Happy Birthday

Vivian - for 11 years we have experienced the joy of seeing and knowing something born from one of Jo's cells and one of mine grow into you.

I can praise all your amazing qualities and make jokes about your quirks. And say that you are my favorite daughter. But I'll leave that to you :-) Instead I will say that, completely coincidentally, the last 11 years have been the most meaningful in my life.

So go on and keep doing what you are doing and I'll keep smiling over here.

Happy birthday, my dear.

The Party

Vivian is social. More than Jo, Evan, and me combined. For her 11th birthday she produced a guest list several weeks ago. Jo scanned it and realized that it was longer than the guest list for her 10th - a wild party at home which we were not ready to re-experience just yet.  So we decided on a skating party at Playland. Jo called and booked the place. Alu and Michelle flew in from the east coast. Grandma and Nicolle's clan drove up to Austin after school.

By the time Alu, Evan, and I picked up the naan and chicken kabobs from Tarka and drove to Playland, the ladies had inflated helium balloons, set up tables, arranged a cooler full of Izzies, hooked up Karen's playlist, and guests were already arriving. Due to this particularly bad flu season, several people who had rspv-ed dropped like flies at the last moment. But Vivian still had about 90 of her friends and family gathered to help her celebrate her life.

Another year, another party later Jo insisted that next year it would be a small affair. We'll see, won't we, Vivian?

Florida

Last Friday after school we picked the kids up and drove to the airport. A few hours later we were on Interstate 4 in a Silvercar rental approaching a fake volcano belching fake fog floodlit in neon blue. Evan said it was the best thing he had ever seen at about the same instant that Jo's google maps announced that we were at our destination - Universal Studios. If someone had asked me Universal or Disney, after thinking it over I'd say Universal. If the options had been Universal or waterboarding, I wouldn't need to think.

After a hurried breakfast the next morning surrounded by hundreds of kids, many of them seemingly in adult bodies, Jo and Vicky took Vivian, Lily, Anna and Evan to see the child wizard while I escaped to Praveen's home. Here they pose with $50 wands outside Olivanders in Diagon Alley (when Jo asked the Universal person why the wands cost so much, she said "because they do magic").

After a relaxed day of drinking wine and chatting, I returned to meet my fam at the hotel pool. The next morning we bid our Baltimore friends good bye and met Praveen and Renuka for a slow brunch before heading off to the airport and back to Austin.

If you are going to have to endure Disney or Universal, it's best in small doses. It's even better when you don't actually have to accompany them into the properties. To quote my not-least-favorite-president-anymore, "Mission accomplished".

Evaners

Evan's class is learning about economic activity. One of their projects was to think of ideas for products they could design and build using mostly recycled materials. Then they had a class fair where they sold the products to their classmates and unsuspecting parents. Finally, one morning they visited Ten Thousand Villages, a fair trade store, and got to spend their hard earned cash from the class fair (wow - "fair" isn't a word that I use regularly, and I used it in two different ways in this sentence).

Evan's team of 5 were called the Evaners. Other teams had more business-like names like Austin Pencil Factory. When asked he unabashedly explained that Roberto, he and Ava voted for that name, so Malena and Sidney had to go along with it. They decided to make journals out of cereal box cardboard. They sold them for a buck each. Vivian showed him the basic design and also made them some miniature diaries that they sold for 50 cents. Somehow they made almost 50 bucks. So each of them headed into Ten Thousand Villages with almost $10 burning a hole in their pockets. They went there the day before Valentine's Day. Because it's next door to us, I dropped in on them to say hello to Evan.

On Valentine's Day the kids exchanged their gifts. Vivian had created a very thoughtful word cloud for Evan with words and phrases like Weird, Fast Reader, Annoying, Kauai, Intelligent, Good Roller Blader, and Amazing. Evan had bought Vivian a heart shaped stone from TTV (I'm tired of typing in Ten Thousand Villages) which said Smile. And he bought another one that said Strength for Jo. And small chocolates for each of us, including two for Vivian. His friends had bought honking big fair trade chocolate bars for themselves. He had spent all his money (he had 53 cents left in change) on us and had to budget his purchases very carefully.  We are pretty darn proud of what both the kids did for each other. 

Here is a picture of their Valentine's Day loot from school. The smaller pile with the water bottle is Evan's. Clearly Vivian's school is less bothered about the kids' sugar intake (but their school lunch is probably healthier and is chef prepared on campus).

Peeking out from under Evan's pile, under the shark thing, you can catch a bit of a card that says To and From. It was the only personalized Be My Valentines type card in either pile. My friend and co-room-parent explained how it went down - she was in Evan's class during the card/gift exchange.

E (to the young lady who gave him the card): "M - what is this word?"
M: "Oh - it says handsome."
E: I think the spelling is wrong. I can't even read your card."
M: "My card says - Evan, you are awesome and handsome and I have a crush on you."

Girl standing next to M: "But didn't you say you had a crush on someone else too?"
M (matter of factly): "Yes - I have a crush on Evan, Jack and Leo."

Happy Valentine's Day to you all. I wish M the very best in life and hope that her spirit doesn't wither into the dreary desert sands of conformity and adulthood. The world does need a lot more of M.

ps. corrections from JoEllen - the keeper of my memories: Strength for Vivian, Smile for Jo, 2 chocolates for Arun because he didn't get a stone, and 3 cents left in change. ;) 

Hair Again

So I've fallen behind in my blogging again. Evan and Vivian and Jo and I drove off to south Austin one afternoon after their school. We stopped at a hipster coffee shop to get the kids a snack.

Then Jo and Evan walked across the street to Havala's salon while Vivian and I went to see at basketball game between Rawson Saunders and Magellan. Her head of school sat with us and the other Magellan parents and somewhere halfway through the game she asked me sheepishly if she was on the wrong bleacher. Vivian had friends on both teams and cheered when anyone did well. Then we picked Evan and Jo up from the salon. Evan seemed pretty happy with his haircut. Jo described it as "skater". Here are his very last before and very first after. I know - his look is more like "dorky" : - )