I should probably go to bed soon, but I'm wide awake. I hope that changes soon. I have to go up to Richmond - and back - tomorrow for Day One of the homeschoolers' convention. Tomorrow is just preliminary stuff, like learning how to homeschool, but for me, that's the crux of the matter, so I intend to be there. I planned to get a hotel room, and I still might for Friday, but we couldn't afford it for both nights. Friday and Saturday will be long days, starting early and ending late, so it kind of sucks that I have to drive home tomorrow night. But, such is life.
Anyway.
This afteroon, we all gathered up and went to Sophia's dance recital for her Creative Movement class.
Look, she is the tallest one in her class! Kind of funny, isn't it, since the other two are always the smallest in theirs? Rob whispered to me, "She gets that from her father... who isn't me." He can claim that all he wants, because there isn't a thing on her that she gets from him... except her blood type. And, well, her DNA. The rest is ALL Simmons (my maiden name, btw).
The recital, as always, was pretty cute. Here is a video of Sophie and the class singing "Where is Thumbkin?":
(Let me know if that works or if I need to change the way it's embedded. It looks weird on my screen.)
They do lots of fun things in that class, always with children's music that you probably know. Sophia has a blast. She is a bit of an attention whore right now, too. See where she's looking? Back at herself in the mirror. Chloë was exactly the same way at that age!
Here, they were doing a train song, and toot-tooting the horn. Sorry for the red eyes; these pix are unedited.
Jack was not heavily invested in the proceedings. He kept whining to me, "When is it over? When can we go out to the car? I'm hungry. I'm tired. I'm thirsty. Etc." At this point, he refused to watch any longer. Brothers!
They do a lot of "animal action" in this class, and this is Sophia pretending to be an elephant. She had a silly noise to go along with it!
I think she was a snake here. (No shoes, because she just outgrew them a couple of weeks ago, and I wasn't about to drop more cash for new shoes at the very end of the year!)
A frog. Sorry about the dirty wall; not my fault.
Here, all the girls kids are waiting for their end-of-class stickers. What I love about this is that for the last song & dance, all the siblings kind of spontaneously joined in, although Jack had to be urged at the last moment. It was great fun!
After the recital was over, it was picture time. Sophia took that to mean she should do a couple of sweet poses for Mommy's camera.
Sophia with her teacher, Miss Jessica. What a ham she is, look at that hand on her hip! Do you think she knows she's cute? It's kind of sad for me, because she plans to do gymnastics next year instead of continuing on with ballet, but she has such a natural affinity for dance that I won't be disappointed if she runs from the gym again, like she did two years ago. I think she'll be great at anything she does, though - she's just got a great physicality that I totally envy. Too bad she was unmotivated on the soccer field, because I think she could have been great at that, too!
We totally failed on getting her a mini bouquet of flowers, which is a post-recital tradition, so I was so pleased when another little girl gave Sophie one of hers! How sweet. And someone else gave her a Silly Bandz, which she also loved. I think those things are, well, dumb (and ugly!), but whatever. They're harmless.
Then she started gathering props and posing for Mama. Silly girl! There are a ton more pictures from the recital on my Facebook page, if you're interested. If we're not friends there, and you want to see, add me! I keep pix for friends only on there.
After that, Jack and Soap played on the ground next to the van while Chloë was in her Jazz class. Rob napped - sorta - and when he was awake and playing on his iPhone, I was busy peeling his back. He got a wicked sunburn the other day, which is horrible, but also a big gift to me, a born peeler. It's kind of like my crack cocaine. Poor Sophia's fingernails peel like crazy, and I am always attacking them! Anyway, what?
Oh.
Tonight was also Bunco night, so after we came home, I rushed through a shower and then mixed up some brownies to take with me. I always pick a dessert, but next time, I have a side and have no clue what to make. Hummus? Maybe. We'll see.
Tabitha, our everymonth host, now lives right down the road from me. I would have walked, but I was already a half-hour late, because the Brownies wouldn't cook through. And I had to carry five chairs, and my prize, and my Brownie pan, back home again. So Rob dropped me off and picked me up again when the night was over. Kind of wasteful, but necessary.
Bunco was a lot of fun this time. It usually is, but occasionally, it's kind of not. I had a bunch of caffeine onboard, though, so I was really into it. We had a lot of laughs, and I really enjoyed myself. Good times.
When I came home, I'd won a butter dish, so I decided to whip up some butter. We were out. I'd never made it before, but Rob had informed me that all I had to do was whip the crap out of some heavy cream, and it would turn into butter. I took his word for it and didn't bother looking up directions. I now know that I should have, but it's okay. Half-decent, anyway. Edible.
Here's the beginning, with the cream just dumped into the KitchenAid. How I love that thing. On top speed, it only took about 4 minutes from cream to whipped cream to butter to whatever I ended up with last.
You can see I overwhipped, and it started to get kind of curdy. And also, I tasted it at the stage after whipped cream but before butter, and it was quite bland, so I added two pinches of salt. Now I know I should have stopped at one pinch. Salty!
Sorry for the flash; it looked greyish without. That's my new butter dish, sans top. I like it! I also baked bread in the machine while I was at Bunco, and it finished at the same time as the butter, so of course I had to have a little of both together. I had improvised a bread recipe, just kind of throwing in some stuff willy-nilly, and it turned out great. I like it. It's a small loaf, though, so I'll have to make more this weekend.
And lastly, remember this sweater from a little while back, for CARE Package? I'm putting sets together now, so I decided to whip up a hat. It's the Puff Stitch Baby Hat, which I was glad to find on Ravelry, since the sweater also has puff stitches. Does it need a pompon? I can't decide. Next, of course, I'll improvise some puff stitch booties, and then a wee blanket. I think after that I'll move onto that pink kimono I made a while back and didn't love...
Okay. Off to get ready for the convention. Have a great Thursday!
Fin.
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