Food for Body and Soul

Our church, Grace United Reformed Church, had our annual Christmas party last night. It was, as usual, a great time of fellowship with family and friends — and the fantastic food didn't hurt either. After dinner we were treated to a showcase of talent as the kids provided the evening's general entertainment. Pianists, violinist and flutists. Oh my!

A Congregation of Kids

Miss Nancy knows how to get a party swinging.

We are expanding our church facility, and last night we got to use the new space for the first time.  It is still a work in progress - no furniture, no carpets.  But hey!  Spill all you want, kids!

Cole was the ring bearer in our wedding.
He's grown a bit since then.

The "Sounds of Grace" Quartet

The kids' choir.

Somehow I don't expect J's this mellow when playing at home.

"Rocking Around the Christmas Tree"
L left them wanting more

"Up on the Housetop" played down on the piano.

We're so grateful for our church family.

Merry Christmas, Grace URC!

Bread Brutality

It is rare that L is actually encouraged to enact violence on something. She is much more used to being scolded for wanton destruction and general brotherly abuse. So when I asked her to help me knead up some bread, it was a chore she could... <e-hem> really sink her teeth into. She could, shall we say, really knuckle down.

After a half hour of savage assault and battery, it was into oven.

The fruit or our manual labor!

My Rose E'er Blooming

When she was in first grade L joined a vocal training class sponsored by El Camino College in which two of her church friends, S and A, were involved and loved. That class was a prep class for the far more serious and focused South Bay Children's Choir. This year she was old enough to join the formal choir, bequeathing her spot in the little-kids' class to N, who jumped at it enthusiastically. Since then she has spent every Saturday morning from 9:00 to 12:00 in some pretty serious rehearsals. Last night, after a particularly grueling week of every-night practices, all the training was put to the test. The South Bay Children's Choir performed their Holidays in Harmony 2012 concert at Marsee Auditorium on the El Camino College campus.

L's choir, the "Meistersingers" performed a half dozen Christmas and Hanukkah choral pieces, alone and with various combinations of choirs of older kids, the "Choristers," the "Choraliers," and the "Bel Canto Singers." L's group, being the youngest, was decidedly more squirrelly, but they did sound amazing for such young kids so early in their training. The older choirs were simply phenomenal. There is a transcendent, unearthly quality to a seriously well-done classical children's choir that gives you goosebumps on your soul.

There were a number of notable guests in the audience. Grandma Lynne, Aunt Joyce and Aunt Claudia all came down. Uncle Kyle and Miss Sera caught the show; Mrs. McCarthy and Kathy George (a.k.a. "Grandma Boop") from church were able to make it. Even Pastor Greg was able to come.

I've got to admit, she had a pretty proud Pop in the house as well.

The diva greets her fans.

The show doesn't end there, however.  On Christmas Eve L will be travelling with the choir up to Los Angeles where the South Bay Children's Choir will perform at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in the Christmas Eve Music Fest, broadcast nationally.

Taken in by a Toothsome Grin

For the last month we've been warned with ever increasing anxiety that N's first dental shedding was imminent. A little wiggle, the slightest of perturbations, was all that was needed to assure the owner that his tooth was about to fly the coop. Stacy and I monitored the situation closely, but for several days there was little to no evidence of dental dispersion. We, being the tooth fairy liaisons and responsible for tooth fairy client general well-being, tried to manage expectations, but N would have none of it and got more and more monomaniacal and as fixed in his thinking as his tooth appeared to be in his jaw. Surely it was looser! It was on the cusp! Any minute now!

Not yet, but any second, I just know it!

The great thing about inevitability is that sooner or later the dice come up in your favor. A six-year-old boy can only go through so many cumulative seconds and not have a tooth fall out. The laws of physiology demand it. All of human precedent was in our favor. On Tuesday, November 27 inevitability got around to giving it up. What had been a slooooooooowly increasing wobble suddenly took on a pretty impressive flap and the end was truly in sight. Unfortunately an end in sight, but not yet realized, is generally an agony of excruciating proportions when you are six and several teeth behind your sister.

Once it became clear that we were in fact in the dental deathwatch we knew that we simply needed to put N out of his misery.  A mother with an iron stomach and a clean Kleenex is pretty much all you need in such situations.

Mommy takes matters into her own hands.

The gaping hole of success!

I think Olympians have won gold medals and felt nothing like this sense of accomplishment.

For Posteri-Tea

I poured the kids cups of tea this morning, as is our custom. I poured L a big serving in her Ariel Mermaid mug. N got a smaller cup in a Peter Rabbit mug. When N came to the table he looked at the two mugs suspiciously. "Which one is mine, Daddy?" he asked.

"Yours is the little Peter Rabbit mug," I answered, purposely mentioning "little" to flush out the protest I was expecting to hear. N considered it for a moment, but didn't say anything. I pushed harder. "I gave you the little Peter Rabbit mug because that used to be my mug when I was growing up and I thought you'd like to use it." He instantly brightened.

"Of course I want that one," he said. And then, sounding a little too rational and competent for his age, said, "Why would you think I wouldn't want it?"

He tucked into his tea and seemed to enjoy it in thoughtful silence. Shortly he spoke again, his eyes fixed off in his thought world. "Maybe when I grow up you can give me this mug, and I can give it to my little boy. And I can tell him this was my Daddy's mug."

Dinner and a Movie, Complements of L & N

Catching up on some recent past events:

1st Grade Community Day

A month or so ago N's 1st grade class had a "community day." This is where everyone in the class is tasked to build a shoe-box-sized community building - a store, a bank, a fire station, etc. After a week or so to work on them with their parents, the kids bring them all to school on the same day and they turn their classroom into a little town.

 N was assigned a movie theater. It is a fantastic school project and N and I had a ton of fun playing around with it. We even let Mommy and L help out (a little).

N had to decide what movie would be showing at his theater. That was easy - he picked Star Wars with little hesitation. He then got to pick out the "Also Playing" and "Coming Soon" selections to put on the posters on the theater walls. Our theater seems to be more of an oldie-but-goodie place, preferring classics like Mary Poppins, Cars 2, and The Little Mermaid over more recent releases.

Only the finest films of the 60's, 70's and 80's!

Somehow "AMC" became "AMO," but we loved it anyway.

We spent an afternoon painting the box - black walls inside gave it a much more theatrical look. Mommy help sew some screen curtains and L cut us some nice rugs for the aisles. The hard part, or fun part, depending on your perspective, was installing the theater seats. We found some little pasta shells ("orecchiette," according to the package) that, if mounted on their sides, made for passably comfy seats. N, L, and Daddy took turns with Mommy's glue gun doing the he-man job of installing a hundred or so of the chairs.

I took a late morning getting to work on community day so I could take N and L to school. It was tons of fun to see all the different projects coming in and being set up. The creativity was rich and clever and you could tell the parents had as much of a blast as the kids did working on the displays. There were hotels and hospitals, carousels and police stations. They were all mounted on the kids' desks, which were arranged to be all interlocking in the classroom. Little paper roads with plenty of matchbox cars were providing the community infrastructure to make the town come to life. I don't know how much teaching got done that day, but a whole lot of fun and learning did.

The local bakery.

Police HQ!

A few days later Stacy used up the remaining orecchiette in a soup. L and N couldn't stop giggling over having theater-seat soup for dinner.


Time for Soup

Speaking of soup, L has been getting braver and more adventurous in the kitchen. She's getting to be a fine little cook and now that she can read, she's starting to use cookbooks and make things with very little supervision. She's made a few things in recent weeks that have come out well enough that we kitchen supervisors are inclined to let down our guard. One evening she decided to make corn chowder - a soup she had made before and that had turned out to be remarkably good for coming out of a kiddie cookbook. Knowing we were on familiar ground, we pretty much turned her loose.

Things went pretty well, with one small exception. Some times, when you're in a rush to get dinner on the table, a 1/4 tsp of thyme can look an awful lot like a 1/4 cup of thyme. Consequently our resulting soup was a trifle too "herby" for our tastes this go-round. And needless to say, thyme was added to our shopping list for the next week.

When L says "Thyme for dinner," she means "Thyme for dinner!" 

Thankfulness

Thanksgiving morning is as appropriate at time as any to take the bellows to the embers of the blog and try to breathe some new life into it. After all, this blog is chiefly a tool and catalyst for thankfulness.

Many years ago, probably starting in college, or perhaps even before that, I started taking "mental pictures." By "mental pictures" I mean that, whenever I was doing something unique, significant or generally enjoyable, I would try to conciously pause, say to myself, "This is something to enjoy and remember," and then lock it down somehow in my brain for safekeeping. I'm not sure where I got this idea - probably from some foofy self-help show or maybe it was something I came up with on my own - don't remember now, but it has been very important to me for all these years. I've met so many people who seem to carry around so many regrets about their past. Not bad things they wish they hadn't done (though I'm sure there are plenty of those), but regrets over the good things they hadn't done, or rather, more to the point, hadn't appreciated. "Enjoy these days, son. They go by so quick," this is the litany of advice I've received countless times, usually by people who you can tell are secretly mourning some good old days they failed to recognize and savor. I don't want to regret missing the wonders I've been given. This idea of mental pictures has been in part my tool to do this.

Will it work? Time will tell, but I think so, to some extent anyway. The early evidence is positive. I'm still in the thick of the sweet spot everyone tells me about - my kids are small, Stacy still puts up with me, my expenses are relatively few, my health is good - but at this stage in life there are already opportunities for regret. I know a lot of people my age who seem to have never grown up. They still want to think they are young and cool. They act like they are in college. There are married folks at work, who still want to act the player. They seem like people who are trying to go back and recover things they think they didn't get (but should have) out of being single, being burden free in college, being popular in high school, etc., etc. I think regrets or the lack thereof are big factors in whether you ever "grow up." At this point, to a large extent, I don't miss the old days. I don't linger and wish I could relive them. I have no beef with them. I've got a great store of memories. I've got mental index cards with times and places and faces and stories. I pull them out often when I start sliding down those paths of self-pity, and they really do remind me that I don't need to go back. I was there and really did savor it.

I know life is better, sweeter, more exciting, etc., when you are young. Worries, troubles, illness and fatigue all layer themselves on you with age. I know there will be things to treasure about old age, if I'm slated to get there, but I also know that the joys and wonders are clustered to life's leading edge. I know I won't be able to avoid illness, worry or outright tragedy, but I do hope to avoid self-accusatory regret that I failed to appreciate the things I'd been given. I want mental pictures to prove I was there, that I enjoyed it, that I appreciated it and was, basically, thankful for it.

So the next time you see me having a good time, if I seem to pause and retreat into my own mental world for a few seconds, it might behoove us both if you'd smile and say "cheese!"