International Day 2015!

This year was our sixth annual international day representing Belgium for Evie's school!  I cannot believe it has been six years since the first time we decided to make real Belgian waffles and create a game for the kids to learn something about the country.  That first year I think I served about three waffles, due to the fact that we were in the parking lot of the old school and I couldn't even run a toaster without blowing a fuse.  I also recall a lot of wind, which kept on blowing over my spin-the-wheel-and-guess-the-belgian-thing game. All of that is to say it did not go terribly well... but I do recall having fun.

This year I decided that I would shake it up a bit and create a new activity for the kids and would take a day off of work to get it all put together. These both turned out to be excellent ideas. With (most) of a day I was able to get all of my ingredients, craft a comic book printout game/contest, and create Tinin, Milieu, and Captain Haddock masks. The contest was to fill out the blank comic bubbles with what you think they are saying (in of course the funniest way possible) and the child winner received a pound of Belgian chocolate.  The adult winner received a bottle of Belgian beer.  The kids (and adults) wrote some fabulously funny renditions of a page from Tintin and the Picaros (and two people, Evie's French teacher and one of the 4th graders, even guessed that the strip was taken from that comic).

On the waffle side I got up early yesterday morning and made three batches of waffle mix and then started making those puppies at 9:30 after getting my booth set up.  I was sold out by 1 pm (the event goes from 10:00-2:00) so I guess next year I'd better make 4 batches!  (Or keep Evie and Izzy...and Patrick.... from eating my wares)

The whole event kicked off with all of the preschool and junior school kids singing a few songs in a few languages. You can't see her in the picture but Genevieve is there too.  Then, while I made waffles and supervised comic creation, my Mom took Izzy and Evie around to the games, which this year included a little train and velcro wall.  Thankfully my Mom even grabbed my camera so for the first time I have more than just one photo of the event!

The whole experience was fabulous, and terribly exhausting.  So much so that when we got home all I could do was lie in bed and veg out on bad television for the rest of the day :)

Tucson Girl's Chorus

Back in January Evie decided that she wanted to switch from dance to choir, so she "auditioned" for the Tucson Girls Choir (I put audition in quotes because I have it on good authority that for the younger girls they all get into the choir unless they are totally and utterly tone deaf... which of course is a reasonable concern for a child of mine, but fortunately she takes after her grandma Nicole and not me). This past Sunday was her first performance.  Evie and the other girls in her Ladybugs choir preformed a series of songs for the annual Tucson Girl's Chorus fundraising dinner.  I must admit, the dinner was quite expensive and parents weren't expected to attend, so we didn't actually go to this first performance.  What we did do, however, was help her get all dressed up and get to listen to her practicing her songs for the performance all week long.  Both were a delight, and I cannot wait for her actual choir performance in a few months!

Book Day!

This week was book day at the girl's school.  Evie decided this year to go as Nancy Drew and Izzy vacillated between a number of different characters including skippy jon jones, a cat (from who knows what book), and little red riding hood.  Ultimately she choose the latter. 

We did not, however, have a hooded cape for her, so we gave her a red baseball cap and a red shirt as a cape and told her to tell everyone she was "little red riding in the hood" (Oh we think we are so clever...)  The big challenge with Evie's costume was to find a magnifying glass (more difficult than you would think) and for me to figure out how to curl her hair in a 50s-esque flip out do.  I went so far as to buy a curling iron and then practice the night before.  I am not sure the practice helped much though... Regardless, Evie was happy with the end result so that is all that mattered :)

Talking Dog Movies

A dark and all encompassing illness has struck my household.  About a year ago it began innocently enough, in search of a family friendly film that Patrick and I too could watch (read not Frozen for the 100th time or Barbie Takes Paris) Patrick put on a Super Buddies Film.  After about 10 minutes I felt the life (or was it intellect) slowly slipping from me and decided to save myself from the gloom. I tried to entice the rest of my kin to step away before it was too late, but, alas, they had already fallen under the strange spell of The. Talking. Dog. Movie. Once captured by this strange genre (and yes folks it is a genre... or at least Netflix thinks so) it is all but impossible to shake the icy-cold cuteness of its grip. The illness starts slow, one talking dog movie interspersed with three or four regular movies, but as the sickness spreads throughout the body (and soul) one finds themselves gravitating to nothing but the talking dog movie. 

The problem with this obsession is that there are hours (days!) of viewing to feed the disease.  From the well known like Beverly Hills Chihuahua (1, 2 and 3!) to the obscure like Underdog (a charming story about Shoeshine the police dog with, you guessed it, superpowers that, yup, saves the city) Then there are the Buddies Movies, which I am pretty sure there are a dozen of...Air Buddies, Super Buddies, Space Buddies, Santa Buddies, Snow Buddies, Treasure Buddies, Mall Buddies, Office Buddies, Vacation Buddies, and Inane-Formulaic-But-Oh-Too-Cute Buddies. Other household favorites are Santa Paws (Christmas in July, and June, and February, and April), Bingo (way to be creative naming your dog and movie), Cats and Dogs (this one almost had me because of the alien theme....), Beethoven (and sequels 1 through at least 5, right?), Marmaduke, Scooby Doo (this is Izzy's preferred dog movie...although almost not really talking dog), Milo and Otis (OK this one is a classic...), and the movie of last weekend... Good Boy.... a sweet story of a boy who finds an alien dog (again aliens, so I was intrigued) sent to earth to determine if earth dogs had, in fact, taken over the world as they were sent to do. With this much fodder for their doggone disease it is no wonder I have lost my family to the canine cinematic chasm that is the talking dog movie.  Sigh.