A long long time ago.....

In a far away galaxy....or something like that.....we had a date night!  Eric was slightly embarrassed to be out with me, but overall we both had a good time.

We went to Star Wars in Concert!  I do enjoy the Star Wars movies...but I'm not exactly a buff.  In fact, I have yet to see the entire Return of the Jedi.  I have a tendency to fall asleep at the same place each time I watch it, waking in time to see Princess Leah racing through the forest on those cool, um hovercrafty thing-yies (oh how I disappoint my husband).  Turns out, I have missed out on important information, as we found out at the concert.

There was a gallery of scenes and characters to walk through before getting to the concert hall

The famous walking carpet...I always found him to be a bit whiney

All of the items were encased in glass

Proof that we did go together

This was before the concert and moments before finding out we were in the wrong seats.  Our correct seats turned out to be more center stage and even better than the first ones we picked.

A little teaser for you.  GO TO THE CONCERT!!!  You'll enjoy it.

Spoiler alert, for anyone else who has slept through the majority of Return of the Jedi (I know you're out there)...They show the scene where Yoda "disappears" if you turn to your husband and say "I didn't know he had that skill --to disappear" said husband will roll his eyes and say, "are you kidding me????????" And really he's Yoda, why couldn't he disappear if he wanted to? --yes that is my defense and I'll add a Harry Potter reference if I need to.  I learned that beloved Yoda died. That was his death scene.  So there you have it, if you didn't already know, Yoda dies in the sixth movie, very un-dramatically I might add.

The concert was fun. Eric's favorite was the beginning, it looked and sounded just like the movies!  The concert was hosted by Anthony Daniels, also known as C3PO, not in costume. My favorite was the encore, pictured above, not just because it was Darth Vader's marching music, but the entire piece featured the orchestra on the screen.  I'm such an orch-dork, I was missing actually seeing the orchestra play. I was distracted by the laser show and movie clips being played to the music as I'm sure everyone else was too.

p.s. upon reading this Eric said the hovercrafty thing-yies are called speeder bikes...but maybe you already knew that.

Stay-cation

About a year ago Eric won a 2 night stay at a local hotel during a golf tournament he was in.  They expire May 31, so we thought it was time to use them up.  It was a nice change of pace.

At the Botanical Center:

 This is a cactus called  " Mexican Old Man Cactus"...the snarky part of me wanted to see his papers

Smelling the flowers

 Digging for worms was what CJ looked forward to while we were there.

We spent lots of time at the pool

We ate out

That would be salsa...he is all about dipping...food is optional when dipping.

And Bowling...and Sweetness may have her daddy's skills in the game.  During the first game, it was the 4th frame before I caught up to her and at that point the score was 39 to 36...in the second game it was the 10th frame, and as I went to bowl, Eric said to me...no pressure but you must get a spare to beat her.  I managed to do so and got an 89, her score was an 82.  Sure not a high scoring game, but she's only 3.

The cheerleader

We did let him push a few balls too

Most of the time she didn't want to use the ramp, but we also couldn't time a picture while she reg. bowled.

You're GROUNDED....until Advent

In December the kids loved playing with our nativity scene.  We have a wonderful, durable set, and I love that they play retelling the Christmas story in their own way.

However, just before his birthday, baby Jesus went missing.  Being the very good parents that they are, Mary and Joseph took off too. Then there was the rogue wiseguy I mean wise man who went searching for the other three on his own.

They have been missing since before Christmas.  I have moved furniture, re-organized the toy room and searched high and low for these characters.  While I really felt that they had to be HERE, I had not been able to locate them.  This made me sad.

Then last night, late, I was going through a bag of shoes in the garage to see if I had any tennis shoes in Sweetness' size.  I found the party...all four of them AND it turns out someone had stolen a sheep too.  Baaaaaaad sheep!

All have been packed away and grounded until Advent!

I knew you had been wondering.  Feel free to carry on with your day.

Dance Recital / Date Night

The girls had their first dance recital. They both did great and had a lot of fun.  Pictures were only allowed at dress rehearsal.  Here they are doing some poses before heading to the actual recital.

Eric took them to the recital. That was their "date".  Thankfully I had gone to the dress rehearsal, as Kjetil battled an increasing fever all day on Saturday and he and I stayed home, more on that in a bit.

She did such a good job! During rehearsal, the little girl next to her decided to throw her spider at Laurelei and Laurelei just kept dancing. I hear that at the recital however, the little girl decided to sit down, and so Sweetness joined her half way thru the song.  

By now CJ is a pro about getting on stage and doing her thing.  The lighting wasn't as bright during her dance, but she did great!  Also I hear, during the finale, after getting on stage CJ moved to stand next to her sister and to "help her out".  Both of them so sweet and caring.

By the time they got home Kjetil was in bed.  At 4:30pm when he woke from a 3hr nap he had a fever of 103.  I gave him some motrin and a cool bath to bring it down.  He went to bed about 8pm.  He woke up about 10pm burning up, gave him another round of motrin as his temp was 104.3 then waited for it to take effect.  It continued to go up and was at 104.8 at about 10:30, another cool bath for him and we were able to get his temp down to 103.7.  About forty-five minutes later it was down to 102.7.  He woke up at 1:30am and was again burning up, a quick temp check showed he was at 105.3...and not able to give him another dose of medicine yet, I took him to the ER. Our "date".

It took over 3hrs and 2 doses of medicine and lots of cool wet wash clothes, but we finally got his temp down to 101.  He has  had no other signs of illness, just this fever that spikes really high and is hard to bring down.  The doc noticed a slight upper respiratory issue and thinks we may have caught the flu early and sent us home with Tamiflu and strict orders to keep his temperature down or to bring him right back in.  Sleep was about all he was able to muster today.

 He was NOT happy about the wash cloths.  He would grab them without opening his eyes and toss them off.

His temperature is trying to creep back this evening, I pray that we can keep it under control and everyone get more sleep in our own beds tonight!

Graduation time

All across America, graduations of all levels are going on...and on Wednesday, we went to CJ's very first graduation.  I have high expectations that this is only the first of several more to come...eh hem...but the bar's not too high. 

Preschool graduation.  While I find it silly, this is a very real thing that even card companies recognize. I did not realize this until CJ got one in the mail from Grandma & Grandpa Ryan.

Always the poser!

A bit of tickle torture while waiting

I believe they said there was 125 graduating to Kindergarten and the class of 2023 (which if they remain in AZ will most likely be 2022 ~there is talk of dropping senior year, if they don't change it to after eighth grade...you think I kid?)

They were suppose to toss their hats, CJ's fell off during the song.

Hijinks

These kids are....well I have a lot of wonderful things to say about them.  Sometimes they are full of cuteness. Once in awhile...I just shake my head.

She saw me taking a picture, and stopped her dance to do a pose.  Saturday, we're not allowed to take pictures, so hopefully she won't be hamming it up on stage, but actually dancing her lady bug dance.

Sweetness has an inner artist that apparently needs a way out.
I am sure this falls into her category of "sometimes that happens".

She also has a Mommy that will make her clean up her inappropriate drawings.

I thought he was already pretty sweet, but he thought he needed a bit more, that would be powdered sugar he is playing in.  Not exactly sure how he got a hold of it...but he sure enjoyed himself.


And apparently our life didn't have enough excitement, so we have added to it:

That's right, on Mother's day we got turtles.  I think the names are still being worked on.

May blew in!

We seem to be having very very windy weather lately!  Thankfully we have not yet hit the triple digits, last year by this time we had.  Keeping that AC off for as long as we can!  This week is very busy for us...here are a few pictures from the past week.

After her bath we put her hair in several small buns....she was very excited to have a crazy curly head of hair to go to school with. This is her new favorite thing to do as well, it is amazing how well her hair holds the curls all day!

Just hanging out, enjoying the sun

Through Bountiful Baskets I ordered a bale of carrots, that would be 25 pounds.  Hehehehe...I'm nearly done with the bale.  No canning this time around, carrots require a pressure caner.  Pressure canning and pressure cooking are terrifying to me! I did make some very yummy carrot cake:

Which was so yummy it required ...

Two hands to hold on to!