While watching Star Wars, when someone says, “May the Force be with you,” you have the irresistable urge to reply, “And also with you.”
That’s all I’ve got for today. Just a quick post to let you know we survived the folklorico performance, and now we need to unpack the various and sundry costumes and accessories. I’ll be back with a real post as soon as I get all that done.
It’s that time again – the Spring folklorico performance. Boo and Pumpkin Girl are in 9 different dances with 5 different costumes, hairpieces/hats each. That’s ten costumes with accessories! We have some of our own costumes, we borrowed others from the company and two more are supposed to be here by tonight’s rehearsal. They’re being shipped from Mexico. I’m a bit skeptical.
Of course, none of the company costume pieces are able to be worn as-is. They all need some sort of basic tailoring to have them fit my children. The toughest one is the pre-Hispanic suit Boo has. It’s 4 inches too big around the waist and with the shocking lack of belts in pre-Hispanic Mexico, I’m not sure how to keep it around his skinny little waist. He’s already got to wear bike shorts under it for modesty’s sake so I need to figure out a way to keep it from falling down around his rattle-wrapped ankles. I already tried safety pins, but I don’t think it’s going to work.
Of course we just got the costumes last weekend. Nothing like last minute costume altering to drive a mom crazy.
We bought a temporary clothes closet to hang costumes on in the dressing room. Right now it’s set up in the living room with the costumes so I can keep track of what I’ve altered and pressed.  I do have a list of all the accessories each dance needs and what I need to do, but I find myself wandering around muttering, “Guerrero, Jalisco, Polka, pre-Hispanic, Veracruz…”
There are still 3 costumes missing from this picture. The jack o’lantern in the background has nothing to do with anything.
I’ve also got house guests coming in on the day of the rehearsal, in the middle of the rehearsal, in fact. Good thing the airport is less than a mile from the theater. Phil can run over there while I watch rehearsal.
In spite of my complaining and worrying, this performance is going to be fun. If you live in the DC area and would like to go to the show, shoot me an email at the address over there in my sidebar. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for children.
edited to add: the show is Saturday, April 18th at 7:30 PM and features both adults and children in dances from various regions of Mexico.
THANK YOU! To everyone who helped or volunteered to help us locate a replacement Wohtee. I had taken a picture of the bottom of the car and was on my blog’s admin site to upload the picture, when I saw I had one comment that was pending approval. That comment was from Phil’s brother and he had left 2 links which correctly identified Wohtee as the Ferrari F40, plus he found a blue one on Amazon.com. ( I think the comment went in the moderation queue as an anti-spam measure since it contained 2 links.) I Googled all morning for a Ferrari F40 in blue and couldn’t find it. So Donald, I bow to your superior search skills.
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We’ve been spending a lot of time in church lately. Last Saturday we participated in the parish’s Seder Service potluck. Lots of yummy food and Boo got to read the part of the youngest child asking the “why” questions.
We attended mass on Holy Thursday and Philip was one of the 12 men to get their feet washed.  When they were finished, they each came down and washed the feet of their families. The water was COLD!. Bip thought it was great fun.
Good Friday was just an amazing service. So beautiful, so stark, so sad, so hopeful. Boo was an altar server, so he was excited to tell us that he “didn’t do too badly” with all the new things he needed to do for that mass. Actually, he did quite well and looked rather handsome, too.
And this morning we were in church again for rehearsal for tonight’s Easter Vigil. I’m excited about this since we are sponsoring our friends into the church. It’ll be a long mass ( I counted 7 readings, an epistle and the Gospel) and one I wouldn’t normally take the children to, but it’s going to be well worth it. I hope Bip hangs in there well, or at least just goes to sleep.
Plus, Boo and I grabbed the opportunity to go to Confession after the rehearsal (Philip and Pumpkin went earlier at a Penance Service) so we are feeling clean and shiny, too.
Replacement Wohtee is on the way, beautiful church services, friends coming into the church and Easter dinner with more friends. We’re all feeling fine.
Bip has a love of cars. “Cars” the movie cars, Matchbox cars, Hot Wheels cars – anything on wheels, he loves. He has quite a little collection going and he plays with them every single day.  A year ago, he’d amuse himself by lining his cars up across the living room, giving us time to do school.  I keep 3 in my purse, for church, waiting rooms and restaurants where he needs to keep relatively quiet. Bip’s cars are found in almost every room in the house. He loves his cars.
A while ago – he’s only 3 1/2, so it couldn’t have been too far back – he named one of his cars. Just one. He named it Wohtee.
This is Wohtee.
Shortly after Wohtee got his name, Wohtee disappeared. Bip didn’t talk much then, but he spent much of his waking hours asking, “Where Wohtee?”.  The other blue cars wouldn’t do, he had to have Wohtee. What makes Wohtee so special is that his tail fin lifts up and you can look inside, so when Wohtee was found, there was much rejoicing.
Then Bip discovered “Car” the movie. He fell in love, of course, in part due to a role by none other than his beloved Wohtee.
See the resemblance?
Even now Bip still refers to The King as Wohtee. And the original Wohtee remains a favorite.
Wohtee met with disaster this morning. Apparently there was an unfortunate bombing incident in the dining room and Wohtee might have been blown out of a cannon, thought that part is unclear, and he landed on the hard, linoleum floor, breaking off the part that makes him so uniquely Wohtee – his lifting tail fin.
Alas, poor Wohtee, we knew him well.
I can’t fix him. I tried. So now what? Try to replace him, I guess. All I know is that he is a Hot Wheels car, but there is no other name on him. Just “1988”, which I learned is not the year Wohtee was made, but the year the real car was first manufactured. Upon closer examination, I think he might be a Ferrari:
I’ve looked online and I can find Hot Wheels Ferrari F40’s and F50’s which are close but not exactly like Wohtee, but not one of them is blue.
Does anybody out there know cars enough to identify Wohtee? Know somebody that does? If I could figure out exactly what kind of car he is, it would make finding his replacement easier.
Anybody know a Hot Wheels collector that might help figure out what Wohtee is? Is there a patron saint for this?
Yes, it’s that time again. The crock pot is happily cooking our corned beef and cabbage, the children are finished with school, lunch has been eaten and I can no longer avoid making shamrock cookies.
I don’t know why I do this to myself.
I have a friend who is gifted in hospitality. She has 6 children, homeschools and otherwise puts Martha Stewart to shame. I was telling her all about how much I hate making sugar cookies, and I still make them a couple of times a year to torture myself make my children happy. I’m just that kind of mom. I let them watch a Rollie Pollie Ollie movie during the Disney Channel’s Movie Time Monday yesterday, instead of finishing school, too. I so totally rock.
What was I saying?
Oh yeah, my friend, the super baker. She thinks I might be rolling my cookie dough out too thin. She doesn’t live on base anymore, so I can’t have her just pop on over to show me how to properly roll out cookie dough. I’m pretty sure she’d do that for me, but she’s now 20 minutes away. Some friend. Just because her house had mold issues and rats in the backyard, you’d think she’d have stuck it out in anticipation of my cookie making needs. Not so much.
So I’ve stalled long enough. The children already caught me mixing up green dough, so there’s no turning back now. If I survive, I’ll be back to tell you the last part of our Rite of Election Story.
Subtitle: School, schmool!
We rarely get more than an inch or two of snow at time around here, so I let Boo and Pumpkin Girl have another shortened school day in favor going sledding. Let’s just call it extra gym class. 🙂
Our formally fluffy front porch…
looked like this when we headed out:
That’s mostly ice, just for the record.
Much fun was had by all…
We were joined by my friend’s children, who are also my children’s friends. They had races…
and some wipe-outs.
The boys engaged in some guerrilla sledding, which involved shoving off down the hill and trying to hit each other with snow balls. In this picture, Boo’s buddy gets him good.
I got a chance to sled, too, but mostly I just took pictures.
I have yet to live in a place that snows enough for me. Ft Leavenworth (KS) had a good amount of snow – it would snow all day and stay for the week. We had a great sledding hill on our block and all the dads were in school together which meant they all had the same snow day cancellations. We had so much fun, four families, moms, dads and children, all sledding together. Some of the grown-ups were more than a little sore after sledding for a couple of days in a row.
I try not to get excited when there is snow in the forecast here. We seem to sit right on the line of snow vs rain and usually end up with rain. But March came in like a lion last night and dumped several inches of snow on us.
The wind was quite strong, causing the snow to drift on our patio.
Philip works on base, so he didn’t get a snow day this time.
Boo and his best friend loaded up our wagon with snow and went off to build a snow fort. I didn’t see them for 2 1/2 hours. Bip tried to keep up with them, but it was way too windy and I brought him back to the house.
Later, Pumpkin Girl gave him a ride in the toddler sled. This is the last year he’s going to be able to fit in it.
We only got a little bit of school done, but really, what’s the point of snow if you can’t play in it? Good friends, hot chocolate and warm soup for dinner. It doesn’t get better than that!
Today when I got home from our homeschool group, I found this on the front step:
And I found this in my living room:
So what’s a knitter to do? Well, since I didn’t make the mess, I’ll let the culprits clean it up themselves. And since I did buy the yarn, I’m off to wind it and print out the pattern I’m using with it.
Priorities. Gotta have ’em.
Now this is not normally blogworthy, but today it is. We’ve been battling either a prolonged stomach virus, or two viruses back-to-back for about 3 weeks. I will spare you all the details, but it has been unpleasant for all involved. I’m tired of all the extra cleaning that goes along with a stomach virus, the sleep deprived nights as feverish children can’t sleep and the way the house totally falls apart when I’m sick. But mostly I’m tired of not eating.
I completely lost my appetite last Friday as the virus hit me full force. Since then I’ve eaten an egg or some crackers every day, but that’s about it. I drank a lot of V8 Fusion to keep from getting light headed, too. Pumpkin Girl got back to normal a couple of days ago, and Bip is almost there. Boo and Philip escaped completely, so I’m the last one on the mend.
My appetite returned today and I ate three meals! Granted, that only means 2 pieces of bacon, a boiled egg and most of a homemade burrito, but it’s an improvement over yesterday’s chicken strip.
Tomorrow I’m hoping to work up to a salad for lunch.
We survived the cattle call that was the auditions for a, um, nationally televised talent show.
I’d love to tell you all about it, except that I signed a contract, agreeing not to discuss or disclose events related to the Program, my involvement in the Program, blah blah blah, forever in perpetuity, world without end, amen. I think I signed away Boo’s first born son, too, but I’m not sure.
I can probably tell you that we sat around and waited for 3 hours before it was our turn and then the kids danced half their dance (we knew going in that they only allow a minute and a half performance) and it was over. Now it’s “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” If we hear back from them, we move on to a live performance. It not, well then that’s it.
It was fun, though. I could have done without the people smoking pot outside the entrance (hello? major resort and convention center!) or the cross dressers (we only saw them briefly and I think the kids didn’t notice. I wish I hadn’t), but other than that it was a good experience.
My favorite part was Boo’s answer to the question on his application – Why do you think you are America’s next great talent? “I’m a good dancer and a great guy with a winning smile.” Gotta love the boy!
My least favorite part- paying $19 for parking.
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