FYI- A Great Find

The Peninsula Community Theatre has a fun upcoming Children's Theatre Season. Their rates are very reasonable, $7 a person per show, or you can buy season passes for $25 a person, which allows you to see all 5 of the upcoming plays. The season will have plays about American History, a caterpillar, King Arthur, a Christmas play, and a play about Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel. Dan and I went and saw 1776 performed here, and they did a wonderful job, it was well worth the $15 we spent on our tickets. For more information, you can go to their website http://www.pctlive.org/children.php

This year for Christmas they are performing The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which I would love to see (Dan, hint hint, Christmas gift :-) )

"Where were you. . ."

For those who know me well, you know I love country music, I love a good story, and country music is about story telling. I also love country because it often can capture so well the depth of emotion of so many of our life experiences. With yesterday being the Eighth Anniversary of 9-11, this song just touches my heart. It was written and is performed by Alan Jackson:



I took the kids to the zoo yesterday, to enjoy their company, get out of the house, and well just enjoy the beauty of the day. It was enjoyable to spend that time looking at God's creatures and to be around such beautiful gardens. The kids and I had such a good time, I'm glad I bought the year pass, so we can go as often as we would like.

After the zoo, we headed to our local 9-11 Memorial Walk. It was a beautiful, cool evening and their was such a spirit of camaraderie. The young lady pictured below, was one of the responders in the weeks following 9-11. She went to New York to relieve the firefighters there and to help in whatever capacity she could. She spoke about her experience there, and it brought me to tears, all the sadness of that time came back to me. Of course, in my memory that day has always stood out, but I had forgotten about the firefighters and police officers and the search effort that followed for several weeks. Its amazing how our memories fade. It was good to be reminded of the sacrifices so many made to help in the recovery effort.

Shopping for Older Kids

This past Saturday, the kids and I went shopping for some church clothes, as they had outgrown much of what was left in their wardrobe. Hiram needed a new white shirt and tie that didn't stop at his chest and Noleigh needed a new fall dress. This turned out to be a very interesting and eye opening experience for me.

It started at Macy's. Noleigh wanted to look and see if there were any dresses she liked there and of course the majority of the ones available were those sleeveless bubble dresses that are so popular right now. She kept asking for one of those, "Please, Mom, I can wear a sweater over it. . . .Please, Mom, I can wear a white t-shirt under it. . ." But, me being the mean, strict, mother I am asked her to wait until we could agree on a dress.

Hiram, after hearing us argue back and forth reminded us we were at the store to get HIM a new white shirt. We headed to the boys department and found them, when all of a sudden he realized the shirts came with clip-on ties and it was at that point I was informed that clip-on ties are for babies. I offered to buy him a real tie, but I was informed that he is not quite old enough for the real ties. He let me know that there are zip ties that look real and are easy enough for a boy his age to use and he asked if he could have one. My sweet son wants to wear a tie he can put on himself for church that looks real and here I am thinking about the financial cost (which really wasn't an issue as I was willing to purchase the real tie that cost the same amount of money). As I was looking in his big blue eyes, I knew my decision was already made, after all, what mother would be upset that her son WANTS and is ASKING for a tie to wear to church?

So we buy his zip tie, and he is happy that he will now look grown up on church on Sunday, but we were still having a difficult time finding Noleigh a dress. We headed to Penny's to see if there were any other options there. They had a much better selection to choose from, but Noleigh dislikes all of the different prints that are out right now. She doesn't like the peasant, mix and match look. She told me that all those colors are "just not right to look at." She found a simple brown dress she liked real well, but when we tried it on, we realized that the entire bottom of the dress was see-through. WHO MAKES DRESSES FOR LITTLE GIRLS THAT HAVE SEE-THROUGH SKIRTS? Unbelievable! So I finally decided on a simple, pretty, teal dress, but Noleigh didn't like it. I promised her that if she didn't like it when she tried it on at home (this was the Saturday before school started and I was done dealing with the crowds) we would return it for a new dress. Fortunately for me, we get home and it was a winner! Thank goodness... I will take pictures later this week of the kids in their nice new clothes. We are all happy, but for a while there I didn't think we would reach an agreement.

I guess I now know what I have to look forward to as they get older and continue to have their minds set on the kind of clothes they like.

Words from those who came before

You cannot bring about prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help little men by tearing down big men.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot establish sound security on borrowed money.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatred.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than you earn.
You cannot build character and courage by destroying men’s initiative and independence.
And you cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they can and should do for themselves.

William John Henry Boetcker (1873–1962)