was The Dress.  We loved it.  And the price? $150.  BOO-YAH!  (Later on, her parents kindly sent me the money for the dress.)  To celebrate, she and Leah hopped in the hurricane simulator.

The morning of prom, I went ahead and dyed Ine's hair brown.  She had been wanting a change and finally agreed to let Leah pick out a new hair color for her.  It was called "Truffle" and was pretty conservative of all Leah's choices, which included purple.  I was really pleased with how it looked!  Her hair has beautiful highlights and the brown accentuated them without totally covering them up.  She looks so great!

Afterwards, we actually had to go to a conference to set up a table for AFS at Mary Washington.  It was a STEM conference, the new buzzword in American education, which stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math.  So there were all these high tech people, and then there was us.

Still, we put together a nice display with stuff I had received from various exchange students over the years, as well as some books Ine and her parents had given us. We didn't get much business--candy bars aren't that interesting compared to the guy next to us who was doing a "build your own hovercraft" display, but Leah and Ine got to run all over the gym, getting all kinds of freebies, playing all kinds of games, seeing demonstrations, and so on.  They had a great time!  Happily, I spoke to 4 families who seemed pretty interested in hosting, so it was a great day.

Ine announced her dress was too long and she was going to kill herself if she had to dance in it.  We also weren't sure what to do with her hair.  So I got in touch with my mom and asked her to come help, and she came over that afternoon and hemmed the dress.  Meanwhile, Ine, Leah, and I hit Walmart and bought every fancy hair appliance we could get our hands on.  At 4:00, Operation Ine began.  The first thing to do was to convince her to stand on the dining room table so we could get the hem taken care of, because my mom's knees can't handle kneeling on the floor.  Ine was NOT happy about being up on the table, especially in high heels, but she survived.

Afterwards, Mom sewed quickly and then we got to work on Ine's hair.  None of the hair stuff we bought was worth the money we spent on it--we had a thing to make a perfect bun that made something crazy looking since Ine has pretty fine hair, and we bought a thing to make a beautiful twist but that also didn't work out so well.  My mom practiced French braiding, and that was ok if she wanted to go that route.  Then I pulled an old Pinterest trick out of my bag, made Ine a double ponytail, and we curled the hell out of it.  I took a picture and showed it to her, and she was happy with it, so we let it be.  I sprayed it with about 2 quarts of hairspray to make sure it was going to last.

Unfortunately, the front looked pretty plain.  So we decided to make a flying trip to Charming Charlies at the mall (we should just rent a room over there!).  I dropped Leah at Wiggle Worms so she could have fun and play, and then we hit the accessories store.  I wanted Ine to have big earrings as my dad's girlfriend suggested they would look great, and I wanted something sparkly for her hair.  We found just the right things plus a wrap so she wouldn't freeze and headed home to finish getting her dressed.  The final product was a smash success!

She looked so beautiful!  She seriously looked like royalty.  We braved the rain, took a quick picture with my mom, and headed over to pick up Jana before heading to Spencer's for the pre-prom party.

And then, finally, prom night was here!  Unfortunately it rained on the big day, but everyone was in great spirits and excited so it didn't really matter.  The prom schedule was grueling--the kids had to be at the country club at 8pm and the prom was till midnight, then they were off to Paragon Gym until 4AM.  Happily, I was able to strike a deal with Karen, Jana's mom, that if I dropped the girls at the prom, she would do the 4AM run so I didn't have to wake up Leah.  One of Ine's classmates had a pre-prom party at 6:30, so we decided to start there.

The pre-party was fun.  The prom theme was "Great Gatsby" and Spencer's mom gave all the girls corsages made of vintage jewelry and feathers.  There were snacks and 'champagne' (sparkling cider), 40's music playing, and everyone had a great time, even us parents!

Ine getting a corsage courtesy of Dana Marshall

Ine and Jana

Ine and her friends

One of the parents agreed to take Ine and Jana with them, so I picked up Leah and went to bed.  Ine said she had a great time!

I have a few other odds and ends, picture-wise, I feel like sharing... I don't know when these were taken other than 'sometime in April'...

Leah and Ine like building things with Legos together.  Here they are assembling an ice cream stand from a set Leah got for her birthday...

Ine and Cuckoo have made peace

If you've been to Fredericksburg and haven't been to Carl's, you haven't been to Fredericksburg

Enjoying Carl's strawberry ice cream!

How we spent most of our nights this month--homework!

It occurred to me that the Virginia Welcome Center is in Fredericksburg.  We went one night and snapped a picture of Ine with the welcome sign--she is welcomed after 8 months!

We went to the Stafford County Art Show, in which Leah had several pieces including this mouse

We took some time to open a coconut... 

It looks like you'd expect a coconut to look

So that's our April... :)  We had a great month, and I'm looking forward to May.  As we near the end of the year, there are a lot of thoughts, emotions, and ideas swirling around in our heads.  It is a rough, tricky time of year, but also an exciting one.  I will post a non-udpate post with some thoughts I want to share in the next couple of days!

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!