Still Here

I'm still here...

...recovering and catching up from Willy Wonka, homeschooling, keeping up with the laundry, buying groceries, cleaning the house, driving kids and doing errands--in roughly that order.

Papa Rooster has been traveling, but the single parenting demands weren't bad while he was gone. I did less cooking than usual, and said yes to lunch with a friend and our church ladies' night at the downtown coffee bar.

I've helped B12, Chicklet and B15 pick out audition songs and start practicing.  Auditions are next Friday, for Robin Hood! One of our favorites. It was our family's first show in our old theater group--and actually that chapter's first show too--and only Blondechick was in it.  I am thrilled for my boys to get to do it now!

I've been busy trying to nail down dates for everything known and unknown for the next...oh...4 months or so.  B15 's school event schedule is a lot more complicated to manage than that of the younger ones, when we're looking at mandatory rehearsals for the next ten weeks, unless you get excused up front.  Papa Rooster and I have been discussing a getaway for the two of us and looking at dates...and we've got a graduation coming up in May, too.  Not to mention Holy Week services to plan around and for.

We've been reading.  I finished reading aloud to the younger kids On The Banks of Plum Creek. They are loving Laura Ingalls Wilder's autobiographical series of pioneer life and the Western frontier, so we started the next one immediately.  (I have recently met some adults who've never read these or introduced them to their kids.  Please don't be one of them!)

I finished this audiobook, recommended by A Circle of Quiet:


I don't know if it was the reader's French accent, or the author's mischievous streak or his intriguing personal history, but The Apprentice:  My Life in the Kitchen was an absolutely delightful book about much more than food.  Although if it had just been about food, it would still have been fascinating.  I was surprised how much I thoroughly enjoyed this autobiography!

I also discovered that we own True Grit, although our copy was in a pile of books to donate, probably owing to the unattractive picture on the book jacket which makes it look like it's set in the French Middle Ages instead of the American West.  Our boys never made it past that cover, but I decided to give it a chance and so far, I'm enjoying it. The movie is supposed to be good--anyone seen it?

Okay, back to life...