Flashbacks and Fireflies

(pictures--lots of them--below)

June was fantastic. Seriously. Despite kicking it off with a nice round of sickness (swine flu undoubtedly . . . but a couple of days worth of fevers and a cough or two?--we weren't complaining), we managed to stamp out the bugs just in time for Theo's birthday party. Of course it rained the day of his party. Hard. Fortunately I learned my lesson last year (yeah, summer doesn't hit by June 5 around here), and his party was indoors at the Saskatchewan Science Center this time. In addition to the regular fun stuff at the center, there was an amazing lego exhibit and a fire show that felt like a Harry Potter potions class. After a couple of hours of play we rounded the afternoon out with a volcano cake (which was nearly as nice indoors as it would have been across the street at the park as we had planned, except the sparklers on top didn't exactly meet the fire code) and presents. Between a robot and rollerblades, yeah, the kid is spoiled.

We came home from the party and started packing. Twenty-four hours later we hopped in the car and hit the road, headed for Cincinnati *cut to grinding noise coming from the wheel-bearing we had just had replaced* SCREECH! We turned around, plopped the kids into bed at home (it was Sunday night, so we had to wait to visit the mechanic again). Monday morning we hit the autoshop at the crack of dawn, then did the whole thing over again. We drove without stopping until Tuesday, then the fun began.

Is it any wonder I miss Cincinnati so much? It felt like coming home. Especially since the first thing we did is drop Aaron off at the airport! Ah, the memories. He caught a plane for the Chorus America convention in Philadelphia (yes, I should have him do a whole blog-post about that, but don't bet too much money on it actually happening . . . long story short: he saw some cool concerts, sat in George Washington's church pew, and saved Dale Warland's life--not bad for two days). Meanwhile, I hit the park with some friends, then took the kids to the art museum and a butterfly show at the Krohn conservatory. We picked up some Graeter's black raspberry chip ice cream, ate Chinese food at the little restaurant where we used to go nearly every week (fantastic food for a family of six for under $20?--um, yes), and gawked at the sinfully low prices at the grocery stores and gas stations. Is it bad that we miss $1.75 milk more than almost anything else?

After Aaron got back, it was all about him. He graduated Friday, decked out in his velvet trimmed crimson doctoral robes, and we couldn't have been more proud. Dr. Rivers, his major professor paraded him around a bit, and let slip that he is nominating Aaron for the highly regarded Julius Herford prize for outstanding dissertation in choral music. It's an international award, and a great honor to be nominated. On Saturday, the school of music held an additional ceremony to honor its graduates. Despite sitting up in the balcony, we still managed to disrupt things a bit when Sera politely dropped a croc on the head of someone sitting below her.

Fortunately for the kids, after all the sitting there was plenty of food. There's nothing quite as fun as telling them that all the food on the buffet tables is free. Possibly they didn't exactly need seven plates of grapes, but who's counting? We also enjoyed meeting the new choral faculty at CCM, who coincidentally received his Master's degree here at the University of Regina, where Aaron teaches. His wife grew up in Regina and we met on facebook through my playgroup friend Alisha. The internet really does shrink the world in amazing ways! It was fun to meet her and their three children, close in age to our own, at a barbeque for the families of the graduates. We wound the celebration up with dinner at our favorite pizza joint, Dewey's. Uh-oh, my mouth is watering again.

We filled the rest of the days with visits to favorite haunts and good times with dear friends. Spoiled Theo got to have his birthday dinner at El Pueblo, complete with a sombrero, a Mexican birthday song, and fried ice cream. He loved it. Also, the salsa there is to die for. On Sunday we attended church in our old ward, and it was easy to remember why I sobbed when we left Cincinnati two years ago. The hall teemed with women holding one another's babies, the nursery sucked Sera straight in with some play-dough and a "Cookie Grandma" during snack time, and the big kids got a joyous welcome from old friends (so much so that Theo insisted that they needed him to stay for two more weeks to help with a Sharing Time presentation). It's nice to be needed in our ward here in Regina, but I can't help missing that special love that we always felt in the Montgomery ward--like someone had our backs no matter what.

We visited the zoo and the museum center, a bird show and a Reds game, Newport on the Levee and King's Island (which our kids plan to buy when they grow up, visit every day, and occasionally treat their parents to free tickets). Somehow we managed to see three different fireworks displays in there (Cincinnati has a thing for "Rozzi's Famous Fireworks" it seems--which is fine by us, since we don't get a whole lot of fireworks in our neck of the woods--er . . . plains). Then we wound the whole thing up with a night at the Cincinnati Pops, joined by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. I've seen the MoTab a lot of times in my life. I've even heard them sing most of the songs they sang before. But this concert was special. Erich Kunzel, the director of the Pops was recently diagnosed with terminal cancer and isn't expected to live much longer. He hasn't stopped performing though. He scheduled all his chemo treatments for Mondays so that he can still conduct concerts on the weekends. He called an requested that the Tabernacle Choir join him for a concert this season, and he talked Neil Armstrong (yup, the astronaut) into narrating A Lincoln Portrait. It made for a breathtaking evening, full of Americana--just what a couple of Canadian transplants needed to make them wax all nostalgic. Yeah, I totally cried. After that we managed to run into Ryan Murphy, newly appointed assistant director of the Tabernacle Choir, congratulate him on his appointment, and catch up a bit on him and his family and their big move from Boston.

The next day we had to leave. Was I sad? Yes. But you know what else? I was also ready. Visiting Cincinnati filled me. It reminded me that life isn't just about having fun and letting other people entertain and serve me. I needed that reminder. There's lots to be done here in Regina, and our family has a responsibility to do some of it. I knew that when we moved here, but somehow in the deep of winter, in the cold of the prarie, I forgot. Or maybe I just got used up. Now I'm ready to go again--ready to take whatever life throws at me . . . at least for a while. Which brings me to the fireflies. I used to love sitting out on our front porch on summer evenings in Cincinnati. I would stare out into the darkness for a while, then a spark of light would catch my eye. Those little fireflies were tiny, for sure. But that flickering yellow-green light captured me, riveted me. Sometimes I would watch them for hours. They weren't reflecting light, or catching it from something else and then transmitting it. They were making it. Making their own light and then sharing it with the world. I think it's my time in life to be that way. To stop leaning on everyone else all the time and start shining a little light of my own.

Growing older, moving on

Theo's birthday party -- the Science Center Lego exhibit

The Fire Show

Vocano cake

. . . and Birthday dinner in Cincinnati--El Pueblo


It was worth waiting for!


At Chamberlain park, near our old house

Sharing animal crackers

Swinging with friends

Addy and Ally Austin

Notice how dirty Sera is--our kids never get quite as dirty at the parks here as they did in Cincinnati!

At a pre-graduation barbeque

Cheers!

Congratulations Dr. Mitchell!

and let's not forget the ankle-biting study companions!

We had to go to Dewey's to celebrate--nothing like a little hand-tossed pizza dough

Can you tell how delicious it was from here?

At the zoo

The misty tunnel near where we always used to eat lunch

We told Theo that the gibbons (monkeys) were his real parents--it would explain a lot

An evening at Newport on the Levee

An Italian festival along the river

. . . followed by some fireworks

Addy with her buddy Ryan at a graduation celebration at the park

Moms I love!

Joy School friends from 2006-07 (minus Preston)

And I seriously can't believe how much all these kids have grown. Seriously.

. . . AND our trip to King's Island--the highlight of our kids' lives, basically

Riding the Monster

Swiper's Sweeper (did I mention highlight of their lives?)

We rode the Carousel approximately 66 times when it started pouring rain

Rehydration Station

An end to a perfect, if wet, day

Sadly, I didn't get any pictures at the concert. But really, it was amazing.

Popsicles for Disneyland

(scroll down for the pictures!)

That Popsicle Stand idea Addy had? Wow! I had no idea children were capable of raking in so much cash!

See, just before April general conference, Aaron and I were trying to figure out how to manage all the trips we wanted to take. We wanted to get down to Arizona to visit Aaron's grandparents, attend a family reunion at Mount Rushmore, and maybe go to Cincinnati for Aaron's graduation. On top of that, we want to get down to Disneyland before our kids get too old to have stars in their eyes. All that traveling and hotel nights and everything can really add up though! And besides that, there's still lots to do on our house to get it ready to sell. Even more $$$.

So, Aaron and I had been talking this over fairly regularly, trying to figure out which trips to cut . . . only our choices changed every time we talked. Then, during conference, we listened to Elder Hales' talk on providing providently. He told a story about his family saving up for a year for a "dream trip" down the Colorado River. Aaron and I took one look at each other, and a fabulous idea was born. At our next family council, we asked the kids if they wanted to start saving up for a trip to Disneyland. Um, yes, they did.

After that we started brainstorming ideas with them in the car and at bedtime or whenever. Emerson volunteered (okay, we sort of bribed him) to drop out of preschool for June (when we'll be out of town for most of the month anyway), and the kids offered to contribute part of their allowances. But it was Addy who came up with the idea for the popsicle stand. We had talked about lemonade stands before, but the popsicle thing was all hers. Pure genius.

They started one sunny afternoon in early May (there weren't many of them at first, to be honest) with a sign colored in marker and a cooler filled with ice and popsicles. It took them a couple of hours, but eventually they managed to drum up a few customers. They talked a few of the students from the school across the street to part with seventy-five cents, and after that, word spread like wild-fire. By last week, kids started lining up across the street before we even got set up. Addy and Emerson have this whole spiel that they do to attract customers. It goes something like this. "Popsicles, seventy-five cents! Cold and delicious! Purple, orange, and pink! And there's two of them, because they're twin pops!" They've even added merchandise, branching out to sell ice-pops as well. So far, they've saved up $275. And I think they just might appreciate taking the trip in February after all their hard work even more than they would have if we had tried to squeeze it in this summer.

Well, while Addy and Emerson were flexing their entrepreneurial muscles, Theo pretty much lucked out by scoring a trip with Aaron down to Arizona to visit his great-grandma and grandpa for a week. We had procrastinated a trip down there for too long, worrying about completely overrunning Aaron's grandparents with our sheer mass. A visit from just Aaron and Theo seemed like the perfect solution, so the two of them packed up and drove down to Bismarck, North Dakota, where they got a cheap flight down to Phoenix.

Let me tell you, Theo had a great time exploring Grandma and Grandpa Mitchell's place, which is like a clock museum and a cool stuff museum all rolled up into one. He took his little camera along to snap pictures for Addy and Emerson, and brought back pictures of at least thirty different clocks and a variety of other things, notably nude sculptures with great close-ups of the private parts--gotta love those seven-year-olds! They went out for dinner every night, mostly to Mexican places (I drooled with jealousy every night), and Theo loved all the attention . . . and all the Sprites. Their favorite outing, though, was probably the visit to Organ Stop Pizza, this crazy place where a huge theater organ rises up out of the floor and an organist performs old-fashioned movie theater organ music while customers enjoy pizza. It looks amazing, and I can't wait until the rest of us have a chance to visit.

It was a great trip for them, and a good week for us at home, too. Aaron and I decided the kid division was pretty fair--Theo really does require triple the parenting of the other kids . . . in a good way. I had fun painting the kitchen cabinets as a surprise for Aaron while he was gone, and when he got back, we got new countertops installed! I wish I wasn't so affected by my surroundings, but having an updated look in the kitchen has done wonders for my feelings of contentment when I'm cooking meals and making cookies.

Other random nuggets about the kids: they've had such a blast finally playing outside! Honestly none of us wants to come in at night especially since sunset doesn't happen until after nine o'clock. School is starting to wind down, but the kids don't technically get out until June 24. Like any reasonable parents, we're ripping them out early for a trip down to Cincinnati for Aaron's graduation. We suppose they can go back for a couple of days after we get back. If they want to. Emerson is having poop problems again. Ugh. And Sera has figured out how to get the doorknob thing off her door so that she can raid the cookie jar at night. I've been a basic failure at teaching piano lessons for about two months now, which is kind of sad--but remember, they've been outside at last! Theo and Addy read a bunch for the Mayor's May Mega-minute reading challenge. And favorite phrases from Sera include "My diddit in washing nashine" (my blanket is in the washing machine), "Ay-ant! Ay-ant!" (regarding the ants that have invaded our home), "I yuh you so much honey!" (I love you so much--the "honey" gets tacked on to a lot of things), and of course "Sickles! Fooey-five say-ents!" (Popsicles, seventy-five cents).We hope you had a great month too!

Arizona Adventures . . . and other stuff

Theo with Grandma Mitchell . . . in a limousine!

Definitely not in Kansas . . . er, Canada, anymore

Whatever else he might miss, Aaron never forgets to take a picture of a rental car!

The crazy-cool theater-organ pizza place where they went for dinner one night

Theo with his great Grandma and Grandpa Mitchell

Meanwhile, back at the camp . . .

Brothers

I went on two field trips with Addy's class this year, not because I wanted to help out, but because I wanted to take pictures. I forgot my camera both times. This time, instead of signing up, I just showed up on location with my camera--it made a fun outing for Emerson and Sera at least. Twenty minutes later, Addy threw up. Fieldtripfail.

Overlooking Wascana lake

Feeding the geese (or "duckies" as Emer and Sera kept saying)

Addy with her friend Lexi

Bouncing around with her friend Diego (hmm, maybe this wasn't a good idea)

Emerson went down this slide before I even had to "persuade" him--that's a first!