SCITUATE!

The first Christmas Luke and I spent together was with my family in Scituate after we had gotten engaged. On Christmas morning, he unwrapped his gift from my parents: a XXL sweatshirt with SCITUATE written across it. He read it out loud in his best tired-but-trying-to be-enthusiastic voice, and it's become an oft-imitated catchphrase at family gatherings. This year Nanny found the best gag gift ever, which combined my kids' love of themed Monopoly games and my husband's love of my hometown. Isn't the box's design in all its Scituate historical society's archives glory exciting?

We had an intensely competitive game with the Phoenix Birds over Bloody Marys on Father's Day. Cindy and Audrey dominated.



I think Luke enjoyed himself.

Maybe he's just gotten better at faking enthusiasm.

Home school Summer school

After school got out, the girls and I sat down to formulate a how-to-stay-sane-while-waiting-for-our-trip-to-Scituate plan. One of my ideas was that every day we do a little school work at home. The girls had both come home with plenty of leftover supplies and I figured it would keep them busy and sharp. Guess who was super excited about this idea and has faithfully sat down everyday and written out her own assignments in her homework log and promptly completed them?

Guess who thinks the whole idea of home school summer school is pretty lame?

Guess who is just happy to have her sisters back home all day long?

Wow, that picture is blurry! I am starting to think that the intelligent auto setting on my camera is not so intelligent...

Want to see something really sad?

That's my flip-flop on the left. Lili's is on the right.
They are the same size!
How did this happen?!?! I swear it was just last week that I was trying to shove her fat little feet into baby shoes...

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.