Are We Broke Yet?

August is always an expensive month, but this year is especially bad. I feel like I'm just flinging money in all directions!

In order for our children to attend the excellent public schools here, we have to pay for all sorts of things that state funding no longer covers. The parents' club at each school and the local educational foundation each request a large donation per child to cover what they provide (music, art, languages, textbooks, other optional things like that). Then there's all the other stuff. For M, I was surprised by the cost of the yearbook ($105), resigned to paying for new PE clothes ($30) and an optional school sweatshirt ($40), and utterly appalled by the $75 charge for his required ID card. Oh, and we had to prepay for his school photo, sight unseen. (He came home from registration today, and informed me that, of course, his photo was hideous.)

B's yearbook was cheaper, and her ID is free, but the requested donation at the middle school is nearly twice what the high school requests. We prepaid her lunches for a semester, and we also prepaid her ballet school tuition for the next year (we get a discount if we do that).

On top of the expected school expenses, we had a couple surprises this month. First, our oven door refused to open when DH tried to bake cookies. After calling several highly recommended appliance repairman, we were informed that we had to go through the manufacturer's designated service people. We got an appointment last Friday, and found that we need a new door latch kit, which has to be special-ordered from the manufacturer. Next, our minivan's oil change turned into oil change + two new tires + new front axle. Finally, the tree in our backyard (which has been in need of a trim for a while) suddenly started dropping large branches not only in our yard, but also in our neighbors', so we made an emergency appointment with a tree trimmer.

For any appliances/cars/kids who may be listening, we're out of money, so please stop asking for more!

Three Shows and a Late Night

Was woken up yesterday morning at 8:30 by B, calling to let me know she'd left her costume at home (yes, the one I told her to put in her bag last night). So, DH got home from dropping her off and had to turn around and go right back to the ballet school.

She danced in (and we watched) the pre-ballet show at 11:00 (she's one of the teaching assistants), then we had burgers for lunch and took her back to the ballet school for the 2:00 show.

Voci concert tonight from 8:00-10:00, then a bunch of us went out for some well-deserved food and drink. I finally arrived at home at 12:40 am--it's been a long time since I've stayed out that late!

Not Quite Prepared

M assured me over dinner that he didn't need help packing for his Boy Scout trip tomorrow, and that he would be the one to suffer if he forgot anything. I had to butt in, though: after he "packed," I looked at the pile on the living floor and saw:

• frisbee
• boomerang
• sleeping pad
• tent

That was it! I suggested to him that he might want to consider a sleeping bag and a change of clothing...

Motherhood

The only job that doesn't come with sick days...

Which explains why, on a day when I felt badly enough in the morning to stay home from my paid job (stupid sinus infection!), I'm doing dishes and laundry, driving carpool, organizing the backstage crew for B's ballet school, and filling out a million forms for M's Boy Scout trip this weekend.

Thank goodness for DH, the best hubby in the world, who made french toast and drove the morning carpool while I slept in. (This despite the fact I'm sure I kept him up late last night with my coughing.)

Saturdays

What ever happened to Saturdays being a day off? (I guess that changes when you have kids.) Today I spent three hours driving three girls to and from the CMEA choir festival (and listening to the performance), then spent 2.5 hours observing ballet rehearsal (making a chart so that the stage managers know which kids are supposed to be where).

Fortunately, the evening was much more relaxing. DH had a delicious dinner waiting when I got home, and I spent over an hour playing Lego Indiana Jones with B.

Ease On Down the Road

Current mental soundtrack: "Brand New Day" from The Wiz

Two dress rehearsals and six shows this week: M was at every single one of them, while B and I only worked half of them (plus attending one show each). I was on backstage duty: opening and closing the back and wing curtains, helping move set pieces, and being part of the balloon-wrestling team. (One show there were six people trying to get that balloon to glide off the stage--it kept getting stuck on everything possible! By the last show, we managed it with only three people.)

M at the light board (poor kid saw the show EIGHT times this week!)

B was cast as part of the Yellow Brick Road, and also as a Winkie. Lots of dancing, a little bit of singing, and a lot of fun! We were not permitted to take photos during the shows, but here are some before and after show photos:

L (crow) and B (Yellow Brick Road)

L (Addaperle), B (brick), and M

L (Addaperle), L (crow), and B (brick)

Venetian Birthday

B's birthday-party theme this year was "Birthday in Venice." She had seven friends at her party (two more were out of town and couldn't make it). 

The cake: 

Vanilla with lemon filling and buttercream underneath rolled fondant

The Carnival masks:

We spray-painted paper-mache masks gold and glossy white, then set the girls loose with feathers, sequins, glitter, paint, and glue guns

The gondola races:

The birthday girl

The two teams (each girl had to put on a gondolier hat, striped shirt, black pants, red sash, and enormous black shoes, then race to the other end of the room and back while carrying a cardboard "gondola."

 

Another successful party, although I'm sure we're going to be finding feathers and glitter in random places for weeks.

Birthday + Birthday Weekend for B

B and a couple of her friends are having a busy weekend: L's birthday party was this evening, and B's party will be tomorrow afternoon. The guest lists are not identical, but four of the girls are attending both parties (two others were invited to both but out of town for the weekend). So far today, I've baked three loaves of banana bread, made lemon filling, baked a cake (from a mix), made buttercream frosting, filled and iced the cake, and decorated it with fondant. (Photos tomorrow). I also cut two gondolas out of cardboard, and I'm now trying to get up enough energy to do what I think is my fourth load of hand-wash dishes (the dishwasher has also been run twice, and needs emptying again).

Oh, and in between stages of cake decorating, I rescued our dog (DH took Coda on a hike which turned out to be much longer than anticipated, and our poor couch-potato dog needed a ride back to the starting point), cleaned the bathrooms, did some laundry, and went out for dinner with DH.

Parties & People & Other Stuff

Busy, busy week.

Several houseguests (F has been here for two weeks, and B is arriving tonight).

Last Friday we had a lab party at our house--I'm not sure what the head count was, as B and I arrived late from ballet class, but we're thinking 35-ish.

Saturday was the Voci retreat, held at the scenic Marin Headlands. While I was off singing, B and M had their usual Saturday activities, B went to a birthday party at 2:00, and DH & M went to another party at 5:00. I arrived home around 6:30, heated up some leftovers for F and myself, then took off at 7:00 to pick up B and take her to see the musical at the local high school (The Wizard of Oz)

Sunday was calm: laundry, groceries, catching up on stuff, actually reading the Sunday paper before midnight.

Today we spent a lot of time at the bank. Our kids have both had their own accounts for 5-6 years, so they can save up their allowances and birthday/Christmas gifts. After years of no fees, BofA suddenly started charging them each $12/month, which is a little ridiculous when you consider how much they get as an allowance! After much time at the bank, we were able to get their money transferred to new student accounts, which should be sufficient for their needs.

While I was at S&P rehearsal tonight, I got a long string of e-mails. B's best friend L has a birthday tomorrow, and no one remembered until tonight to organize a "shanghai"! Fortunately, another friend's mom was more on the ball than me, so we now have morning plans. I called B during my break to work out what time she wanted to get up tomorrow morning (since she would already be asleep by the time I got home tonight). Normally, DH does the early morning runs, but since he's off picking up someone at the airport right now, we agreed I would do the morning wake-up call. (Neither of us knew it would be an extra-early call when we made this agreement!)

Off to bed now, in hopes of getting some sleep between now and 6:20 am...

En Garde!

Today M competed in his first fencing tournament. Yes, I know he's been taking classes for the last seven years, but until this year he wasn't interested in competing. Over the last couple of years, he's been participating at the in-house tournaments at his fencing school, and enjoying them, so he decided to try out a "real" competition.

DH and I both got up bright and early in order to get to San Francisco by 7:45 am (naturally, M's division was the first of the day, at 8:30). The tournament went pretty well. M achieved his goal of not finishing last: in his pool he lost three bouts and won two, then lost in the direct elimination. The silver lining to losing in the first round is that you get to go home early, instead of having to spend even more time sitting on a folding chair. Like any event of this type, there's a lot of time spent sitting around and waiting, punctuated by brief bursts of competition.

Girls' Night Out

B is a little annoyed that M is "stealing her dad" for the weekend (after a nearly two-week trip, she saw him for about an hour last night), so after sending the boys off on their Boy Scout ski trip, she and I had a fun evening together. I picked her up from musical rehearsal at 5:45, drove her friend home, and headed out to California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. After dinner, we wandered through the Gap (didn't find any clothes she liked), Barnes and Noble (she bought three books and a new sketchbook), and Crate and Barrel (that stop was for me--picked up a new gravy boat). Last stop of the night was Loard's Ice Cream, our local ice cream place.

She already has tomorrow night's restaurant picked out :-)

Back in the Swing

After a relaxing January, February is off to a rather hectic start. DH has been gone for nearly two weeks (one of the longer trips he's taken). Tomorrow, the kids will be home for exactly an hour after school, and they each have a thirty-minute piano lesson during that time, with the other thirty minutes spent getting ready for fencing/ballet. (They usually have lessons on Tuesday, but their teacher had a conflict this week.) About the time we take off to pick up T for fencing, DH should be landing at SFO. The plan is to take B to ballet, drop M & T off at the fencing school, have DH take the BART to the station nearest the fencing school, pick him up there, and drive him home so that he can attend the Boy Scout parent meeting at 7:30 while I pick up B from ballet.

A good chunk of today was spent trying to organize the weekend. M signed up for the Boy Scout ski trip, but I didn't have it on my calendar. When I realized that it was this weekend, and that the scouts who don't ski well (M has never skiied before) need to have an adult with them, I convinced DH that he should go on the trip. The poor guy will be home for less than twenty-four hours! Once we sorted out who was going, I rented skis for them online, and will be making a trip tomorrow to pick up the gear we don't have (ski gloves for one of them, ski pants for M). Oh, and I have a choir retreat all day on Saturday, so B is going to have to miss her pre-ballet class assisting this week, as I don't have time to drive her home during the middle of my retreat. (For some reason she wasn't very excited by the idea of spending the entire day sitting in a church listening to us rehearse...)

Tomorrow is also Chinese New Year, but we're putting off our celebration until Sunday evening. Kung Hsi Fa Tsai!

A Slightly Smaller Black Hole

M found his PE clothes today. In French class. Still no sign of B's T-shirt, so I ordered her a new one.

Do We Have a Black Hole?

Both B and M brought their PE clothes home to be laundered at the beginning of break, two weeks ago. (Or so they say!) We arrived home from our vacation on Saturday night, and I promptly started work on the mountains of laundry that had accumulated. B's sweatshirt and shorts were in the hamper, but no T-shirt, and M's PE clothes were nowhere to be found. He remembers bringing them into the house, in a plastic bag, and I have a vague memory of seeing him bring a plastic bag in (although my memory is not always reliable for stuff like this). Nonetheless, we searched everywhere we could think of yesterday, and no PE clothes were to be found.

Both kids were sent off to school this morning with something to wear for PE (so they don't lose points), and instructions to check the lost and found plus every classroom they went to after PE. (PE clothes are emblazoned with their last names, since everyone at the school has an identical set.)  Once they've looked at school, I guess it's time to order new clothes. And search for the black hole that has taken up residence at our house.

Warp-Speed Laundry

Dear B,

I'm very grateful that unlike your brother, you actually remember to bring your P.E. clothes home to wash every now and then. However, in the future, I recommend that you present them to me a little earlier than 8:15 am on Monday morning, as neither our washer nor dryer have a warp-speed setting.

Love,
Mom

Movie Night & Mom's Taxi Service

The family went out last night to see the new Harry Potter movie. Good movie, overall, but definitely part one of two. Can't wait for part two! B invited several of her friends to go along, but since we couldn't go to any of the early showings (B doesn't return from ballet class until 8:00 on Fridays), her friends' moms all decided the 9:00 show was too late for their daughters.

Today DH and I are running our usual Saturday taxi service. M was out the door at 8:15 to join the Scouts in Scouting for Food. B left with DH at 9:15 for her pre-ballet teaching assistant gig, and returned a little before 11:00. M was dropped off at our house around 11:30 (one fewer trip for me!), then B and I took off at 11:40 to get her to Nutcracker rehearsal. (Poor kid has a six-hour rehearsal today, in which she'll probably dance for about five minutes.) The rest of us are at home having a quick lunch, then we're off at 1:00 to take M to fencing. We'll be home around 4:00, need to pick up wreaths to sell for the Scout fundraiser, then B has to be retrieved at 6:00. Oh, and today's the Big Game at Cal, so dropping B off at the ballet school was entertaining. Hello, Stanford fans who were walking down the street in front of my car, have you ever heard of a sidewalk? Or at least moving to the side when a car comes up behind you?

Snow White Photos

Current mental soundtrack: "Friendship" by Cole Porter

All six shows went well, with no major disasters. Occasional mishaps (several crashes were heard on the stage at Wednesday's preview), but overall it went quite smoothly. Here's a photo of our Duchess Dahlia:

And our light board operator:

Onward to holiday concerts and Nutcracker!

Snow White

It's Snow White production week at the middle school, so we've given up any pretense of family dinners this week. B has a small role (Duchess Dahlia) in the Ebony cast, and M is running the light board for the Crimson cast, so we have one kid in each of the six total shows. And, since we have two kids involved, I've been assigned to two committees: backstage and costumes. I am attending every single show, either backstage, in the costume room, in the audience, or in combinations of those.

DH and I saw the preview show yesterday afternoon. M did a fine job running the light board: in other words, we didn't really notice the lighting, which means nothing went wrong. It's a typical middle-school play: the handsome prince is a foot shorter than Snow White, the seven dwarfs are played by girls, and no one on the stage knows what to do when the kid on curtain duty misses a cue.

Scheduling Needs To Be Done Earlier!

It's November 1st, and I JUST received an announcement from B's choir teacher about the date of the winter concert. Naturally, it's on the same night as Nutcracker dress rehearsal. B has already been pulled from one of her Nutcracker performances because she's missing rehearsal this Saturday (she has a role in the school play, and was assigned to the matinee performance), and missing a dress rehearsal is grounds for removal from at least one more show. The last two years, the winter concert was the second Wednesday in December, so I had hoped that by not signing up for Nutcrackers that week (necessitated by my schedule and DH's schedule), we'd be covered for the concert. Looks like I guessed wrong...we're hoping that the choir teacher will be flexible about an alternate assignment.

We still have one potential conflict coming up--both B's ballet school and B's choir teacher have the afternoon of December 4th reserved, but neither one has a time! I can make an educated guess for choir (4:30 pm the last two years that M sang at the tree-lighting ceremony), but the ballet school won't tell us until the week of the rehearsal.

M's Weekend

The calendar for this weekend is filled with M's activities, for a change. He is off at a birthday party sleepover right now. Tomorrow morning, we pick him up at 9:00, and have to have him up in Hercules by 10:00 for a piano studio class. He'll be back from that a little after noon, then we leave just before 1:00 to pick up his carpool and go to fencing class. Sunday is an in-school fencing tournament, and Monday is the first tech dress rehearsal for the school play (he's running the light board for one of the casts).

B's weekend, on the other hand, looks very relaxed. She'll be gone Saturday night and all day Sunday, at a beach house with L and her family.