Busy Weekend

Oh my, where do I start?! Here's a sort of play-by-play of our busy yet relaxing and fun-filled weekend.
Friday: My Birthday! I'm now 26 years of age. It's odd to have passed the half-way mark from 20 to 30 and other than feeling odd about this I haven't spent too much time contemplating this; I'm afraid if I did I would feel old. For my birthday Erik bought me a scale ruler ( I really am excited, it will make drawing floor plans and elevation drawings so much easier!) and a massage. He surprised me with the massage. Thursday night he told me that he had something for me to do on Friday morning. My parents where still here so they watched the kiddos and he drove me over to "Sea Essence Massage". It was very nice and relaxing.
Then we spent all afternoon packing up to go camping and headed to LL "Stub" Stewart State park to meet Erik's parents. It was a nice little camp ground. We got the tent set up and then left the kiddos with grandparents while we headed out to dinner for my birthday. We went to the Old Spaghetti Factory. Neither of us had been there before but we really enjoyed it and the food was yummy. We hadn't heard from Erik's parents so we assumed the kiddos were behaving and made a quick stop at Old Navy so I could spend some of my birthday money.
Saturday: We left 3 of the kiddos with grandparents again while we headed into Banks to pick peaches. The farm where we picked them was really nice in allowing us to use their cooler to store the peaches until Sun. morning so that they wouldn't be over ripe by the time we got them home. BJ and Ashley and little Bellalisa showed up at the campsite not long after we got back from picking peaches and we spent a relaxing day of just hanging out, though it did rain off and on and every time most everyone would run to the RV. Jon and I just sat through the rain. I knit for awhile but it was hard to knit with wet yarn and needles (good thing it was synthetic yarn!).
Sunday: Woke up, packed up and headed back to Bays Farms to pick up our peaches. We also picked another 25 pounds or so of peaches and 10 or 15 pounds of nectarines. We made it home and I started canning while Erik unloaded everything from camping. I got 42 jars of peaches done yesterday and have about as many more to do. I'm waiting till after lunch and Hannah's violin lessons today.
The kiddos enjoyed camping and I think we'd all like to do it again, but we do need to invest in sleeping bags for the kiddos and maybe an air mattress or some camping pads. We had tons of blankets with us this time. They worked but they take up lots of room in the packing.
I also talked to Liz about ideas for homeschooling Hannah. She suggested a very laid back approach. She did a program called "sing, spell, read, write" and then just worked on shapes and numbers from books she picked up randomly. This is along the lines of what I was thinking. She said that's what she did with all four of her kids and that her experience has been that if you make learning fun and not strenuous the first couple years that kids "catch up" just fine in everything else by the time they hit second grade and they want to learn. I'm actually excited to get started now instead of feeling so overwhelmed. But first things first, I must clear my kitchen of peaches.

Really?

You know how it is when you watch a movie and the holes in the plot are so large you could drive a semi through them? Then there are movies that you watch a few times and slowly the ridiculousness starts to emerge, even when it is a fairy tale. Don't get me wrong, I love fairy tales, and I love a lot of the old Disney movies. A few weekends ago I found a VHS of Beauty and the Beast at a garage sale and I think it might officially be Hannah's new favorite movie and as such it has been watched whenever it's her turn to pick out a movie. I love this movie too but lately I've started to wonder about a few things...
*When the prince is turned into a beast he is given the rose that will bloom until his 21st birthday and then in the song "Be Our Guest" Lumiere sings that "ten years we've been rusting...". So the prince was 11 years old when he turned the old lady/enchantress away? Where were his parents? Why was he mostly alone in the castle without any advisers or the King or Queen? And he's the Prince, what's he doing answering his own door anyway?
* How did the villagers not know about the Castle or how had they not heard any rumors of a castle or a beast? It's only been ten years...if the castle is close enough that they can walk there while singing "kill the beast" wouldn't this have been the royalty that ruled them? Wouldn't they wonder what happened? If not where are the subjects of said Prince...How is he even really a prince with no subjects and only a castle full of servants?
*Maybe it's just me...but when you fall in love with someone don't you at some point think of procreating with them? The subject is certainly touched upon when Gaston is asking Belle to marry him, he talks about having 6 or 7 strapping young boys... and I just don't see Belle having a little litter of beasts, and she was obviously surprised when he turned into a Prince...did she honestly think that it would work out...she read a lot of fairy stories about princes in disguise...do you think maybe she was hoping deep down inside that this was like the fairy-tales she read? But if she was hoping it was like the stories she read, why didn't she try different ways of breaking the spell...is there some sort of unspoken rule that you can't talk about the spell, she knew the castle was enchanted...?
I know...I'll probably get comments saying, "wow...you know it's just a movie right?" "you've obviously thought way too much about this" etc. So I apologize but my mind really must find ways to occupy itself when I've seen the same movie a dozen times but my kids want to snuggle with me while they watch it...what's a mom to do?

The Acting Bug

Last night Erik gave me the night off and I was able to catch "Bullshot Crummond" at the Coaster Theatre. I loved it. It was a great show and I knew quite a few of the cast members. It was also the Talk Back Thursday where they have a question and answer session with the cast and crew afterward. Last night's Talk Back was neat as they also had one of the authors there. I worked concessions so I got in for free. After the question and answer I went to say Hi to Bill (who played Bullshot Crummond) and he said he knew I was there because he heard me laughing. Craig Shepard made sure to fill me in on next years season, mentioning that there are three musicals planned and that next Christmas they are doing "My Fair Lady". Ahh...that would be amazing. There are a lot of "if"s but it gives me an entire year to convince Erik that we can survive me being in another show.
I've spent many hours pondering why I love acting with such a passion and after these many said hours this is what I've come up with: I just love it. I love being on stage, I love affecting and playing with people's emotions. I love telling stories. I love making people laugh and cry. I love being something I'm not.
Sometimes I try for a noble line of thinking, "I'm doing this because this story needs to be told." But then I've been in a few shows where I'm not sure the story really needs to be told but we tell it anyway. I often end up discouraged when I really sit down and ponder this passion of mine because I want to express myself this way, I want to keep acting and I really really love it but I'm not sure how. I would love to perform in church or for churches but I've been discouraged by the lack of "non-cheesy" female or one or two performer christian scripts and I don't feel adequate to the task of writing my own.
I hate to admit it but this is the one area in my life where I wonder what it would be like if I wasn't married or if we didn't have any kiddos. I hate when these thoughts arise because I wouldn't trade any of my life for any role in any play but I haven't figured out the balance of being able to do both in this season of my life.
I have been blessed with a wonderful husband, who even though he doesn't understand the passion in the slightest, supports me with minimal grumbling and I love him all the more for it. I don't even think I fully understand this passion of mine to perform...why is it so strong that I want to cry sometimes? Why do I get so frustrated with everything when I'm not able to? Why does my stomach knot up with excitement at the thought of another acting opportunity? Sometimes I do just cry, "God why this burning passion? How can you use this?" I have so many questions and I'm not very good at patiently waiting for answers.
I'm sorry. I didn't mean to let my heart bleed all over the page this morning...
If any one knows of a good monologue or script that they want to send my way, please do.

Mini Bikers

Tonight is a momentous night and as usual I forgot to get pictures. Hannah and Ivan both rode their bikes without training wheels. Ivan is not sure he likes it all that much but Hannah is loving it. She's always been my cautious one and yet the training wheels came off and she took off like nobody's business! She has a little trouble getting going but once she's going it's quite impressive. We borrowed our neighbor's expanse of grass and tried it out there and then we borrowed their expanse of asphalt and tried it there. Ivan had a few spectacular falls with minimal scrapes and Hannah for the most part stayed upright, only twice running into Clayton's parked tricycle. They came home a tired sweaty group of kiddos and now we are attempting bed time.

Home Sweet Home

My blogging has been sporadic as of late mostly due to the fact that my mind has been taken over by thoughts of floor plans and house building and property. I've wanted to blog about these things but I don't know how much to say. We are in the beginning stages of hopefully purchasing property from friends and then building our own house. Having property, as in a few acres, and building our own house in this general area has been a dream of ours for awhile now and seeing the beginnings of a possible dream come true is very very exciting for us. We are trying to finish up the last few projects in this house to get it ready to sell and then figuring out what needs to happen when to make this all happen. We have a lot of things we still have to figure out, like what we'll do and where we'll live while we are building, if we can "hire" Erik to build our house so that he can take a little bit off work to get our house built faster or just built. It would be hard to work construction all day and then come "home" to build some more.
I've always enjoyed drawing floor plans so drawing a floor plan that we will actually build and live in is so much fun. We have drawn up a really simple plan that we could possibly expand at a later date. We've also been reading a book called "Little House on A Small Planet" that has some really good ideas in it (as well as some strange ones). I think the strangest by far is the idea of "role playing" with your artistic impression of what home means to you.
Erik woke up the other morning and commented, "I hate dreaming in floor plans." Glad I'm not the only one!
P.S. Anyone want to buy our house?

Queen Mod's Crown

My sisters visited last week on their way up from California and Mindy once again (to the enjoyment of my kiddos) filled my living room with balloon creations. Mod's hat, I think, was slightly taller than she is and every once in a while she'd spot the balloons above her forehead and spend a few minutes going cross-eyed while trying to get a better look. Mindy has definitely improved in her balloon art and my children ran around with spiders and sharks and swords with sword belts and fishes on fishing hooks and skate boarders etc. I also begged her to bring her balloons to MOB last Wednesday and she willing did and entertained the masses of children while all of us very grateful mothers chatted and drank coffee and laughed over some of the new make-up products in the Avon catalog. (They have press on eye-shadow now! You just peel this already perfectly shaded, shaped thing off a sheet and press it on your eyelid and rub and then remove the back and wah-la...perfect eyeshadow...I'm still skeptical.)

More Duct Tape

While I was being wrapped in duct tape Hannah decided she needed a duct tape skirt. I promised I would make her one and then forgot. She reminded me the other day and this is what we came up with. She can't move very fast and it's not all that comfortable but it's a duct tape skirt, what do you expect?

Me & Myself

Being wrapped in duct tape is an interesting experience. Being cut out of it and then studying the form (your own form) is even crazier still. That being said, I am now very excited to own a dress form to make my own clothes on. I tried making a shirt/tank top thing the other day and it was difficult trying to pin and alter it when I was wearing it. I think this is why I never really like most of the clothes I make for myself, they never turn out quite right.
When I first saw it I had a momentary shock of wondering if I was really "that big" but the longer I look at the dress form the more comfortable I am with my own body shape. I can make the excuses that I've had four children and the most recent one only 4 1/2 months ago and I am hoping to lose more of the baby weight but excuses aside, I'm still comfortable in my own skin. And I think most of the shock came from just seeing a life-size replica of myself. That's just odd.
Thank you Maggie for your duct tape wrapping skills.