A Jumble of Things

Friday was our parent-teacher conference at Lucy's school. Darren decided he wanted to go too, so that he could ensure that Mrs. Blevins and I would actually talk about Lucy and her progress rather than our shared taste in music, shopping at Ann Taylor, and Door County. I told Lucy that Daddy and I were going to her conference, and she asked, "What are we going to do while you're gone?"

I said, "Well, I think you're old enough to watch your sister at home on your own."

"No, Mama, no!" she started to lose her cool. "We don't want to stay by ourselves!"

"You're almost six, Lucy," I said, "It's time for new responsibilities. And while we're gone, we're going to need you to dust and wash the dishes. You can pretend you're Mary and Laura."

"We can't be Mary and Laura yet, Mom!" she shrieked, "We're not old enough! Please don't leave us!"

"Just kidding," I told her. "Isabella's mom is going to take you to breakfast at the coffee shop."

So we packed them off there and headed to school. Mrs. Blevins said Lucy has had a great year and made wonderful progress. She said she can easily tell how much we work with her at home (slight pat on the back for ourselves). She gave us some great resources to use over the summer--mostly for math since she knows how much we read around here. I asked about Lucy's first grade classroom and which one she thought would be best.

She answered, "You know, Lucy would fit well in any of the classes. Lucy is....LUCY!" She added, "She's very social, too." Really? We never would have guessed. Then she said, "Whoever her new teacher is, we'll make sure she has great hair."

We then went back to the coffee shop to pick the girls up; they had had a glorious time with Sarah. She let them pick whatever they wanted and showed them her cool phone that had a picture of fish swimming on it.

On Saturday there was both a work day at the church and a ladies' lunch. Elaine and Darren went out to breakfast and then to the work day together. Lucy and I went to the ladies' lunch--a luau to be precise. "What's a loo-how?" asked Lucy. Neither of us had ever been to one, but we were pretty sure that this would be appropriate attire:

We weren't completely sure what to bring for luau food, so we decided on Tia's Crema de Fruta recipe.....



We had a great time at the lunch. There was lava flow punch, and those little paper umbrellas everybody loves (we took quite a few home for our Japanese dolls to use). About mid-way through Elaine made her way into the building and arrived at the luau, dressed in a hoodie, muddy jeans, and sporting bedhead.

"I want to eat too," she announced.

When we got home, she changed into this:



That looks fairly normal, correct? Except that "skirt" is actually a blouse. She tucked the sleeves in as pockets (please note the Strawberry Shortcake flip-flops, Ann-Marie! Sorry...)

There are two pictures I didn't take, but if I had they would be titled simply, "Why?"

The first is something I discovered when I walked into our bedroom. Over near the window was a pile of band-aid wrappers. A lot of band-aid wrappers. In fact, an entire boxful of band-aid wrappers.

The second is the dashboard of my car, which has been colored on with a black ball-point pen.

As I said, there's really no other caption I could devise for them other than, "Why?" However, for "Who?" see the picture directly above.

Lastly, the excitement is building to fever pitch here this week.

Here is the reason:



Each day the girls reassure themselves and us that we are indeed going to Riverdance on Thursday. At the luau on Saturday, we saw our friend Angie, who is going to go with us.

"Are you excited about Riverdance?" she asked Lucy.

"YES," Lucy answered. "Our favorite is the blond guy, Michael. He like, FLIES instead of dancing. But he's not going to be in this Riverdance. He has his own show called 'Feet on Fire.'" (Uh, I believe that would be "Feet of Flames.")

So that was our weekend--eclectic to say the least.