A Lifelong Ambition, Fulfilled

I have always wanted to make homemade bagels. Now I have:

They were delicious for Christmas luncheon!!

Merry Christmas To You

What should I tell you about? The fit that Rose #2 threw right before we had to leave? She didn't want to wear her black clothes (king's page) under her white clothes (Heavenly Host). "It feels weird..."

Or Rose #3 marching right in to put on her costume and twirl and charm all assembled, including the 5:30 Mary (who Rose #3 kept calling "Jesus," and then saying, "I get mixed up!")?

Or Rose #1 gamely putting on her children's choir/graduation gown and white stole?

Or me, sitting in the pews watching it all and being brought back to when I was a little girl, doing the exact same thing as my daughters are doing now?

Merry Christmas to all of you.  I hope you are all having a wonderful day of family, good food, and even a few presents.

If It's December 23rd...

It must be the Christmas pageant rehearsal at church! I remember in years past feeling like I had just barely been able to escape work. One year I even met Aunt Brenna at the door at Unity; she had been nannying for us for the week and the end of her week was delivering the girls to the pageant rehearsal.  I remember she looked distinctly relieved when I finally showed up!

Anyway, this year we have Rose #3 as a Heavenly Host (if you look very carefully you will see that she has candy cane tattoos on her neck):

We also have a repeat appearance as a King's Page.  Rose #2 is a page to the Green King this time (last year she was purple):

Rose #1 is in the Children's Choir.  No photos of her today since the choir doesn't have to come to pageant rehearsal.  Such is the passage of time that Rose #1 stayed home during the rehearsal, most of the time with H but also part of the time alone while he ran errands.  I remember when Rose #1 was one of the cherubs, a 4-year-old with her Guppy sitting proudly in the pews at the 5:30 service.  Sigh.

This year I am not the parent chaperone in the Heavenly Host room at the 4:00 service.  I am the parent chaperone with the children's choir at the 4:00 service.  I am OK with change, truly I am.  As we were waiting for the group photo of the pageant case I heard Rob, our minister, describing to someone how one year he changed the script of the pageant at the very end.  There is a little bit of a prayer at the end, and the final words are "The Work Of Our Hands, Establish Thou It."  Rob changed it to, "The Work Of Our Hands, Establish Thou The Work of Our Hands."  This caused much angst - you just don't change the pageant.  I guess sometimes you have to change the room in which you are the parent chaperone, though.

Rose #3 and I Went Shopping

Sometimes you just have to take your girly girl shopping for a new Christmas dress...

As we were trying on all 5 candidates in the dressing room, I got the idea to show Rose #3 what she looked like in each of the dresses!  And then I had a memory of watching the movie Clueless where Cher takes Polaroids of herself each of her outfit concepts to see how they look.  A star was born (in purple):

This one was my favorite (since it is a Christmas dress, after all, and it came WITH the cardigan):

I like the little cap sleeves on this one:

This was Rose #3's pick...can you tell from the way her eyes cut to the side in a flirtatious manner?

In the end, we compromised on this one, and somehow this is the picture that ended up looking the blurriest.  A pity, but cute even though blurryish: On one hand, Rose #3 really doesn't need any more dresses. She has a number of very cute ones in her closet. On the other hand, it is very nice to be able to get a new dress at Christmastime. We are lucky that we can do that.

Still Here

Sometimes I get just overwhelmed with sadness about Guppy's death, and then the thought of writing about anything is too overwhelming. That happened in mid-November, in the midst of my optimistic attempt at NaBloPoMo, and then I just couldn't stand to even pull up my blog for a few weeks. Why is grief so unexpected and sudden and all encompassing sometimes?

But we're still here, never fear. I have a treasure trove of pictures from Christmas dress shopping with Rose #3. Do you remember the movie Clueless where the Alicia Silverstone character had to take pictures of her potential outfits to see how they might look? That's a preview of the photos that await you. Rose #3 found 5 - yes, 5 - potential dresses and I gamely took a picture of each one in the dressing room at Herberger's. Which Rose #3 got confused and called Burger King. You had to be there, I guess, but it was funny.

More to come. We're still here. We're still grieving and sad. I'm told that I'll be that way my whole entire life. Can't wait.

Tired Thursday

Don't take too long brushing your teeth, or Rose #3 might fall asleep on you:

And my little reader, Rose #2, actually took to her bed when requested and is reading a storybook:
Rose #1 (Hat Hair!) is the lone rebel who is not in her bed yet:
We had all three Roses' conferences over the past week. Rose #1 is a very earnest student. Her reading level is very advanced, and she works hard in math and excels in phy ed. Rose #2 got high reading marks as well and is advancing as a mathematician. Her Visual Arts scores were her highest scores. Rose #3 is a big, big helper in kindergarten. She is doing so well on her reading: she knows all the sight words on the kindergarten wall, and tonight she filled out a counting sheet on which she counted to 100! (I love how little kids make their 9s backwards. So cute.)

I am always relieved when conferences are over and everyone is on track. Are the teachers evaluating us at the same time they evaluate the girls? I don't know how they can help but do that. I certainly would, in their shoes. We have really been blessed with excellent teachers so far, and this year is no exception.

When Left To Our Own Devices...

We did fuse beads last night!

Mine is the car (boring). I wanted to use the square, but I was outflanked. I didn't think I could top the brown dog - isn't is clever? The star and heart were already in use. Sigh. Fuse beads are actually pretty fun, whichever shape you get.

Rose #2 kind of guilted me into playing with the kids last night - why I didn't post actually - and it made me reflect that I hardly ever do actually get to just sit down and play with them. My mother never played with me either. Now that I am the mom, I guess I understand: I always, always, always have something to do - laundry! Picking up! Making lunches for tomorrow! Work work! I guess my mom always had something to do times 7; mine is just times 3. Plus working full time. Maybe that equates to 7.