Tizita to Tiara!

Quite embarassed to admit this, but I enjoyed watching Toddlers to Tiaras, the show about little girls in beauty pageants. For the most part, I enjoyed watching the moms who always seemed to be overweight, wanna be beauty queens. They would do the whole routine with their daughter from the audience. It was all so bizarre, but, like a train wreck I just could not look away.
Well, today, which by the by, just happened to be a most beautiful 70 degree spring day, we witnessed Tizita in action with her baton. She takes weekly dance, tumble, baton lessons at a studio in Oshkosh which specializes in getting the girls ready for beauty pageants. Now, Courtney has no desire for her daughter to be a pageant gal, but I tell you, Tizita has all the moves and if she had a flipper (fake teeth, necessary for pageants) and some fake hair, she could win it all.
She performed so well for us in the driveway and the whole time Courtney was doing the moves from her lawn chair. She reminded me of a true pageant mom except she isn't overweight.
John and I are so excited because next Tuesday we get to watch Tizita at her dance class! What a fun time that will be!

Like Grandpa, like granddaughter!

While Tizita and Courtney were here for their extended stay we headed over to Tribeca, a nice coffee/book shop in Watertown. Alissa joined us, too. Grandpa sat down in one of these chairs on the second floor looking out a big window on to Main St. The rest of us were looking around at all the children's books and other cool stuff. All of a sudden we noticed that Tiz had joined Grandpa. She was sitting just like him. It was so cute!

Here they are pretending to sleep complete with snoring. You know, Tiz may not be our biological granddaughter, but she sure has learned a lot of our mannerisms and expressions. It is an amazing thing to be a part of!

Let's Go Fly a Kite, take two

We have been enjoying a visit from Courtney and Tizita while Paul is in Norway on business. The weather has been just beautiful and John and I have been enjoying many outside adventures with Tizita. On Monday we took our Georgio Monkey kite down to the park and had some fun flying it. There was not a great amount of wind, but every once in awhile we could catch a breeze and the kite took off. Tizita had so much fun running around with the kite flying behind her.

Here she is running across the ball diamond with the kite up in the sky behind her.

And here is Georgio flying high. (Well, not so high to us, I guess, but it was high enough to please Tiz. This is the same kite we flew off our roof on St. George Island with Tizita. It was fun to get him up in the air again.

Here she it, string in hand while Grandpa watches the kite.

Just to show you we did manage to get Georgio pretty high!

It was a fun afternoon. I think it is just one of so many memories we are making together.

After our kite flying fun, we came up and relaxed with a root beer on our nice swing. First swing of the season.

Let's go fly a kite

I wanted to update tonight but I received the message that I cannot upload any more photos until I buy some more space for $5.00 a year from Picasa or Google or whatever so I will check on that tomorrow. In the meantime, know that we are having so much fun with Tizita and Courney spending a few days with us while Paul is in Norway. Today we flew our George kite at the park and those pictures will be here soon. I would do it tonight, but it is late and I am too lazy to go and get my charge card.

Rethinking my love affair with March

I was just rereading my posts from last March. I think I was a better writer a year ago, it is fun to go back and read what we were up to in March of 2009. One of my posts dealt with my love affair with the month of March, two posts later, I ate my words and no longer had such strong feelings for March.
Well, this year I am back in love with this wonderful month and the beautiful weather it brings with it! This week we have had temperatures in the high 50's and low 60's. The Preschoolers have been able to get outside everyday this week and oh, how we missed our playground time.
Today we were wearing the green for the Irish and just look at what Tizita wore to school today!
Her green wig and she kept it on all day!
Here she is with her green hair playing in the St. George sand.

And here she is playing on the playground. Hair still on and blowing in the breeze.

After school we took a nice long walk. Here we are in the St. Vinney's parking lot. Since Grandpa is unemployed he gets to join us on our Wednesday adventures and it is so nice to have him with us. If it weren't for the need for money to live, I could have him home all the time.

We ended up at the park in the subdivision by the hospital. I don't think this park has a name, but not sure. Here I am trying to climb up the tunnel. This feat was so easy for Tiz since she just used her feet to walk up, but my size was working against me here. She thought it was so funny to push me back down each time I made it to the top.

Here she is with her proud smile after pushing me back down! I think everytime we go back to this park I will be asked to climb up this tunnel.

Let the races begin. Here we are waiting for the "Go" word from Tiz.

Well, I think it is obvious who won this race. Just look at how John and I are getting up so slowly. We need to brush up on our sliding skills.

Here Tiz and I climbed the rock wall into this castle.

And once we returned home, it was time for a root beer!

Yep, I am in love with March again, best month ever. Check back in after the predicted snow this weekend. I am a fickle lover!

A week of Donkeys and Whales

It has been a very exciting week in Preschool. I don't know why this happened (probably poor planning on the teacher's part) but two very big, fun activities happened to fall during the same week. We rode our homemade donkeys and went whale watching all in the same week. From Jerusalem to the Arctic Ocean all in a matter of hours!
Tizita was a part of all the fun. She has changed so much since she started Preschool in September. She now enjoys playing with all her little friends and spends very little time around me like she used to. I love to just sit back and watch her interacting with them. I know how lucky I am to have my granddaughter in my class. It is very unusual for your grandma to be your Preschool teacher.
Anyway back to donkeys and whales. One of my parents said, "Did you ride the donkeys to the sea to watch whales?" I had to say, "No, silly, we rode the donkeys to Jerusalem and rode a boat to whale watch!"
We put on the play about Jesus riding into Jerusalem. Here Carsen (number 83) is playing the part of Jesus while Gavin and Tizita are the two disciples who had to go and untie the donkey for Jesus to ride. Here they are waiting patiently for their part in the play.

Here Jesus, Carsen is riding the donkey while the two disciples march behind him. The children on the chairs are waving palms and singing, "Hosanna."

Here Tizita is part of the group of people in Jerusalem waiting for Jesus to ride into town. They are holding their palm leaves. You may notice that Tizita has a plastic palm branch as opposed to the paper ones the other girls have. Well, that is my branch, but Tiz helped herself to it when my back was turned! Perks of being the teacher's granddaughter, I suppose.

After a few reenactments of the Bible story we all ride our homemade donkeys around the school and sing a few Hosanna songs. I think the kids remember this Bible story for a long time because of all the fun activities we do with the story.

Later in the day we rode our elevator boat to begin our whale watching trip. We ended up in the cafeteria on this other boat. Her we are looking through our binoculars trying to spot a few whales. It was a very successful trip since we all ended up with a paper whale to take home with us.

Such a fun week, add to that the beautiful weather and the world seems pretty good even though John is still unemployed. He has some irons in the fire though and I think something will come along when the time is right.

Another Pleasant Valley Saturday

I felt the need to post something new on here even though I am not so sure my heart is in blogging right at the moment. Bloggers block has hit or perhaps it is because there is not much to blog about that seems important enough to document.
Oh, wait you say, most of my stuff is not worth documenting. But at least it is something that I want to write down and remember someday. Onward...
Having an unemployed husband is nice in ways. John does laundry, cleans bathrooms, runs errands, and generally makes life easier for me. I think I will give him a few quick cooking lessons for next week, then I will really have it made. There is not much harder than a 55 year old man looking for work in a world that has no work available. We live in a very sad time and unfortunately John and I are at the wrong age, too young for social security and too old for much of anything else. In the same breath, we wonder what young couples with children do when they lose their jobs. At least we have our house! One thing we do not have at the moment is health insurance, we are not in any hurry to pick it up either. Enough on that for now.
We have received out first unemployment check and I am happy to report that our government is still pretty generous when it comes to taking care of us. Our classes at the Financial Peace University have also come in handy as we try to make our money stretch. We are definitely putting our lessons into practice.
We are becoming experts at shopping at Aldi and we actually enjoy all the money we save. The products are very good and the check out process is so quick! Last night we got all the fixin's for five meals this week, plus dinner last night and our necessary sweets all for $53.01. We did have to make a quick stop at Walmart where we spent another $20.00 on some necessary items like duck tape and Easter stuff, but all in all a pretty cheap night.
One other nice thing about John's lack of employment is that we can walk earlier in the day. The weather has been so nice lately and we have enjoyed three days of long walks. Tonight John is grilling up some burgers for our first cook out of the season. I better go get everything ready.
Despite our bleak financial circumstances, the first grilled burgers of the season always bring a smile to my face!