School's OUT!

Another school year is over, and while I am having difficulty holding back tears at the thought that Audrey is DONE being a kindergartner, I am so grateful for the great year both of the girls had. On the last day of school, VDM holds a little awards ceremony outside. The kindergartners each get an award, and Audrey was thrilled with her "Most Improved" one...
We were really proud of Lili, too, who received the award for Academic Achievement for her class. This year was really challenging, but she learned so much!

Here she is with her BFF and their matching awards...they are truly a match made in nerdy heaven...

I took some videos of the kids today showing off a little bit of what they've learned this year:

On the car ride home, Audrey was telling me how much she loved this prayer, and as she read it to me I found myself blinking back tears again. Is this the kid who a year ago wasted no opportunity to let me know how boring she thought Mass and the Rosary were? Now, she is usually the one to ask if we can say a family Rosary, and during Mass, all of those fierce whispers of "when will it be over?" seem to have vanished. Is it just that she is a year older? Is it the influence of her walking-saint of a kindergarten teacher? Is it just a phase? I don't know, but I'm grateful for it. It has been kind of a crazy year for our school, with a lot of transition, but sometimes seems that the task of raising kids in this crazy world is just too daunting, and moments like these make me so grateful for our little school. We parents need all the help we can get.

Untitled from Allison Speier on Vimeo.

Lili's fabulous teacher had the kids memorize a poem every week to recite in front of the class. I'm going to try and keep up the habit over the summer. This past quarter, they memorized Gerard Manley Hopkins' The Blessed Virgin Compared to the Air We Breathe in its entirety, which was too long to upload, so here she is doing another one of Hopkins' gems. This one was actually extra credit, but I convinced her to learn it anyway, amidst visions of her twelve years from now cramming for her English comps at UD and feeling a surge of gratitude for her awesome third grade teacher (and equally awesome mom) who made her memorize all those awesome poems all those years ago... ahem...I may have been projecting just a tad...

Untitled from Allison Speier on Vimeo.

Dancing in the "Rain"

We had an unseasonably chilly, drizzly day yesterday. We revelled in it, since it will probably be the last cool day before the summer heat settles onto Phoenix like a ton of bricks. Audrey wanted to get "rain clothes" on Kateri and herself so they could run and play in the rain. The closest thing my little desert dweller Kateri has to rain clothes is apparently a terrycloth hoodie, the can-can tutu Uncle Justin gave her, and Uggs. The perfect outfit for a little rain dance:

Audrey's Birthday continued

In a desperate attempt to combat middle child syndrome, we invited a few of Audrey's friends and their families to celebrate her birthday on Saturday night. Here are some shots of the evening's festivities:

Audrey took one look at the misshapen, drooping cake I made and proclaimed it "MAGNIFICENT!" I'm so glad she is still young enough to be so easily pleased.

An American Girl Cookbook? Two of Audrey's most favorite things combined?! Who knew the world contained such wonders?

We set up a movie on the lawn, but this cute little scene did not last long.

The sparklers were a big hit...

Even our walking catastrophe managed to escape singeing herself...

...the goofy party favors the girls picked out.

We were so grateful to our friends for coming out to celebrate with us! Audrey sure is a lucky little girl (even if she is a middle child.)

Blue Hydrangea cupcakes and bunnies...

Audrey turns six today, and time marches on. She has lost two teeth in the past week, after days of furious near-constant wiggling (which may or may not be due in part to a clandestine competition with her best friend Lucy, who has coincidentally lost the same two teeth.) We also got to bring home two baby bunnies from her kindergarten class.

They are a ten on the cuteness scale.

We also made hydrangea cupcakes to share with Audrey's class. From a very early age, Audrey has noticed and loved the beautiful blue hydrangeas that flank the steps to Nanny and Papa's front porch, deeming them (at age three, I think) her " favorite flower." This might have been helped along by Nanny saying that they match her eyes. Audrey is no stranger to vanity, as we all know.

She was so happy with them.

Hopefully they will not be a melted mess of blue frosting by the time break rolls around.

So Happy Birthday to my hydrangea girl! Here are a few things I am begging you not to outgrow too quickly:

1. Your habit of singing in church in the highest possible falsetto with your eyebrows raised

2. Your maniacal giggle

3. Your adorable grammatical mish-mashes like "butcept." As in; "Nanny is the nicest person butcept God."

Feel free to grow out of your habit of stripping for shock value...

On another note I had to include this picture of Kateri and Luke. She had to get stitches in her lip AGAIN. This time, she was not sedated, and the only thing that kept her going through the ordeal of being swaddled and pinned by four people while her amazing Doctor sutured a moving target was the promise that she would be able to play Angry Birds on Daddy's phone when she got home. So here she is after her four hour stint in the ER, delirious but happy and beating her last high score. (She is way better at the game than I am.) Thank you Nanny, it is the gift that keeps on giving.

An Eye for an Eye, and a Tooth for a Tooth

Based on the title, you might be thinking this post is about Bin Laden, and whether or not as Christians we should rejoice in his demise, but it is not. (Although we have been praying extra hard for our brave troops...especially those amazing Navy Seals) No, the title has a much more literal relevance to the story I am about to tell.
Several months ago, Lili had a loose tooth. It had been loose for a very long time, and it was very loose; horribly, disgustingly loose. I would cringe every time I saw it twisting and flopping around. Also, Lili was constantly complaining about it and refusing to let me yank it. Finally, I had had enough, and told her that we were going to do the old dental-floss noose pull. She agreed, but demanded that she do the yanking herself. So there was Lili, sitting on the tile floor with floss trailing out of her mouth, trying to work up the courage to give it a tug. Suddenly, Audrey came sprinting out of nowhere, paused in front of her sister and gave the floss a vigorous tug, then sprinted out of the room again. Lili sat stunned, staring at her tooth as it lay on the floor. I was stunned. It was one of those moments as a parent when I was completely shocked and horrified by my child's behavior. What could have possessed her? I guess she was just as tired of that darn tooth as I was.
Anyway, last night Lili returned the favor. She yanked a toy out of Audrey's mouth and pulled out Audrey's first tooth, which was not all that loose to begin with. All's well that ends well, and after some blood and tears, sisterly affection has been restored.

Also, the best Dad a girl could ask for turned 33 yesterday.

(For the record, he's the best husband a girl could ask for, too.)



Happy Birthday, Daddy!

We sure love you!

So, we left our kids...

...even though they tried to stowaway with the luggage. Luke and I are celebrating our ten year anniversary this month, so we decided to do something we had never done and go on a little getaway. It was a big deal for me...I have a hard time being physically separated from my kids for any length of time...and I am slightly neurotic. It's a family trait; I come by it honestly.
My dear generous mother flew all the way from Boston, leaving her tulips in the spring, to come and babysit, so we knew that the girls were in the best possible hands. So I taped an envelope containing our health insurance and prescription benefits cards along with a signed and dated letter giving my mom full authority to make medical decisions for our children to the inside of our kitchen cabinet, and we were off!

We spent the first night at a resort on a vineyard in Temecula. It was beautiful and relaxing.

Our main destination, however, was Santa Catalina Island. One of the biggest reasons for us choosing this spot was the glowing recommendation of Luke's grandparents, who are pretty much our heroes when it comes to marriage. They have had a few getaways here themselves, and it was so fun to picture them here in years gone by.

On the ferry over to the island, I must admit that I felt a few pangs as I thought about the miles and miles of ocean and desert that lay between me and my babies, but then the harbor town of Avalon came into view.

gorgeous...

Our hotel was tiny and right on the water. I loved the European feel of it...no elevator, real keys (instead of key-cards that you have to fiddle with until a green light clicks on)...the sweet proprietors even had chilled champagne and a "Happy Anniversary" note waiting in our room when we checked in.





The next day I did a zipline tour. There was only one spot left on the morning tour, so my sweet self-sacrificing husband offered it to me. I took it. Carpe Diem and all that.

Here is a super nerdy picture of me in all my zipline safety gear holding the zipline contraption thing upside down...smooth.





The tour itself was amazing. I must admit the first run was REALLY high and I felt a little shaky, but it was so much fun.

My sweet self-sacrificing husband hiked up and took pictures...that's me whizzing by on one of the lower runs.

Untitled from Allison Speier on Vimeo.

In the afternoon we rented a sea kayak and explored the little coves and beaches north of the town...I loved paddling over the kelp forest...the water there is crystal clear, and the kelp looks like huge tree trunks growing down towards the bottom with bright orange and silver fish flashing through them. We got very close to a pair of inquisitive sea lions, too. No Great Whites, though...sorry Papa.











I also was kind of in love with the Casino. It is not, much to Luke's disappointment, an actual casino. It was a dance hall and theater, and it still shows movies in the evenings. I loved the outside, but I was too cheap to pay 20$ to see the interior.

I wish I could have seen it in its heyday, with Big Bands playing in the dance hall.

The Art Deco mosaics in the porch were my favorite...

The mornings were beautiful. I got to enjoy them because I couldn't sleep in. Apparently I sleep much better squished onto the ten or eleven inches on the edge of our mattress while getting pummeled intermittently throughout the night by toddler heels. So I would go for walks while my husband slept in.
It was very strange to just leave the hotel room with nothing but my room key (and my cell phone of course...Nanny might have called and I might have had to sprint down to the ferry dock or helipad and beg, borrow, or steal passage home to Phoenix immediately.) But seriously, neuroses aside, it was really nice to be able to walk as long and as far as I wanted sans stroller and baby wipes.

I have no idea why the pictures on this post are so far apart...sorry.

Driving home, Luke and I talked about when we would ever do something like this again. I said, "maybe for our twentieth", before doing the math in my head and realizing we'd be leaving a 16 year old Audrey...a terrifying prospect. Not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy, but something tells me Audrey is going to need a fair amount of adult supervision in her teenage years.
...so it was fun while it lasted! Thank you thank you thank you Nanny, and Steve and Cindy and Emily for keeping my girls happy and safe! And thank you to my wonderful husband, who has made the past ten years the best of my life!

Our Easter Egg Hunt

Our family had an Easter Egg hunt in our back yard this year...

Abby checking out her much bigger and more mobile competition...

Look at the determination on her face!

I thought it might be fun to hide some confetti eggs this year...

...some people were good sports about it...

...and some people were not.

Happy Easter!