Choir Gal

A couple of weekends ago, Vivian's choir had their Spring Tea event. Last time she had a choir event I made sure I was visiting a sick friend in Boston. No such luck this time - my friend is feeling much better.

I have to admit choral music, aromatic tea, small bites of pastries, and a lovely setting came together very nicely. Grandma, Nicolle, Grace and Ava also attended - making the event even more special for Vivian. I wore a starched white apron and served tea during the event (Nicolle was an ass and made me wait on her hand and foot :-).

Vivian - when you look back,  I think you'll agree that what you like the most about choir is the camaraderie in your group of very quirky girls.

El Nerdo

Evan is in love with energy and electricity. Every once in a while, the subject matter, the teacher's passion, and the child's curiosity match up and then the learning explodes like a zeplin full of hydrogen. Ms. Paola, it turns out, is a closet electrical engineer. One day Evan came back from school and said that "people think that Benjamin (he pronounced it "Ben-ha-min") Franklin discovered electricity. That's not true but he studied it. It was Faraday." When he saw Jo and my surprised looks he said "That's his name in Spanish. In English you can call him Benjamin."

Another time "Edison is really famous but he was better at taking other people's ideas and improving them because they were better than his ideas. His direct current wasn't as good as Tesla's so he stole Tesla's idea."

The other day we drove past the power substation near his school and he asked "Daddy - does this step the thing in the electricity up or down?"

He was able to sort out the answer on his own. Then I asked if Edison's electricity would be able to do this. "No - only alternating current can be stepped up or down."

He's actually learned a thing or two.

Fashionista

Since before the girl could walk we sensed that Vivian had a sense of fashion. One way to soothe her when she was a screaming infant was to take her to Nine West. She would trace out the shoes lovingly with her finger tips and feel better quickly. So when Jo took her shopping and she spent her friends' birthday gift cards, not on science kits or candy, but on sandals and a purse, we should not have been surprised.

We went to Chez Zee for dinner and the kids had much more fun playing with the giant toys than the Maine lobster salad.

It should be noted that Evan, who had more money than Vivian in gift cards, hardly spent any - and when he did, it was always in products that were mostly made up of sugar.

ps. Vivian just finished a presentation she made up for Ms. Marisol - her Spanish teacher. The subject - "Moda Durante los Años" (Fashion through the Years). She covered ancient ancient Greece, ancient Egypt, the Renaissance, colonial America, and the 50's. Here's one of her sketches from the presentation.

Evan's Birthday

From a few days after Vivian's massive birthday party back in February Evan has literally been counting the days to his birthday. "Only 42 days to my birthday! I can't wait!". Then we asked him how he wanted to celebrate and thankfully he said with a smallish sleepover. And he started counting up to two dates "Only 24 days to my birthday! And only 26 days to my party! I can't wait."

Eventually he dropped the count to his birthday altogether. The sleepover party was all that mattered.

The weekend before, on Easter Sunday Jo had cake for him at Grandma's. They ran in wet and cold from the pool, sang/ate cake and ice cream, and ran back to the pool.

The day of Evan's birthday dawned and he was as excited as we thought he'd be. Jo and Vivian met him at school with yogurt popsicles and he celebrated his birthday with his class. After school we took him for dinner to his favorite restaurant - Musashino, for miso soup, edamame, tempura crab, salmon, and nabeyaki udon noodles. Then we dropped Vivian off for he choir practice and we went to Amy's for ice cream. 

All this was before his actual birthday party. Saturday morning finally arrived. Aunt Michelle showed up and engaged a very excited seven year old in a psychological test that lasted a couple of hours (Michelle is getting a degree in counseling and needs test subjects and they can't be her children). A little bit after that Evan and I finally left for the Main Event where we met his friends, while Jo took off with Vivian on a complicated pick-up and drop-off schedule that involved volleyball team practice and coordinating with the family with whom Vivian was seeking refuge for the duration of Evan's sleepover (she had shamelessly asked her friend - who then asked her mother to contact Jo to facilitate Vivian's sleepover at their home).

Eight kids (seven boys and one brave little girl) were soon literally climbing the walls at the Main Event. Some parents had dropped off their spawn. The kids were mostly too small to pull down the auto belay rope and attach / unattach it to / from their harnesses. Which kept me pretty busy. And there was the occasional policing when they got too rowdy and swung like giant pendulums or chased each other over the walls. The bad thing about the Main Event is that their staff don't help. The good thing about the Main Event is that their staff don't give a shit. 

After a couple of hours Jo and I drove a tired bunch of kids home. My expectation: they'll nod off in front of the TV after a quick dinner. Jo knew better.

The kids ran around in the yard and tried to beat / shoot each other with nerf guns, cross bows, bamboo poles, and anything else that could be weaponized and had so much fun that it left me worrying about the future of the species. Then they ate pizza and we moved on to The Cake.

One of Vivian's birthday gifts from her friends was a cookbook. Besides admiring what the chef wore, Vivian was fascinated by the cakes. She asked Evan what cake he wanted for his birthday and he picked the chess board.

So for the week before the party, Jo and Vivian labored over a cake while I taste tested several pounds of buttery white and dark chocolate. They melted down the chocolate, poured it into moulds, chilled the moulds, pulled out the half chessmen (chess persons?), stuck them to their other halves with more melted chocolate, and finally baked and iced the cake. On Saturday morning, before the craziness of the sleepover started, Evan had tiled his cake into a chess board and arranged the pieces in a way to have the white king check mated. 

Poor Vivian who was away at her refugee camp missed the event, but Evan's friends enjoyed watching him blow out his candles and cut his cake while they sang Happy Birthday in the traditional three languages that Magellan kids do. Then, like barbarians, they snarfed down the carefully made cake in seconds.

I lit a fire outside and had a tent set up incase they wanted to spend the night camping outside. The kids played outside and then thoroughly spooked themselves out by telling ghost and other macabre tales to each other in the tent and by the fire. Then we tried the movie - which they watched for about an hour and then they lost interest. Back outside and around the fire. Finally at around 11:30pm after I had threatened several turds with having them sleep separately, they quietened down and it was lights-out. I left Jo holding the fort and escaped to the now unoccupied tent outside for one of the last cool spring nights in Austin.

Jo did the equivalent of hanging up when I told her where I was going to sleep. With good reason because the kids were all back up at 4:30am and resumed their rowdy play. Finally and 7:00am, Jo sent Evan to the tent to wake me up get me back in the game. I bought a bunch of breakfast tacos and by 7:15am we were at Ramsey park - it's sole occupants for a while. They played, chased each other, and attempted, sometimes successfully, to throw themselves or their friends off various pieces of playground equipment. Finally. they found the old tiny sand pit with abandoned toys in the park and they settled in to quietly and played cooperatively with each other till it was 10am and we walked back home to reunite the visiting children with their parents. 

Parents sent me pictures of their children fast asleep five minutes later in their cars. Jo returned home with Vivian and we cleaned up as hurriedly as we could and headed off to see Minal play Raksha (the wolf mother) and Ka (the ssssnake) in the Scottish Rite Theater's presentation of Jangle Ki Kahani. We returned home and everyone finally napped.

Evan - it was fun but I think we preferred having 65 screaming psycho kids over for a few hours.