Everything but France

Who blogs on a Saturday? Really? Saturday is the computer waste-land day, nobody's interested in being online, exchanging e-mails, chatting or blogging. So why am I blogging on a Saturday? Because I'm behind on updates (for all 3 of our readers!) and I don't imagine finding more time during the week to update so today it is.

I promised updates and gave a couple. I'll try to knock out most of the others now...

The last week of school was May 22-25. For the last day the school had a talent show of all the grades for all the grades and parents. Ophelia had actually gone to the auditions and played one of her piano songs from the end of her first book and ended up being near the beginning of the program for the talent show playing "The Streamline Express." This song is easy for her so she played with no problem and didn't even seem a little bit nervous. She had given her full name for the program so she was introduced as "Ophelia Chantelle Martin-Weber," walked up, gave a little smile to the audience, sat down at the piano and played (very steady too, no rushing), stood, faced the audience, smiled and curtseyed before walking back to her place. We couldn't believe how comfortable she seemed and she told us later that it was a lot of fun and she liked it when everyone clapped for her. After years of getting kids ready for recitals and seeing them go through that experience, it was neat to finally see one of our own in such a setting. We were very proud of her. Jeremy and I didn't stick around to watch the rest of the kids (I was headed out of town for work) but we thought she was the best anyway!

Ophelia's school year ended well and just as she had her first real friend crisis. The last few weeks of school were tough relationally for Ophelia, she got teased for having a boyfriend when she started playing more with a boy from another class, had her two closest friends ditch her and talk about her, developed her first "enemy" on the playground, dealt with being bullied for the first time, and decided that she didn't want to school any more. It was time for the year to end. Scholastically she did great, her reading level is still very high and she did well in every subject. We're looking at different schools as we plan to move, hoping to get her into one that will be a smooth transition and have a stronger arts and self-guided learning program.

Lavinia can't wait to start school in the fall, she'd love to start now if she could. She's an early reader, sounding letters out all the time and doing very well reading the Dick and Jane books and loving it. We are constantly amazed at the words and phrases she reads in some random places, constantly looking for signs and labels to read. Her vocabulary is also very expressive and surprising. Jeremy and I often wonder where she heard such a word or phrase and ask her what it means. Often she can't really tell us but she uses them correctly so she has some kind of understanding of what she's saying.

Mother's Day was wonderful but I find myself frustrated with this holiday and I don't care for how it is treated in the church, media, and society in general. I guess I just don't get why we need a special day to honor mothers and fathers, it seems like every day we should honor and celebrate the mothers and fathers in the world. Being a parent is a wonderful and special honor as it is and it's a lot of hard work. One day a year just doesn't seem like enough to really communicate how special it is plus, the way these holidays (Mother's Day and Father's Day) is treated ends up leaving out parent-figures, parents that parented the best way they could by giving up their child, parents at heart but childless, and the parents that lost their children. I have no answer but this is some of my frustration. However, my Mother's Day was wonderful in a very ordinary day kind of way. This year we spent our Mother's Day weekend picking out containers and plants for a container garden we created together. I loved digging in the dirt with the girls and planting little plants with colorful and interesting flowers to create our little garden together. We went to church, came home and hung out watching my favorite Disney movie (Beauty and the Beast), grilled some burgers for lunch, watched an amazing thunder and hail storm, then planted our garden and played outside in the wet earth. The girls showed me tricks on their bikes and scooters, picked dripping primroses and weeds from the road side, and gave me lots of dirty fingered hugs making for a perfect day. Since I didn't have to work on Mother's Day (working in the church for years always had me working on holidays) and since we kept our day simple spending it together as a family and gardening, this may have been my favorite Mother's Day yet- just a quiet, ordinary day with my children and husband showing me how much they love me and I them. Beautiful.

For the miscellaneous updates: We lost Satine and now just have Rosie who seems very lonely. Lavinia is starting piano next week. Helena is still beautiful and sweet, very loving. My parents finally have a grandson and I have a new nephew. We're all working on learning French. Ophelia is taking some private art lessons from a friend for a few weeks and loves it, is sketching ALL the time now. Jeremy is teaching group guitar this summer for summer camp programs. Ophelia is now a green belt in Tae Kwon Do. Lavinia is a white belt... still. Jeremy is still at the coffee shop and teaching private lessons. I've started teaching privately as well and have a nicely growing studio. We are together looking at doing more church consulting for worship, outreach, music and sound- recommend us to any churches that could maybe use some help in those areas. Oh, and we're writing music like crazy preparing to go into the studio this fall to record our first CD project because of some generous support from a donor.

So there's an update on everything but France, I'll get to that next time. We're keeping pretty busy these days! Hope you are enjoying life too, let us know how things are going! Looking forward to reading your comments.