Enchantment

This has been in some ways a magical week.

Yesterday, I had the good fortune to attend the Segullah Writer's Retreat. I won't talk about that now (in fact, I'll probably talk about it on my other blog at some point, so please revisit!).

While I was out, Dan kindly took the kids to Enoch's birthday party. Of course, for Andrew, cake and cousins is one of the best possible recipes for having a good time.

On Thursday evening, I took my mom to an outdoor concert with Linda Eder (who played Lucy in the Broadway version of Jekyll and Hyde.) The concert itself was wonderful and Ms. Eder sang two of my favorite songs from her repertoire: "Someone Like You" (from Jekyll and Hyde) and "Man of La Mancha."

Some of the other songs (that I recognized, at any rate), were a cover of "Help" (Beatles), "Unchained Melody," "Everything I Do" (Bryan Adams), "Accidentally in Love" (from Shrek, although it could well have origins elsewhere), "Bridge over Troubled Waters," "Gold" (from an as-yet unproduced musical Camille Claudet, but which I heard at Penn State when Ms. Eder visited).

But of course, the main event of the week was the Princess Festival that Jeni and I took our girls to on Wednesday. The Festival was started by a wealthy family who wanted to do a fundraiser for their non-profit organization to benefit people in Kenya (they use the proceeds to build schools, etc.). The festival itself involves the little girls who attend (who are encouraged to come dressed as princesses) in a fairly elaborate adventure. I think Evelyn may have been a bit too young to appreciate all the details, but she loved tagging along with all of the big girls (especially with her cousin).

Before I launch into the full story, I should note that anyone who wants a short, concise retelling, should visit my sister's blog, here.

Here's Evelyn before the big event, dressed in Emi's old princess dress (which my mom made), and her princess purse. (In fact, she was so attached to the purse that she took it with her bird-watching earlier with me and a friend of mine earlier that same morning.)

And here's the main house on the property--the whole thing was incredible (more on that later), with this exquisite attention to detail. The couple who built it built it basically as an elaborate playground for their granddaughters (all 38 of them!). You might be able to see the iron giraffes, elephants, and cheetahs around the perimeter of the building, and you can see the gorilla perched on the roof.
The adventure began with Jack (from Jack and the beanstalk) and Red (from Little Red Riding Hood) introducing themselves and explaining the crisis (the call to adventure, if you will.) Cinderella's kingdom has been taken over by the Winter Queen (and her three sisters, Spring, Summer, and the Autumn Robber). (I have to say that I was amused by the ways that the producers drew from and combined a random assortment of fairy tales and sources--Cinderella seemed drawn from Ella Enchanted, as her spouse was named Charmant, and she had a guardian fairy named Lucinda; Jack and Red and their friendly squabbles could have come straight out of Sondheim's Into the Woods).

The little princesses were then led into the main house, where they encountered Cinderella's stepsisters flouncing out of the building (and gleefully predicting failure). Inside, they met Cinderella, Charmant, and the blue fairy, who explained that they would have to defeat each of the winter Queen's sisters before they could hope to defeat the queen.

And here are the princesses, listening raptly to Cinderella. (I got a serious kick out of the way that Evelyn was just as intent as the--in some cases--much older princesses. I suppose, if I was truly honest, part of what appealed to me in all of this was my own childhood fantasies about just this kind of adventure.)

The first obstacle was defeating Spring, who had taken both Aladdin and Prince Phillip prisoner. The girls convinced her of the virtue of kindness and forgiveness, and she relented.

Next, the princesses proceeded to Summer's realm, where they found that summer had turned Beauty's prince into a beast and her friend Pearl (below) back into a mermaid.

The princesses demonstrated to summer that they could master the virtue of grace (I'm pretty sure there was a virtue involved at each step, but I didn't catch what all of them were, since the parents were encouraged to stay back so the girls could get more immersed in the experience.)

Enroute to Autumn's realm, the girls met a North American "princess," Pocahontas, and then a Greek "princess," Psyche.


The Autumn Robber seemed to be genuinely enjoying her part, taking on a kind of French accent and threatening Snow White and Rapunzel (who was locked, naturally, in a tower) and their respective princesses. She was finally persuaded to give up her evil ways by an appeal to love.
A few of the princesses, afterward, lined up to hug Rapunzel and Snow White, and so of course Evelyn lined up to.

The final stop: the Winter Queen's castle. (If you look closely at the castle, you can see the level of detail in the estate. The light covers had dragon shapes; inside, the light covers were fairies. There were also doors around the interior of the castle bearing significant names: Narnia, Camelot, and the Secret Garden.)

It turns out that the Snow Queen arrived at power with the help of Cinderella's step-sisters in addition to her own sisters.

Charmant dueled with the Winter Queen while Cinderella and the Princess and the Frog (don't remember her name), tried to take her magic book away from the stepsisters.

Finally, she too was defeated and peace was restored to the kingdom.

Fun fact: the Winter Queen is actually named Asenath, and she was one of my Writing Fellows when I worked at BYU (in fact, she was one of our office assistants and a very delightful person.) She graciously posed with our girls, although I don't imagine that the little princesses were exactly clamoring to have pictures with her. She also told us that we could climb up to the upper level of the castle (up to Rapunzel's tower) and so we did.

I had to include a few pictures of the kind of fantastic details on the estate (Jeni and I kept wondering why *our* parents haven't made the same kind of fantasy land for our kids? Oh, right, that whole money thing . . .)

I loved this cement dragon coming out of the grass.

The doorway to Rapunzel's tower was guarded by a metal spider.

A tunnel functioned as an easy short-cut between the castle and the cottage where the Autumn Robber lived.

So of course, we had to go back and re-explore the cabin. I loved the mushroom table and the dwarf-sized beds upstairs. And for a quick escape from the upstairs: a twisty slide.

After the formal adventure, we had a treasure hunt to complete (although really Jeni and I figured out the clues and dragged the girls along). In between, we made a lot of new friends. I really loved how friendly and interactive all of the actors were. I have no idea if these actors get paid for what they do (but I'm guessing most are volunteers), but they really entered into the spirit of the event.

Never-never land was, conveniently, located around an on-site playground. (The Mad-hatter, Alice, and the Red Queen were also there, but I didn't get any pictures of their tea party).

Tinker-bell sprinkled some "pixie dust" on the girls, and then Peter Pan took them "flying" (you can see the clouds around the perimeter of the trampoline).

Evelyn got some special attention from Tinkerbell, who helped her take her shoes off and then jumped with her on the trampoline for a few minutes. Afterward, they played tag (Evelyn still tightly clutching Tink's hand), and then a rousing game of "Captain Hook says."





This princess is Bedora, Aladdin's partner (I'm not sure where that particular name came from).

The Princess and the Pea.
And finally, Mulan.
Aside from the fact that it was hot, I think we all enjoyed it. Definitely, I would go again, and to anyone close to Utah Valley, I would recommend watching for it next June.

Rescue Efforts

We had an unusually dramatic afternoon here today, and we got the chance to play heroes (albeit on a very small scale).

Andrew surprised me by taking a nap (half-way through his sister's nap)--in my bed, no less! After waking him up around 4, I noticed some unusual movement out of the corner of my eye. Our bed at my parents' house is in the basement, right next to a window well, so we usually keep the blinds closed. I wasn't even sure if I'd seen anything, but then I heard a quail call just outside the window, sounding quite distressed.

My first thought was that one of the cute baby quail we've been seeing in the backyard the last week or so had fallen down the window well.

"Oh no!" I said. Andrew, always alert, said, "What? What's wrong?"

I pulled up the curtain. I saw a male quail standing at the rim of the window well, but I couldn't see anything at the bottom. I thought I must have been mistaken: then I saw it. The quail chick was only about four inches long and it blended in nearly perfectly with the dried leaves at the base of the window. But it was undoubtedly there. It was also too little to fly. No wonder the parents were making such distressed noises!

So, we staged a rescue effort. The kids followed me outside (we snagged a butterfly net from the garage), and I finally managed to catch the chick in the net. I lifted it up, set the net on its side on the grass, and the chick (once it realized it was being set free), made a beeline for the base of a nearby bush. Unfortunately, it's parents were on the other side of a stretch of grass.

We watched for a minute or two. Nothing happened. (Other than the many loud clucks coming from both sides of the grass.) We finally decided that maybe our presence was preventing the parents from claiming the chick, so we went inside and watched from the window. After a few moments and several false starts (apparently, we'd scared them), the parents finally reconnected with their chick.

Later, I saw it, along with its sibling, running contentedly alongside its parents in the grass, and I breathed a quiet sigh of relief. No harm done.

And, as Andrew has said repeatedly this afternoon, I hope that this chick doesn't fall down the window well again! (Still, it was a very lucky chick--if we hadn't been downstairs when we were, we might never have noticed that it was trapped.)

Kind of nice to be heroes, even if the heroism goes unmarked by its beneficiary.

Happy Father's Day

While I realize that Father's Day (and Mother's Day, for that matter) can be tricky for people who don't have ideal family lives, I feel very grateful for the great father's in my life: my father, father-in-law, grandfathers (although both have since passed on) and, of course, my husband, who's helping me figure out this parenthood thing. So, to all of you: Happy Father's Day!

This week was all about the cousins. My sister had a writer's conference during the day each day this week, so her three kids stayed at grandma's house with us. The kids seemed to really enjoy one another (well, most of the time), but the grown-ups (my mom and I) started running out of energy towards the end of the week.

Early in the week we made the mistake of promising the kids that they could run through the sprinklers--and then of course, the weather turned nasty (Dan and I got hailed on after a temple session Tuesday night) and it was too cold for the next three days. Finally, on Friday, it was warm enough. As you can tell, the kids loved it. Of all the kids, Evelyn was one of the most fearless. Enoch, probably the least fearless. (Enoch mostly hovered at the perimeter of the water, shrieking with joy when the droplets touched him and then retreating. But he never actually got wet like the other kids did.)




This picture pretty captures what the kids did: the big kids thought it was funny to position their bums over the sprinkler (someone--maybe Jacob?--started calling it his "booty," and so the other kids all followed suit), Enoch ran around the fringes of the water.



Evelyn, making an offering to the water gods.

I even managed to capture some of this on video. My two favorite parts come a little later in the video: Jacob does a funny little dance when he gets sole possession of the sprinkler, and (at the very end), Evelyn runs across the bottom of the screen repeating, "My booty, my booty!" (I'm pretty sure she had no idea what she was saying.)

Yesterday, we enjoyed some family time: we took the kids to a park in the morning and then had a picnic lunch (and Dan accidentally left the diaper bag under a tree). The only fly in this ointment was the fact that the park was right next to a swim park, and Evelyn was heart-broken that we weren't letting her go swimming. (She walked along the chain link fence for some time, apparently trying to find an entrance, and cried when I told her she couldn't get in that way).

Dan escaped for some private time in the afternoon (long over-due, I think!) and saw Clash of the Titans at the dollar theater. (You'll have to ask him for his review, I gather he didn't think it stood up to the original).

Next week, we're (well, me and Evelyn and Jeni and Emi) are looking forward to the Princess Festival, where one of my former Writing Fellows stars as the evil Snow Queen . . .

Happy Birthday Poppy!

If you were wondering about the half day in the last post, it's because we needed to get back north in time for Poppy's birthday surprise. Matt and Laurie were flying in from Texas to surprise Poppy, so we all showed up at for lunch Friday at the Pizza Factory. (Poppy was under the impression that he was having lunch with some colleagues from work, so he was quite surprised--and pleased--to find his entire family assembled instead.) Here's a picture of the assembled crew:


Saturday's big event was family pictures. (In retrospect, this is a little funny to me because, while it was Poppy's birthday, the pictures were clearly for Bubby. Poppy wasn't nearly as excited about the pictures.) Among other things, the pictures showed me that I need to have a little more faith in Bubby's powers of persuasion: Bubby had planned on an outdoor shoot but the weather was most definitely not cooperating. It was cold and lowering all day, and then, about half an hour before pictures, it started to rain. I (and I don't think I was the only one who thought this) was convinced that we'd have to fall back on plan B and take the pictures at the studio, but Bubby was determined. She had prayed for good weather and she was going to get it. So, skeptical but willing to go along, the rest of us drove to the outdoor site in the rain. It was still raining when the photographer showed up. He agreed to wait fifteen minutes for the rain to clear, so we all sat in our cars and tried to keep our carefully groomed and coifed kids entertained.

And wouldn't you know it, not ten minutes after we agreed to wait, the rain did in fact stop and the sun came out. I'm not sure this would have worked for anyone other than Bubby, but she clearly has some mad skills the rest of us don't have. (Or maybe she just has more faith.) So we got some nice outdoor shots after all.

Here's Evelyn, after the shoot, in all the glory of her costume (we all wore SUU wear for the occasion.)

Mouse country

I told you last week that I'd have more to report this week, and I do.

My sister and I decided somewhat spontaneously (i.e., four or five days beforehand) to take (drag?) our families to Disneyland. Dan couldn't go (I suspect he also didn't really want to go) because of work, so my mom came with us to help with the kids.

In the space of 3.5 days, we . . .

took a jungle cruise


rode horses (of the land and sea variety)


got dizzy in tea cups (Evelyn giggled uproariously and couldn't manage to stay upright--for much of the time she had her face pressed into various appendages),



tried unsuccessfully to be crowned kings (and queens) of England,

wore 3-D glasses (sort of, in Evelyn's case) and played various shooter games,

slept (in Evelyn's case, in both beds and strollers),

flew,

walked a lot and posed occasionally,

explored pirate lairs,


and found some pirate treasure,

tried (unsuccessfully) to swing from ropes like Tarzan,

and met some famous people. (We saw lots more, but these are the only ones we were willing to wait in line for. We got lucky with Minnie--there were only a few people in line when we saw her, which was fortuitous as she's become one of Evelyn's new favorite characters.)

Some of these encounters were happier occasions than others--although you can't see it in this picture, Andrew was in the background crying because he had fallen over the railing right after I told him not to climb on it or he would fall.

And in this picture, Evelyn actually is crying. (Otherwise you definitely wouldn't have seen me in *any* of these pictures.)


The gods of fortune must have been smiling on us this day since, after nearly an hour of waiting in line to meet the princesses (Andrew's insistence, not mine), were actually got to see Belle. (Since it's pretty much a crap-shoot which princesses would be available at the end of the line, we were incredibly fortunate to have seen Andrew's absolute favorite. It was also fortunate that we made Andrew leave his dolly at the hotel so this Belle didn't have to see her bedraggled namesake.)

A prospective princess:
We spent the first two days with Jeni and Samuel, which was fun because the cousins got to run around together. We stayed on another day and a half after they left. Since I don't have time or inclination to run you through all the details of our trip (and those details are really only of interest to the people who were involved), I'll give you some of the highlights and basic statistics.

Andrew's favorite rides:
*Astro blasters
* Pirate Island (formerly Tom Sawyer's island)
* Redwood Trail in California
*Toy Story Mania

(You'll notice that none of these are rides in the classical sense--and actually, Andrew's very favorite locations were really just glorified places to play and climb).

Andrew's least favorite rides:
*Space Mountain (my sister took him and said he was white-knuckled the entire time)
*Thunder Mountain Railroad

(This is why we didn't go on any other roller coasters.)

Evelyn's favorite rides:
*Any kind of carousel
*Tea cups
*It's a small world

Evelyn's least favorite ride:
? There didn't seem to be anything she didn't really like (except maybe waiting in line. Oh, and meeting Jasmine.)

My favorites:
To be honest, I just like being there. I know that Disneyland sometimes gets a bad rap for being so commercialized (and a recent scholarly book on place that I read criticized Disneyland as being the ultimate "no-place"), but for me, there's still something magical about the place and the ambiance, lines and annoying people not withstanding.

Mostly I liked anything that made my kids light up. Oh, and Soaring over California was pretty cool.

Grandma's favorites:
You'll have to ask her. I think she liked the tea cups because Evelyn was so hilarious to watch.

Favorite foods:
Most of the park food we ate was okay (and we ate breakfast and dinner at the hotel), but we really liked this bakery in the wharf section of California that served yummy soups and salads in fresh sour-dough bowls.


For a breakdown of overall facts:

Rides we went on:
Astro orbiters
Astro Blasters
Finding Nemo Submarine
Star Tours
Space Mountain (Andrew, with Jeni and Samuel)
King Arthur's Carosel
Dumbos
Storyland Canal
Casey Jr's train
Peter Pan
Alice in Wonderland
Pinnochio
Gadget's Go-Coasters
Thunder Mountain Railroad
Haunted Mansion
Pirates of the Carribean
Pirate Island
Tarzan's Tree House
Jungle Cruise
Disneyland Railroad
Soaring over California (in California Adventures)
Toy Story Mania (in California)
Mickey's Ferris Wheel (disappointing waste of time!)
Redwood Trail Adventure (in California)

Rides we did NOT go on
Splash Mountain
Snow White's Scary Adventure
Mr. Toad's Wild Ride
The Roger Rabbit Ride
Indiana Jones (none of the kids were tall enough and none of the adults cared to wait in line)
Captain Eo (although Jeni and Sam wanted to go)
The Tiki Room
All of the roller coasters/thrill rides in California Adventure

Parades we watched:
None (what can I say? We're not really parade people--it just doesn't seem worth it to wrestle my kids to wait in line and fight crowds)

Fireworks we watched:
What fireworks? (We were usually asleep by the time they started--the one downside of taking small kids to a theme park.)

Shows:
Playhouse Disney Live On Stage (this was so exciting that my mom fell asleep during it--but the kids liked seeing some of the Playhouse Disney characters--like Mickey Mouse clubhouse and the Little Einsteins--on stage. And the production was pretty interactive with the kids in the audience.)
Aladdin (this was extremely well-done, and worth the long wait!)


Needless to say, we enjoyed ourselves but came home tired. Perhaps in a few more years we'll go again.