Tales of a Shoebox Princess

One of the items on my 50th year list of fun things to do was go to a concert at First Ave. I've been once before, but that was in the main room. This time, Jim and I went to the smaller room (capacity 250 standing). It's about as big as the two levels of my house put side by side. When I had told Jim about my bucket list and wanting to go to a concert, he got on the First Ave website and found out that Sondre Lerche was coming to the 7th St Entry. I don't know many of Sondre's songs, but one of them that I do know, "Phantom Punch," is one of my favorite songs ever. So we bought tickets. The concert was last night and it was fantastic! I loved being in a small venue because we could see the band, even though we were towards the back. (We were actually the first ones to get in, and we snagged two of the few barstools for the show because I was worried how my back was going to hold up if I had to stand the whole time). The music was LOUD, but after a few tim...

Despite the busy background, this is totally a senior picture. Magic has the head tilt right. Cute kitty! Tiny tiny spider. We had an infestation of tiny tiny spiders. This one chose poorly the site for his web. Kitchen faucet? Nope. Tiny tiny things are cute but not necessarily long-lived. We're cute. Even when we are cold.  Cute and cool as a cuke Robotics cute Pretend sleeping on the deck is cute Smiling is super cute Lemmy and his toe stubs are cute Not just cute, ADORBS Real sleeping is real cute  Daffodils in the front yard are cute up close and personal cute

Matt's robotics team went down to Peoria for a district competition, made it to finals, lost in finals, but received the Chairman's award for being a model robotics team. Some of the robotics team member families decided to welcome home our little robot people with signs and balloons to celebrate the award and the qualification for World's competition in St. Louis in late April. The gear leaning on the door is what their robot is designed to deal with: Pick up, load, and deliver. Jim holding my spur of the moment sign. I painted this one. Matt applauded my correct use of gears. Matt and teammate unloading Sir Bedivere the bot. Bagged, it is placed on the cart to take it back into the school. Matt pushes a box of tools and supplies back into the school 2169 returns victories with their Chairman's award banner It has taken me 4 years to understand how the competition system works (and there are parts I still don't understand), but M...

And the one where we finally return Mr. H's house key to him. We've had this house key for two plus years, ever since Hayley dog-sat for Mr. H. (Mr. H is one of the district band leaders and he's familiar with the 4 band kids we've had). Hayley used to babysit Mr. H's daughters too. We are down to 1 actual band concert and 1 possible marching band event ever as high school band parents. Katie picked up a flute after fourth grade and we've been band parents ever since. One of the songs the Wind Ensemble played was Xerxes and if I may direct your attention to this post  from six years ago, you will understand why I was so excited to hear it again. Also if you go back to that old post, you'll see Matt as a young trombonist. Too bad he wouldn't allow close up pics at this concert so you could gauge his growth. Re: Xerses, I talked briefly to Mr. K about it, expressing my delight that it was played, and he said Matt was one of several seniors who reques...

The title of a familiar song to Jim and me, which I did not use on Jim's birthday cake. I'm kinda done doing all out, fancy schmancy, detailed cakes anyway since I've done them for so long. I think the first one was a Batman cake for Paul when he was 3 or 4. And now he's in his 20s. But now that I think of it, I do have one more detailed cake to do: Matt's grad cake. Oh and Hayley's wedding cake(s). I went easy on myself for Jim's cake. Boxed mix, which I like better than homemade anyway, and Katie had given us some leftover buttercream frosting, enough to frost a cake and do minimal decorations on it. So when I sat down to decorate Jim's cake, I had to come up with an idea that was 1)easy, 2)special for Jim, 3)doable in one color because I wasn't going to mess around with multiple colors, and 4)no fondant. I toyed with the idea of writing the lyrics to The Beatles' You Say It's Your Birthday, but I ditched that in favor of writing random...

Jim and I had Jackson and Emma for the weekend. It was good to be up close and personal grandparents for three full days. Boy, they were full days. Jim and I did nothing else but tend to them. Even sleeping was weird because we went to sleep knowing the baby would get up in the middle of the night at some point but we weren't sure when. It's weird to always be on the lookout. It's been a long time since we've had a baby wake us up. And it's been a long time since we've had to focus so much attention on children. It was a reminder of what it was like to be a young parent, only we had old people bodies to use instead of young people bodies. Not complaining, though. I'm glad we said we would babysit. It was almost tough to hand Jackson and Emma over to the other grandparents for the next three days, because I was pretty close to deciding to adopt them because they are just so darn cute. I enjoyed hearing Jackson say "Hi Gramma" at random times. I al...

Matt has been busy with school and robotics. For not seeing a lot of him, I was able to take lots of pictures. Here Matt is working on a project for "A Tale of  Two Cities" for English class. It's a guillotine made of yarn. A most ineffective guillotine, if you ask me. The finished guillotine. He says there is symbolism in the use of yarn and the colors of the yarn. It looks like a dream catcher. He got 28 out of 30 on his presentation, and apparently the teacher said he's good at BSing. I asked him why the teacher said that and he explained that his project broke during the presentation and he found a way to incorporate the breakage into his symbolism explanation.  Matt poses for the camera before his band concert the pre-band concert grimace You can never get a good picture of a short trombonist. You can only see half his head.  The Wind Ensemble plays "Godzilla Eats Las Vegas." This is either the third or fourth time I've ...