Whew! April is HERE and we are happily enjoying its beauty and all the work that it brings our way. Children prance about in the sunlight, there’s Easter and General Conference preparations to take care of, and there’s beginning to be a bit of “school will be ending” energy in the kids’ activities, despite there being a good two months of attendance left. There’s just something about the beginning of April; it’s peak spring and looking-to-the-future vibes. I love it!
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The band was involved in a big bunch of parades over the weekend, so there was a lot of prep work for that. Band Boosters pack lunches for all the kids and chaperones, which requires a bit of logistical tap-dancing, but we got ‘er done. Rachel also got to be in the parade this year—she pushed the wheelchair of one of the band students. As luck would have it, that student plays percussion, just like Nathaniel, and the two of them were placed next to each other in the parade formation so I was able to get photos of both Rachel and Nathaniel together in a parade! I never thought that would happen. (I’m not going to post those photos because there’s a whole bunch of other kids from the school in the shot and I would not like it if other parents posted pictures of my kids in public spaces on the internet.)
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I was looking through old photos of the kids doing gardening and Easter prep work throughout the years and feeling all the feels from those days. What a blessing it has been to be able to easily share their childhood moments with family through the blog and through social media. It was not part of my plan to have lived so far away from family while my kids were growing up, but at least there was an easy way to keep in touch. I’m so thankful for blogging and social media in that regard, and more grateful on top of that when I consider all the great opportunities that have come into my life because of the blog, namely, the opportunity to collaborate with Fat Quarter Shop, Blank Quilting, and the other businesses that I’ve teamed up with to promote quilting and knitting projects.
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I’ve been on Instagram for over eleven years now. Who would have thought that little free photo-sharing app would turn into what it’s now become? The online world has changed so much over the years, and I’m a little sad to say that I’ve found it increasingly difficult to keep up with the pace. The pressure to stay relevant and adapt to new trends can sometimes overshadow the joy of creating. More and more I find myself wondering if I want to keep participating in a rat race where the rules keep changing without any notification or warning. Somber thoughts for such a beautiful time of year, but there you go…
The past two weeks have been full of color, celebration, and music! Here’s a quick recap of what I’ve been up to:
Birthday Magic
We celebrated Rachel’s seventeenth birthday last week with doughnuts and a tea party! We had to postpone the family birthday dinner due to last-minute glitches with the tea party scheduling, but that will happen pretty soon. She had a fun time with her friends and I tried to make things nice for her last “childhood” birthday. I can’t believe these kids are getting so old!
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Nearing the Finish Line
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The King David’s Crown quilt is nearly complete. The “finished” photos of it were due this last week, so those have been taken and submitted, but there’s still some last bits of quilting to do on it and the binding and labelling, which I’m going to do slowly because I’m really burnt-out on crafting at the moment. (Blame the Februaries…blah.)
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So Much Music-ky Goodness
The past two Sundays had a lot of music in ’em. Ren and I performed a beautiful arrangement of “I Know That My Redeemer Lives” two Sundays ago, and last Sunday the choir sang a really pretty arrangement of “My Shepherd Will Supply My Need.” Music takes a lot of work to happen, but it’s work that matters! I love the enthusiastic musicians in our ward who are always up for the next thing. Work continues on the Easter program and I also need to spend some quality with the latest batch of newly-released hymns so I can write up a game plan to get them introduced to our congregation.
Also Some Sugary Goodness
Renaissance was asked to help out at the Relief Society activity this week and showed the ladies how to decorate cupcakes in three different ways. She did so good! Yay for fun church activities!
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Up Next…
I’ve got some “finished project” posts coming soon…there’s a pair of socks that took a tub-tub this morning and currently drying on their blockers. I’ll try to get that post written up ASAP to share with you! Happy Friday and have a great weekend!
Seeing how I posted my goals for the week on Wednesday, the chance that I’d make significant progress on them was small. It’s just been such a busy week, and with needing to still rest when I start feeling tired I just don’t have a lot of time for the extra things. It’s a frustrating place to find oneself, but nothing terrible will happen as a result. I would just like to be able to do all the things, is that too much to ask?! 😉
Top priorities this past week:
Processing the garden harvest
Ward Choir logistics
Band Booster everythings
Walks
Secret Christmas knitting
Caring
Rachel had her first choir concert of the year on Tuesday and it was really lovely. I love seeing how much kids can do after only a handful of weeks into the school year. Even the freshman choir sounded great!
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Unfortunately, the family that sat behind us at the concert had a free-range toddler who pulled out some of my hair, and when I turned towards whatever the heck had yanked hair out of my scalp the offender wetly sneezed directly onto my eyeballs.
Zero stars. Would not recommend. It got even worse later on when the toddler tripped and smashed its face into the back of my seat and screamed their anguish into my ear. I was very glad when the concert finally ended and I got to go home.
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Nathaniel had his last cross country meet today and he did SO GOOD. He placed TENTH in his race with a time of 20:00.0. He wanted a 19-minute-anything time so badly, but alas…ha ha ha. Considering that he ran his first race of the season with a time of 23:03.0, I think he can safely be pleased with his progress over the season.
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Garden
I think all we managed to work on after all the work at the beginning of the week was to get the last pumpkin roasted and pureed. I did go to the store and purchase ingredients to make Green Tomato Mincemeat, but the excursion made my incisions hurt, so I decided to rest a bit before continuing with my plans. Unfortunately, I started feeling crummy that evening, and I woke up Friday morning feeling awful and ended up sleeping most of the day away. I think I was fighting off whatever the Choir Toddler sneezed into my face. I needed to do a bunch of other stuff today, so I still haven’t gotten to the mincemeat.
Community
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The church Halloween party was last night and Rachel and Renaissance helped out with the face painting. Renaissance also took over getting our van ready for trunk or treating once it became obvious that I would not be attending the party due to feeling so yucky, and she did a delightful job!
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Ward Choir logistics were dealt with this week and we’ll have sheet music to sing from tomorrow as long as I remember to make copies in the morning. I also ordered all of the Christmas sheet music and expect it to arrive next week, and I could cry over how much it all cost, but if I can get everyone I want to help out with the Christmas program it will be amazing. I am very excited about the possibilities.
I did not get to Band Booster stuff, but it’s high on my list of priorities for next week. The fabric for the table runners should arrive Tuesday afternoon, so I guess I’ll start sewing up table runners on Wednesday or Thursday. (Boring! But needed.)
Health
I went on zero walks this week. Between getting over the cold from last week and dealing with the Choir Toddler flash illness this week I just haven’t had the energy to do much more than some halfhearted office-y work from the couch. I’m doing my best, folks.
Healing from my surgeries is feeling good. One of my incisions is healing a little slower than it should so I have to do some extra care for that three times a day, but it looks like it’s working and the wound is finally closing up. Grocery shopping really tired me out on Wednesday, so I’m still working towards having more energy. It’ll come back.
Creativity
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I worked on my not-secret knitting for a little while before Rachel’s choir concert. Emily and I went on a little yarn crawl together in July and I saw a skein of self-striping yarn in perfect Christmas colors and I had to have it. I’m making some adorable Christmas socks for myself from it and adding in solid red heels and toes because it’s perfect. I’m almost done with knitting up the heel flap of the first sock. I love that you can take the downtime of daily life (like waiting for a concert to begin) and use it to get further along on a project, rather than wasting that time looking at a phone. More crafting in public is needed! Join the cause!
I didn’t work on anything else due to the aforementioned ickiness that prevailed all week. I’m falling so far behind! Fingers crossed for a healthy new week!
Highlights
When Nathaniel came running over the crest of the hill before the finish line in his race, way before I expected to see him.
The huge smile on Rachel’s face when we handed her the bouquet of flowers after her choir concert.
How cute the van looked after Renaissance finished decorating it for the Halloween party.
Emily brought me Panda Express for lunch one day as she came home from running errands because she thought I’d like it.
Lowlights
The Feral Choir Concert Toddler :::squinty side-eye:::
Two illnesses in one week
Despite all the illnesses, I AM getting stronger and feeling better each week, so that’s good. Michael and I both are really excited for how much better I could potentially feel in my daily life once I get all healed up. Ugh, the amount of pain and lost days I’ve had to deal with for the past ten years is gobsmacking. And it could just be over now. Maybe. That’s incredibly exciting. We shall see…
I’ll leave you with a photo that Nathaniel texted me while he was out on a run this week. I may not be getting out a lot to enjoy this beautiful autumn weather, but my kids send me pretty pictures of it, for which I’m grateful. There’s always happy little glimmers to make one smile…
We made it! She’s a full-fledged high school graduate!
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I’m just so proud of her. She’s always been a hard worker and these past two years have seen her working harder than ever, which has been awesome to witness. She’s ready for the real world with a plan and a work ethic that will bring her success. I just love these milestone moments; these chapter endings. She’s done with being a child, which is bittersweet; but she’s got a whole blank canvas of adulthood ahead of her, which is so exciting. I am so glad to be a mother and to have done the work of mothering this sweet girl. She’s been such a joy to raise and I can’t wait to see what she does in the next chapter of her life.
This week was full of fun activities—the end of year film festival for Rachel, Nathaniel’s final middle school band concert, and the senior honors night for Renaissance. It’s so much fun to see the culmination of everyone’s hard work at the end of the year, and, in Ren’s case, at the end of her K-12 school career.
Top priorities this week:
Graduation & recital clothing
Graduation quilt progress
Party decorations & ordering progress
Planting last of plants in garden
June’s hymns
Celebrate
Graduation party preparations are going well. My credit card fraud department gave me a call this week to make sure my card hadn’t been stolen because I’m ordering large quantities of things from businesses that I don’t normally do business with, so that was a funny little moment. We will have shelter from the weather and ways to keep the food warm. Excellent party prepping.
I made a lot of progress on the signature quilt as well; all pieces have their top and bottom borders. I’ve had a number of requests to mail blocks to people who will be unable to attend the party, and I need to get those out in the mail. I ordered more of the white fabric because I think I’m going to have to either make a bigger quilt or incorporate some signatures blocks into the backing, which is an awesome “problem” to have. It’s so nice that people want to share their good memories and well wishes with Renaissance. She’s such a kind soul.
We went to a graduation party for Renaissance’s friend Riley on Saturday. We’re really there! Graduation things are happening! It was such a nice event; there were all sorts of band families there and lots of great people who are involved with the school in some fashion. Riley’s mother, Chrissy, has been involved with everything forever and wow, does that ever create a fantastic village for your kid when you do that. Good food, good friends, and the best picture wall I’ve ever seen done. It was lovely.
Gardening
I haven’t planted my remaining plants in the garden yet because budgetary constraints dictated that I wait until next week to purchase the planting containers and extra potting soil. It’ll be fine. Nathaniel is so pleased that we’re going to have raspberries and Rachel is really looking forward to her strawberries. It makes me so happy to stoke their interests in gardening; it’s such a great hobby and skill to develop for their adult years.
It’s rained a lot this week, so the plants are well-watered and I haven’t been out to check on anything too much. From my kitchen window it doesn’t look like the slugs have been getting to anything, so I’m optimistic that we got the majority of them killed whilst weeding over Memorial Day weekend. Fingers crossed!
Community
I haven’t touched anything church music this week, which is OK because I always post a month’s hymns through the next month’s Fast Sunday, so we’re fine. I’ll get June’s hymns finalized and posted during church on Sunday.
Highlights
Nathaniel’s concert was so great. I am just so impressed with our music programs in our school district. Proud to be a part of it all. Nathaniel had a big part in one of the songs they played where it looked like his arms weren’t even connected to his body because he was drumming so fast. So proud of him.
Renaissance participated in the elementary school walk through this week where the seniors go to their old elementary schools in their caps and gowns and parade about and talk to their old teachers, which I think is the cutest idea ever. Since she didn’t attend elementary school here she decided to go to the elementary school where she volunteered and read to children last year, so some of the teachers knew her anyway. It was even topped off with the PE parachute being brought out for the seniors to play with one last time. Because honestly, gym parachute was peak elementary school enjoyment. What a fun week for her.
At the Honors Award Ceremony Renaissance was awarded cords for a high GPA and having 50+ hours of community service, and she received her stole for National Honor Society. A wonderful surprise that evening was the announcement that she’d been awarded two $1,000 scholarships from our community’s scholarship foundation! Those scholarships will cover her expenses for her first quarter of pastry school! We are so grateful for our community’s contribution to her post-high school education, and proud of her for doing all the work to earn those awards.
Renaissance will be playing her flute during Baccalaureate next week, and so she was flipping through our church’s hymn book and all the flute books for church and asking me if specific hymns were LDS-oriented only or if they were well-known in other denominations, and it was nice way to spend an hour together. I was pressing quilt blocks and making my guesses and she was confirming with some internet research, and we learned a lot about different songs, some that I would have guessed were only known to the LDS church and then we’d find out that it’s been around since the 1600s and we’d laugh at our silliness. I’ve missed doing church music stuff with my kids—I’m proud of their work in the school bands and choirs, but church music was where they started and I’ve always enjoyed doing that with them. We figured out which hymns would be recognizable to people of other Christian faiths as well and she created her program from those choices.
Lowlights
I have a smattering of ant bites on my left wrist and hand from a Memorial Day gardening mishap and they have swelled up angry and red and they’ve itched and ached all week long. I look like I have some sort of communicable disease.
Rachel asked that her final film project NOT be shown at the film festival. She was heartbroken over how all it shook out. She loves making films, but this was a group project gone sour. Thankfully, her teacher respected her wishes and didn’t show the film.
The five-year-old dishwasher developed a hole in one of its hoses and leaked all over the kitchen and ruined the wood floor we had installed just a few years ago from when the fridge developed a leak and ruined the wood floors. This is bad for three reasons: 1) The floor is warped and absolutely ruined, 2) We’re hesitant to make another claim on our homeowner’s insurance and risk our rates going through the roof, and 3) Our family must handwash the dishes until the replacement dishwasher shows up next week, and a family of six creates a lot of dirty dishes. It’s been a moderate source of stress. One of my work arounds has been to have whoever is on dish duty to start working while I prepare dinner. I like the results so much that I may keep this arrangement going in the future. *silver linings*
Another week done and dusted! Oh, next week will see me on the verge of tears pretty much every day…I’m so proud of my girl, but so sad that her little childhood is ending. I have absolutely loved being a mama to these sweet people. I’m excited to see where adulthood will take them, but do I ever miss pigtails and brown paper bag puppets. There will be new cool things! I just don’t know what they are yet, and that’s ok.
I’m a huge believer in the power of a debriefing at the end of a project, event or era. I think it’s monstrously constructive and therapeutic to take a minute to pause and reflect over the past [whatever] and feel all the feelings and think through the highlights, lowlights, and ways to improve in the future. I love reading the wisdom of those who’ve been through it before me and I love celebrating the wins.
I also love the idea of heirlooms and traditions, and I’m hoping to solidly get some things established in that category with Renaissance’s graduation party. I’ve been researching so many different ideas for her graduation party and one thing that popped up was having a signature quilt that people could sign for the graduate. I had been thinking about a book of wisdom or index cards with words of wisdom or something like that, but the problem with those is that they get tucked away in a box and rarely seen ever again, and a signature quilt could be a tangible reminder of all the great things people have to say about you and what they hope for you, left out for memory jogging and having the potential to really become a part of your early adult years and memories. And, really, HELLO—quilt.
I texted Ren and told her to choose a jelly roll from Fat Quarter Shop* and was not surprised at all when she decided to go with the Here Kitty, Kitty fabric collection by Stacey Iest Hsu*. Renaissance and Quesnel have been joined at the armpit since Quesnel joined our family almost fourteen years ago, so cat fabric makes complete sense. I’m pleased that she picked out something by Stacey Iest Hsu as well, as my kids’ childhoods have had many of her fabric collections and dolls hanging around in the background. It’s a perfectly fitting choice for an end-of-childhood memory project for my girl.
My plan is to sew up the individual blocks and have a quilt block-signing table at her graduation party. I’ve also extended the invitation to loved ones who will not be able to travel to her party to contribute a block to the quilt, whether I send them a Jolly Bar-sized (5×10-inches) piece of fabric or they cut fabric themselves. It’s been a good reception thus far!
These next few weeks are going to be an absolute flurry of graduation activities and party preparation, but I’ll try to show updates on this quilt when I get the chance!
*Affiliate link: When you click an affiliate link in one of my posts and make a purchase from that vendor, I receive a small commission at no cost to you.
I cannot believe that it is still the month of May. So much has been going this month that is seems like it’s been two months in one. What a busy, fun time of year!
Top priorities this past week:
Get grad party invitations out
Get Christmas tree down
Garden
Cleaning
Laundry
Celebrate
Graduation party invitations are almost all mailed or delivered, yay!
The Christmas trees are officially dismantled and stored away until November. For future reference, Future Cara, it only took an hour to take down the giant Christmas tree, so stop dragging your feet about it in the future. And also, Future Cara, you are freakishly busy from January through May for the next four years, so take down the Christmas stuff before the New Year. Just do yourself that favor. Please.
Garden
It’s radish season! I need to spend some quality time with my mandoline slicer in the next weeks. We’ve not eaten a lot of radishes as a family, but boy howdy are my kids going to get some exposure in coming days! I purposely planted a purple variety in the hopes that it will make Rachel happier about eating them.
One of my big plans for the Memorial Day weekend is to get the garden and yard cleaned up and we spent a big chunk of yesterday doing that. There’s still so much work to do, but we got a lot of the worst of it done so I’m hoping that tomorrow’s work will see it through to the end of everything.
There are so many signs of potential in the garden right now from the little bits of work that we’ve been doing up until now. It’s so exciting to watch spring burst onto the scene. I really, really love seasons and how everything changes and has signs about new parts of life on the horizon. There’s so much excitement in nature!
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Cleaning
Prom preparation messes have been cleaned up. I also ordered a storage box for fancy hair accessories so we can store them out of the way during most of the year and be able to find them easily when the next dance rolls around. Ren and Rachel have amassed a beautiful collection of formal hair accessories over the years, and it’d be a shame to lose them.
Prom dress construction has almost been cleaned up. I just need to clean up the leftover fabrics and I’m dreading opening the tote bins of apparel fabric and potentially finding out there’s no room for the prom dress scraps. I’m making myself write that down because it’s such a silly reason to be avoiding a task, and hopefully, by writing it out and acknowledging how ridiculous it is, I’ll be extra motivated to just bite the bullet and get this rather simple task done.
My back was hurting a lot this week from overdoing it in my Tuesday workout, so I didn’t get a lot more cleaning done. I traded off for getting a lot of office work and grad party planning done.
Clothing
I made a little bit of a dent in the looming folding pile. It’s nice to reclaim the space that’s been storing the laundry bins of clean clothes .
Highlights
Nathaniel had his last Cross Country meet this week. All season long he has consistently run his 2 miles in 15:55-16:05 minutes. All season long. After his last race he quickly logged on to the website that reports their times and a look of disbelief and then joyful surprise crossed his face: Somehow, even after having to take a week off of practices due to being sick all last week, he shaved off an entire minute and finished his race with a time of 14:55! He was a very happy boy for the rest of the evening.
Renaissance had her final band concert and it was such a great evening. She had a solo in jazz band, the entire concert was fun and upbeat and sincerely impressive with the music each group was playing, and then we had a reception afterwards with cake and treats and a tear-inducing slideshow of the seniors throughout their band years. I really, really love being a band mom and I’ve really enjoyed all these years of helping her make music with her friends. It is incredibly sad that this part of her life is over. I think the only thing that keeps me from being downright depressed about is seeing how excited she is to begin the next phase of her life and her pastry chef training.
Emily and I went out for lunch on Thursday and had a great conversation about her future plans. I don’t want to get my hopes up too much too early, but it feels like she’s starting to get to the end of working through some of the hang-ups that have been plaguing her for the past couple of years and is getting ready to surge forward into adulthood. Sometimes you just need a little extra time to sort stuff out, right? It’s scary to allow that time to take place, but we might be getting to the end of the tunnel. At any rate, she seems to be less anxious about things, which is such a relief. The high schoolers that were in the thick of it during COVID have really struggled with a lot of stuff ever since. Perhaps normalcy is starting to catch back up with them finally?
On Wednesday, when my back was twinging the worst, I gave myself permission to go down a research rabbit hole, partly because I was in too much pain to think logically and partly in the hopes that doing crafty research would help me relax and send the message to my muscles that they could also relax. I spent multiple hours tracking down as much information as I could about bead embroidery and beaded embellishments because I want to continue making formal dresses, but I’m finding that even if you make a gorgeous dress it often needs a little dose of embellishment to truly make it sing, and I think the skill of bead embroidery would be absolutely fantastic to fill that void. I’m thinking about dedicating time over the next year to learning the skill so I can apply it to next year’s prom dresses.
Lowlights
Wednesday’s back pain. Totally did it to myself because I was enjoying my workout on Tuesday and decided to go for far too long in it. Consistency and moderation win the race, not frenzied extremes. This is a battle I fight in my soul on a daily basis.
I hit a flock of baby birds with my van as I was driving to work on Friday. Not my best Disney Princess moment.
It was a really good week, despite the few setbacks. This really is a lovely time of year and I’m excited for what’s coming our way in the upcoming weeks! End of school year is exciting, exhausting, and fun.
Oh my goodness, summer school registration is cutthroat in our district. I arrived thirty minutes before the doors opened to the counseling center and the line was almost going out of the front door of the school. I was successful in securing Nathaniel a spot in the classes he’ll take over the summer to open up the rest of his schedule to accommodate four years of band in high school. Whew!
This week has felt like it’s been all about Nathaniel! He came down with something Monday night and has spent the entire week just hanging out with a 103-104˚F fever. I ended up taking him to the pediatrician on Wednesday because he was looking really awful, even for being sick, and they tested him for a ton of stuff. All the rapid tests came back negative, so we’re waiting on cultures. This has been a rough illness. I made Michael stay home from work on Friday so someone could be with the boy while I was at work because I was worried about him. Thankfully, his fever broke on Friday and he was feeling a lot better, so he could join the marching band in their last parade of the year on Saturday.
Gardening
I put in a huge day in the garden on Monday and cleared the weeds out of two big areas of the garden. This made my back extremely unhappy for a few days, but it was worth it. I also planted a few of my started seeds—zucchini, summer squash, slicing cucumbers, pickling cucumbers, cilantro and a lot of marigolds—and direct sowed some bush green beans, more cabbage than we’ll ever need, zinnias, cosmos and some more sunflowers that the slugs already ate. Clearing out weeds helped me find a number of slugs so I could send them to their eternal torment of an afterlife.
It’s so fun to see things coming up and blooming! The peas are doing well, the nasturtiums are definitely coming along, and the radishes and lettuces are starting to gain some steam. The carrots are slow starting and slugs keep getting my sunflower sprouts, so I’m keeping an eye on those crops.
Clothing
Some laundry has been done, but not the amount needed to truly make a difference. I did wash Rachel’s choir dress, so it’s ready for whenever she needs it.
Cleaning
I did a good job on getting the kitchen reset and the girls have been doing a pretty good job at maintaining it.
I’ve addressed and mailed about half of Renaissance’s graduation party invitations. I really hope people remember to RSVP. It’s so nerve-wracking to depend on RSVPs. I once received zero RSVPs for one of my kids’ birthday parties, so I made plans to do something else so my child didn’t have to wait around at home for no one to show up. I left a note on our door that said we’d received zero RSVPs and so we had made other plans, and came home to wrapped gifts left on our doorstep. I know I was in the right with my actions, but I still feel terrible about it. It’s not hard to RSVP, DO IT. I even made it super simple and put a QR code on the invite. I am still terrified that I’ll get three RSVPs and then eighty people will show up. I think this will be a situation where I will definitely have to phone around two weeks before the party and nail down the RSVPs myself because food-wise I could be in a lot of trouble if I don’t have a definite head count. People just always make you feel so pushy and high-strung when you do that, but what else should they expect? Ugh, this is one of my soapbox topics. Just RSVP, people. The same day you get the invitation. We all have our calendars on our phones, so we already know whether we’re available or not. Yes or no, I don’t care; I just need to know how many people I need to feed. RSVPs save the sanity of the hostess. Be kind to the hostess.
I’ve almost got the menu planned out; I just need to check in Ren to see how involved she wants to be with food prep so I can decide on the desserts. When you have an aspiring pastry chef in your family, their involvement greatly influences what you offer for desserts at a gathering.
Decoration plans are good and supplies should be arriving soon. I need to come up with some activities as well, mostly to keep people’s younger children occupied. Space might be at a premium, though, so judicious planning is needed.
Community
I don’t like to publish where my kids are going to be ahead of time because that seems unsafe, so another thing we had on our plates this past week was the Rhododendron Parade. It’s quite the drive from where we are and we invite our middle school’s eighth graders to also participate so they can see what all the fun is about in the hopes that they’ll continue with band in high school, which meant, for the only time ever, Nathaniel marched in a parade in the same band as Renaissance.
In years past the eighth graders have also gotten to wear a high school marching band uniform, but the decision was made in the days leading up to parade that we were going to stop doing that this year, so my hopes of a picture of Nathaniel and Renaissance in matching uniforms together was dashed. Sigh. Our little school district is growing rapidly and it costs $22 to dry clean each used uniform at the end of the year, which hasn’t been that big of an expense in years past, but we had forty eighth graders this year, which would have added $880 to the bill and that’s a pretty big expense for such a small amount of wear.
Luckily, though, we decided to open up the “Band Gear” store to the eighth graders ahead of their freshman year so they can have band swag before the football games start in the autumn, and we were able to deliver their new band gear to them at the rehearsal prior to the parade, so many of them were wearing those items, my son included. Adorable.
I really enjoy being involved with our band program and am so thankful that the booster president approached me at tip-off two years ago to see if I’d be interested in helping out. It’s been a great way for our family to spend time together and serve together. It’s sad to see Renaissance’s band days come to an end, but we still have four more years of Nathaniel in band! And I’ll be dragging our family along for the ride the entire time because I was elected to be the band booster president this next school year. Get ready for even more band booster craziness, y’all!
We have a big end-of-the-school-year BBQ at a nearby park after the parade, and I was able to get some really photos of the kids and even one of Michael while we were there:
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It was a good and busy week, thankfully, and I hope to keep pushing forward and getting everything put back together in the house. There’s so many good things coming up in the weeks ahead! What an exciting phase of life! See you next week!
I did manage to finish Rachel’s dress in time—11:30 that morning, to be exact—and Renaissance was able to finish adding bling to her dress—at 3:00pm that day, after a two hour gem-gluing session with Emily, herself and me—so all the dress dreams became a reality for the Church Spring Formal. I threw their hair into some updos, fretted over shoes and petticoats, and we were on our way! Their dates looked great, and I think everyone had a good time. We had dinner at my granny and aunt’s house because it was near the dance and we knew that Granny would love to see the dresses. It was a nice evening.
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And now, I think I’m going to take a little break from my sewing machine…it’s been a wild two months of non-stop sewing! I’m so pleased with how they turned out and so glad that my girls liked them. Happy memories.
The big day has come and gone and Renaissance’s dress was finished the evening before and Rachel’s backup dress actually fit. Success! Oh, they looked beautiful. My baby girls went and got all grown up.
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They had a great time at prom, and it was wonderful watching them be excited for and enjoying the evening. My heart is full.
That Crafty Cara 