We started our day with the early morning
wake-up to see Dad off on his way to the city, and while we’re going to miss
him while he’s away; my strongest thoughts while we were doing that were about
how little time I actually spent with Dad over this past week while we were
both busy with other things. It’s funny
how it sometimes takes saying goodbye to someone to pay attention to things
like that; though I should also be honest and suggest that not much could
change with that even if we thought about it all of the time. I’m sure that most people can relate.
The goodbye breakfast visit with Dad was
fun, though, and so was the cuddle time with Mom and the twins when we had our
little nap before needing to get up and going again. Michael came over for Tai Chi, but then went
home again to have breakfast with his family; and we had a quiet rest of the
morning before I went to meet up with him, Rowen, and Rebecca to walk to school
while Mom took Ethan and Ehlana in tow and headed for the lab.
Now that we’re down to just days before the
Christmas break, it’s mostly time for fun at school. Michael and I have two or three music
practices a day to deal with for the younger kids for the first few days this
week plus the pageant on Thursday afternoon; and we’re mostly just doing games,
movies, or other fun projects during the rest of the time each day. While that kept us entertained all day, there
wasn’t really anything newsworthy to report from any of that; so I’ll move
right along to the post-school part of the report.
For Michael and I, that started out with helping
out at the Inn for a few hours after school.
The Christmas dinner parties are going on every day now – and some
lunches too; so the Inn is much busier than usual. Since Monday and Tuesday are two of the days
when a lot of the staff get their days off after working all weekend; that
makes it tough to cover the extra work – which is why Jacob, Miranda, Jake, and
Stephanie were all working too. Rebecca was
busy with a basketball game tonight, and I feel bad that we haven’t gotten to
one of her games yet; but the timing of her games so far just isn’t working
with my schedule so far.
We did get to see Violet and Dillon for a
little while because they’d stopped in at the Inn to congratulate Jake and
Stephanie on their engagement and have a little visit with them before going to
have dinner with Dillon’s family. They’re
staying here at our house tonight so that they could spend some time with Mom,
Ethan, Ehlana, and me before Mom goes to the city tomorrow; but I’ll get to
that part of my update in a minute. They
also stopped in Crystal Springs and had lunch with Dad on their way here form
Woodvale; so they’ve already packed a lot of travel and visiting into their
holiday so far.
Michael and I worked at the Inn through
until all of the prep work for the night was done and all of the dinner parties
meals were delivered and then we had our own meal before moving on to my house
to meet up with Rowen and Tim for a music practice. Tim only needed to practice our pageant song
with us, and then he played video games with Ethan and Ehlana while Michael,
Rowen, and I practiced both our band songs for the pageant and music for the
Christmas concert at the church on Sunday night. Rowen and Tim are both involved with that
through the skits side of the program; but Rowen was also asked to add a bit of
flute music here and there too. Since we’re
doing the full dress rehearsal tomorrow night; Michael and I wanted to make
sure that we’re ready for that too. We
did our homework too, but it could barely be called work; and didn’t take long
to finish.
Michael did a bit of gaming with Tim and
Ethan after we finished our music practices, but they didn’t do that for long
because Violet and Dillon came over and we all went downstairs to spend some
time with them. Rowen and Tim left
first, and Michael stayed until a bit after ten; but then we all pretty much
called it a night after that anyway. The
last highlight of my day was a half-hour long girl chat with Violet and Ehlana
while Ehlana was being tucked in for the night; and then I came up to my room
and left Mom alone with Violet and Dillon for a last little visit before they
all turned in for the night too.
Violet and Dillon are in Violet’s usual
room next to mine as I write this; but that doesn’t seem strange to me anymore –
and they’ll be staying together throughout the holidays at our house, his, or
while they’re visiting in Woodvale. I
don’t know what they’ll do next summer; but I am sure they’ll figure out a way
to be together – probably either here or at Dillon’s house. I’ll hope for the ‘here’ on that one; but we’ll
see what happens.
I’ve done my usual bedtime computing; took
care of a bit of family business work; and didn’t have to worry about archive
homework because Mom skipped my lesson tonight.
That’s pretty much it for the news for today; so let’s do the Christmas
music video pick and then call it a night.
With the pageant coming up on Thursday, I’m
going to include some of the songs the kids will be singing; so let’s start
that out with one that’s going to be very cute – and probably an audience
favorite. The arrangement we’re doing is
a bit different than the video from the Christmas show, but we do have the boys
and girls taking the parts of the song that Holly and Hal sing; they’re going
to use the video on the big screen in the background; and the kids will all
have moose antlers. Michael and I will
lead the boys and girls respectively as well as playing; but we’ll try to keep
as quiet as we can while also still keeping the kids on-track for the
song. Hopefully it’ll be as entertaining
as I think it is during our practices.
May the Magi Force be with you!
