as cozy as spring

Everything in its place

I've been streamlining our home for the last few weeks and it's exhausting.  Sorting papers, assessing whether any given item is in the right place for maximum space efficiency and whether we really need it at all.  I wake up every morning to a home that's usually a bit messier than the day before. But this week, I saw some improvement.  I got the living room pretty much in order.  I moved the piano to the wall adjacent to our bright front window (a tip from A Charlotte Mason Companion).  My daughter doesn't ever resist practicing, but I feel having the piano in a spot where it's bright enough to read the sheet music might improve her proficiency.  

I also, it must be noted, moved my seat in the living room to a spot in front of the television with my knitting basket nearby.  It's almost football season.  I must be prepared.

My next finished project is a ballet bag.  This is our fifth year in ballet but my daughter has never had a proper ballet bag.  We just sort of wing it.  But then I found this fabric:

 

It took awhile to find.  Etsy is your best bet (search Trefle + ballet).  I paired it with a polka dot print found at Superbuzzy and now she is all set.

 

Except for hair pins and tights and shoes and leotards....

It was a busy ballet year last year.  In addition to regular practices and the spring performance, she had a role in two separate ballets for a total of 15 performances and a whole lot of rehearsals.  What made all the driving bearable was a collection of great audio books.  Every practice seemed to take place at the worst time of day for attitudes and traffic, so it was particularly helpful to refocus on a beautiful story. This year, we've added another Naxos title (love these), Grimm's Fairy Tales and I took Theresa's suggested and ordered A Little History of the World.  I think it will be a good introduction for my son and a good review for my daughter.  

For today, I hope to create a good filing system and finish gathering our September picture books. 

 

My pajama clad helper is eager to get started.  My daughter wanted to start August 1st, but I don't think that's going to happen.  I'm pushing things back to the fifth and even that will take a lot of effort as half my books haven't arrived yet and some have yet to be ordered.  

It was an amazing weekend.  We are so proud of our little girl.  

 

The ballet was beautiful.  My daughter doesn't really seem to get nervous, for which I am grateful.  I, one the other hand, was very nervous, but she danced perfectly.  She has always done every step as she was supposed to, but this year she seemed to do it expressively.  It was a gorgeous night in (that place where I live) and we finished off the evening with my parents at my very most favorite restaurant.  I admittedly grumble every time my husband decides to participate in a silent auction because I'm no fun at all, but he managed to get me a great deal on a basket of children's books and a trip to the zoo!

As an interesting aside, we had our first little "mean girl" issue back stage and I heard about it later.  I was just listening to my daughter nonchalantly tell me about what happened and dismiss it as "No big deal".  In my head, I was crying, "It is a big deal, she was mean to YOU!  MY BABY!"  I managed to restrain myself and applauded her handling of the situation then went and vented to my husband.  And vowed to chaperone next year so I can get my hands on little...  Kidding, of course!!  I am actually glad we went through this and she shrugged it off so well.  Since making the decision to homeschool I wondered how she would handle that sort of thing.  She handled it beautifully.

 

Dinner and Dancing

What happened to Typepad?  

Anyway.  Our annual Spring Performance was last night.  The ballet part was wonderful.  My daughter seems oddly comfortable on stage.  

The fund raiser part was also sort of wonderful.  It was a dressy sort of dinner.  I was a bit worried about finding something to talk about with the other strangers at our table, but either someone planned well or it was just a happy coincidence - we were mostly homeschoolers.  The dinner conversation ranged from sports & homeschooling to helping young adults avoid sin. It was rich conversation.

That's all I'm going to write about it.  The good stuff.  There's much more that happened, but I'm just too tired and headachy to think about it.   I have three day old dirty dishes in my sink right now.  I'm ready to return to normal.

Big Night

Last night was just wonderful.  It was my daughter's very first ballet performance and it was a fairly large production. Lucy didn't seem nervous at all.  She was amazing.  My husband and I were very nervous and squeezed each other's hands through her entire dance.  I'm sure we had the goofiest smiles on our faces.

It was my first time as a mommy to be in the audience like that and that was a truly odd experience.  My parents attended the performance as well and I met them outside to hand off the tickets and show them to our seats.  I'm sure everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of always feeling like a child when your parents are around.  And as I watched them walk across the grass towards the theater it was the strangest feeling to know they were there to see not me, but my daughter, my child.  I'm a real live MOM!  Amazing.

Proud Mommy. 

Daddy and Lucy

"Mommy, I got a hundred thousand flowers!"

Because when you're six it's all about the cookies.  Truly when you are thirty it's still all about the cookies.  "There are cookies??!!"  Perhaps only because my husband and I skipped dinner, but that was nice.

We are very nearly into summer mode.  I am having Lucy finish all of the MUS test booklet as a final exercise.  I sort of didn't realize we had a test booklet until a few weeks ago.  Because I am on top of things like that.