Alicia's Weekend Project

Saturday morning, pretty much first thing Alicia decided she was going to write a book. I didn't really think much of it but then I start getting calls for help.... she's got Photoshop up on the computer and is trying to figure out how to delete something she didn't like off the cover. I help, go away and then I get another plea for help a few minutes later.... "Mommy, the cover's done, how do I get to the first page so I can start writing?" After trying to explain the basic differences between Photoshop and Word, I opened up a Doc for her to start in.

Here is how she spent the majority of the rest of the weekend...

Hi, I am Christian and my sister’s name is Elizabeth. I am a traveler with my Mom. Elizabeth stays with Dad. Mom has two bags, so does Dad. Mom has a bag for her clothes and the other bag has her tools. One night we went to see Elizabeth and Dad but when we got there Dad was not there. Elizabeth said he was getting dinner so we waited there till Dad got home. We had a yummy diner. When we were done with diner Mom said she would clean. Dad said he was going to the Lydia Museum. “No, not that museum,” said Mom. “That one is too dangerous.” “No it is not dangerous,” Dad said and he walked out the door like nothing happened. Mom followed Dad and she hugged Dad as if Mom knew what was going to happen. Then we all got in the car except Mom. After Mom got in the house we took off. When we got there we saw two people. They were coming toward us. Elizabeth was not scared. I was scared. But when they got to us they didn’t seem too creepy, they seemed friendly, at least one did. There was a woman and a man. The man said “come this way sir and ma’m and you sir.” We followed him into a room. The woman took Dad’s clothes bag. She was reaching for Dad’s tool bag. Dad saw her reaching for his bag. He said, “I’ll keep this one.” When we came in our mouths dropped. The room was huge. There were statues of Egyptian gods and in the center of the room was a box with a stone. The stone was blue, almost glowing it was so beautiful. The woman said, “We will leave you. I will give you the rules and don’t break any of the rules and they left. “Okay, so what do we do now,” I said. Dad said, “I need you to turn around for a minute.” So I turned around and Elizabeth turned around. We waited till Dad said it was okay to turn around. He handed a chain to me, it felt heavier than a chain should feel. Dad said to follow the two people who let us into the room and he told us to lock Joseph, the museum keeper, up. We followed the man in to his office and he shut the door and we chained Joseph’s door up. And after we locked his door up we went back to the big room that the man took us when we got there. Dad was turned around looking at the stone. I realized Dad was writing on the stone. And he was writing “open”. I was a little scared. Then the stone exploded. I woke up to find a piece of the stone in my mouth. I spit it out of my mouth. I looked at Dad but he was looking at something else something in front of us. I held my breath. Something was standing in front of us. Dad said, “how many did I release?” “You released all eight.”

That's where she left off for now (granted I did edit slightly for some sentence structure and grammar/spelling issues but not much.... except for maybe the spelling part, she is after all, my daughter) ... slightly more than the couple of sentences on each page with a big picture that I was thinking was the plan. She wants to finish it, draw the pictures for it and turn it into a real book that will be in bookstores and libraries and people can buy.

Can you tell what book we listened to twice on cd last week? Another hint.... the title of her book is "The Red House".

Spring at School

In addition to the play, May had lots of other fun goings on at Alicia's school. They had a karate instructor come and do workshops with them for a few weeks and then they put on a demonstration for family and friends that could come out - mostly I think the kids just thought it was pretty awesome to get to walk around without their shoes!
They also had their Spring Concert. Thankfully it was only the younger grades this time. The kids all had fun and sang their hearts out!

Saying Goodbye to Andy

Mark's father Andy passed on May 5 this year. In one way it was very expected in another sudden and shocking. After all that we've been through I can honestly say that I don't think anything really can prepare you or make you feel prepared for those kinds of moments. He is really an amazing man and I wish I would have had the chance to know him better. My memories of Andy are of a man who loved to tell stories and remember the past. I think his favorite story to tell was about how his father ferried their big car (maybe a Cadillac) across the Atlantic and then had to maneuvered it around the much narrower streets of Europe doing genealogy. He was always fascinated by learning and was always researching things or listening to various news reports and other ideas and soaking it all up. It was obvious by the remarks made at the funeral that many of his hobbies had been passed down to his children - mostly a love of computers, genealogy, and nature that included hiking, fishing, and gardening. Andy was an ophthalmologist by profession following in the footsteps of his father. One of the things that was also spoken of at the funeral that I thought was a very poignant remark was that he had often compared his accomplishments to those of his brother who was a world-renowned paleontologist and felt that he came up short. In reality Andy's work blessed the daily lives of many people in remarkable ways, helping to improve their eyesight and allow them to see.

The upside of it all was that for the first time in at least a decade all five of his children were gathered together and enjoyed a few days with each other.

On Stage

May began with all the regular insanity - a play! Alicia was in the school production of Hatshepsut. Our friend was the director and she was amazing in pulling everything together with so many munchkins running around. I didn't get any pictures of the play (somewhere I think Mark has some video) because I was helping out backstage but in rehearsal I did get this one of "the sisters" - Alicia and her really good friend. The girls had a blast working together and Alicia and Ryan filled the house and the car singing the songs from the play (yes, so now at 4 Ry is fully aware that the Nile flows north).

More Art with Alicia

One of the things Alicia's enjoyed this past year is the Pixie Hollow website. Part of it includes real life quests to complete. A few of these have included drawing pictures and Alicia's had a really great time using her imagination for them. Here are some of them that she did during March.

The first one was a quest to imagine what you would look like if you had a buggy antennae.The next was to draw a picture of the most amazing birthday cake you could think of having. Then the quest was to draw a picture of someone you know as a fairy.

Happy Belated Birthday Alicia

All About Alica

Names: Lesha, Leash, Buggy, Princess, Pumpkin, Sissy

Favorite Activities: drawing, knitting, playing with clay, playing computer games, watching movies, playing with the I-Pod, dancing, gymnastics, swimming, playing on the playground, listening to stories

Favorite Foods: corn dogs, Japanese, Chinese, garlic bread, desert toast, bagels, mayo (don't ask)

Major Accomplishments this year: increased reading, a great job with 1st grade, learning some cooking skills, learning to knit

Major Memories this year: going to Dinosaur Tracks, visiting the Eric Carle Museum, visiting the beach, helping with some clean-ups for Green-up Day and at the beach, getting in trouble at school for hiding after recess


For her birthday this year she got to take some cupcakes into her class on the last day before Spring Vacation. Then she got to have her birthday with the traditional birthday dinner - corney dogs (again!) The weekend after we had a party with the 1st grade girls from school. Another round of cupcakes were called for as Alicia's birthday cake pick was a rainbow of mini-cupcakes. The weather for once was actually really nice and although we did some crafts a lot of the fun was just letting them run and have a good time together at the playground. She had a great time with all her friends and really enjoyed all the fun and presents.

Summer Updates

So Spring and Summer haven't been much of what we expected at all to say the least. Despite that things have been pretty good. It's funny because I feel like I make a goal of updating the blog whenever I start to get the chaos under control and then something happens and it's back again. Hoping for a little better luck this time :-) Anyways... officially back with some spring and summer fun before fall really starts to show!