Lois Lowry

I know I have said this aloud and in print before, but I love Charlottesville, Virginia. Love it! There is no place I'd rather live that right here at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Today after church I fed the boys a quick lunch of left over pizza from Friday's pizza/movie night and drove the 15 minutes into town passing a whopping 4 traffic lights to sit and listen to Lois Lowry at the Culbreth Theater on the campus of UVA. We had general admission tickets and arrived early enough to get 2nd row seats, which I knew would be key if the boys were going to have to sit still for yet another hour after the three hours of church they'd already sat through. We brought along four books of Mrs. Lowry's that everyone except Jonah has read: The Giver, Gathering Blue, The Messenger and Son. Earlier in the month Gavin read The Giver for the first time as part of his reading group at school and was so captivated by the story that in the next two weeks finished the other three books. So when the chance came up to see her in person, how could we resist. Jared was traveling at the time, but we kept him up with texts and a phone call afterwards knowing he would have loved to be there with us.

This event was part of the Virginia Festival of the Book which is a yearly celebration to promote reading and literacy as well as honoring the culture of the book. Kathryn Erskine (a reasonably well-known author from Virginia) and Lois Lowry both came out on stage for this afternoons session and sat in two soft chairs. Kathryn would be the interviewer of Lois for the next hour. As the questions began, Mrs. Lowry surprised me with her very casual body language, especially for someone who is 77 years old. She crossed her legs in a way more common for men and with her two hands behind her head talked about how she comes up with names of her characters: "with very few exceptions, the names just come to me when I see the charter in my mind" to her personal writing style and habits: she's not very routine other than usually having the beginning and the end of a story worked out before the coming up with the middle pieces that will tie them together. She said she loves to form words, then sentences, then paragraphs, then stories and that she knew from the time she was about 9 years old that she wanted to be a writer. She talked about the movie of The Giver that will be coming out this summer with a cast that includes Jeff Bridges as the Giver and Meryl Streep as the Chief Elder. I didn't even know the movie was coming out let alone casting one of my favorite actors, Jeff Bridges.

After getting our books signed, the boys thanked me for taking them and I'm grateful that they were able to put a face to the author of stories we all love. And if I were a betting woman, I'd put my money on Liam publishing something of his own one day and I wouldn't mind being in the audience listening to him when I'm 77 years old!

There was this amazing formation of saplings out front that people were observing and the boys were fascinated with for several minutes before Caleb make the poor choice of tagging someone.  It was wet and muddy and it was a work of art after all! So in the 5 seconds from the first tag Gavin and Jonah had fallen and slid and that was how we ended our lovely outing! Honestly!

The unexpected Winter Break II and St. Patrick's Day

This week the parents of school children in Albemarle County got to vote on how to work out getting in the required amount of school hours after having 10 days of cancelations from weather. We had the option to increase the time in school each day, attend Saturdays or apply to the state for a waiver to let us out of two of the ten days. The vote was to apply for the state waiver, but I'm pretty sure that will all be good for nothing because at the moment we are in another snow storm with an expected 6-12 inches of snowfall. The cold temps will likely keep us out for another two, maybe three days. Good thing we bought ski passes at Wintergreen this year as we have certainly made the most of them!

We planned a dinner with friends tonight after the violin recital for Jonah and Liam. All native Westerners, they braved the falling snow to get to our house. We enjoyed some great salmon, "Bang-Bang" shrimp made by Caleb and Liam, and warm chocolate chip bars as well as some other yummy sides. It just felt great to share a meal again with friends as we've been on an unintentional hiatus from company for far too long.

In the recital earlier in the day, Jonah played May Song by Suzuki and Liam played Millionaire's Hoedown by H. Clebanoff. Liam's song was very lively and even got a few muted hollers from the crowd. Their teacher is a very tightly wound woman during the recitals (contrary to her more easy going nature in lessons), and Jonah and Gavin and another little girl got an earful from her for shuffling their paper programs, so when a friend of ours gave that little hoot during Liam's performance, I totally expected a reprimand from her at the end of Liam's piece, but she held her tongue. Whew.....

This morning Jonah was thrilled to discover the green toilet water and milk from the tricky Leprechauns! The boys are now into a heavy morning game of Settlers of Catan and I'm pretty sure Jared is going to take on the job of breakfast unless Caleb beats him to it. It's still snowing and we have about 6-8 inches and with a little of that green luck we'll have clear road to ski this afternoon. Our awesome neighbor has already come by to plow our driveway which we did with shovels in the last storm when he was flying (he's a pilot). That was an exhausting experience I hope to not have to repeat this year!

First Birthday of the Year

On Saturday, Caleb turned a whopping 14 years old which simply means that in two short years this kid is going to be driving. That day might feel like it did when he turned 12 and we suddenly had an in-house babysitter that we didn't have to prearrange with or do the pick-up/drive-home routine! A new sense of freedom from all the driving around I (we) do. But until then, we'll stick with being 14 being that I'll honestly be a nervous wreck when he finally does get behind the steering wheel.

This was the year that a party felt strange and maybe too childish, so we stopped pressing him on having one and I came up with the idea of inviting some friends ski with him on his birthday. I was so relieved to see that he was excited with my plan and I understand his reservations about having a party. Caleb has great friends, but not a tight-knit group of buddies he's been friends with for years. In fact, he tends to wander between groups and so the thought of inviting people from different groups just made him feel awkward.

So Saturday morning Jared picked up a few friends from his soccer team. I brought the other boys and we met them at Wintergreen for what will likely be our last ski day now that the temps are in the 60's. The brothers promised to not be "pestery", and they did a great job keeping that promise. But, Caleb's friends were all very interested in the little dudes and engaged them in all sorts of conversation and even a little teasing with Liam about girlfriends. It was a great day and I could tell that Caleb was so happy with how things turned out.

Here are a few things I'd like to remember about you Caleb:

1. You wake yourself up every morning at 6:15 (mom and dad are still in bed) and practice your piano before the rest of us get up for scriptures at 7:00.

2. You are a very happy person. You like your brothers you like me and Dad and I keep waiting for the horror stories of teenage adolescence to start up, but they really haven't. I keep waiting for you to want to spend more time with your friends and less time with us, but you haven't done this either. I'm so grateful that we are your home base in so many respects.

3. You laugh easily with those around you and love to come up with sarcastic phrases or comments that then circulate among the brothers for a month or two before a new phrase comes along. And your sarcasm isn't the mean, cutting kind, it's making fun of funny things.

4. You still love Napoleon Dynamite and quote the movie almost daily.

5. You are an amazing musician. Your first love is the drums and you were over the moon to get 4 new Zildjian cymbals for your birthday. Your second love is the piano and now that we have the Steinway, I hear you taking your playing up to a whole new level. And finally you enjoy the cello and you are currently the 2nd chair cellist in the Evan's Orchestra. Frankly, it's amazing that you keep all these balls in the air.

6. You shave about once a week. I know it's embarrassing to talk about, but it's a fact and like Gavin said in his birthday card: "Woweee, when you turn 14, you sure grow a lot of peach fuzz....."! And Caleb, you always take it in stride, never letting their comments get under your skin!

7. You really like to play, like shoot hoops, throw the football, kick the  soccer ball around, jump on the tramp kind of play. Physically and emotionally you need something active when you get home from school and after you've had your giant bowl of cereal, usually Rice Krispies with no sugar sprinkled on top, you are out the door.

8. Speaking of Rice Krispies, they are one of your all-time favorite foods in addition to white sticky rice with anything Asian on top, ebelskivers that you make most Saturdays during the off-season of soccer or when we don't have 9:00am church, popcorn, waffles with syrup and whipped cream, kale, cooked cabbage, and most veggies except salad...I cannot get you to eat a salad for anything! You also like most fruits except strawberries which you say make your stomach feel weird. You have lost your taste for hamburger and most beef and prefer either chicken, fish, or soy products like tofu or texturized vegetable protein. You drink milk to quench your thirst despite my disapproval. Water, water, water :). Oh, and gum. I'm not sure you can go a day without it, sort of like your mother!

9. You love to read and just finished up and engaging series titled: Beyonders by Brandon Mull that kept you off your iPad for several days!

10.You are pushing yourself in soccer with this travel team and hoping to earn a spot on the Western High School team.

11. You have a group of friends you eat lunch with. You have a group of friends you hang out with in your two band classes: jazz and symphonic. You have a group of friends from orchestra. You have a group of friends from church. You have soccer buddies. But most of these friends do not intersect with each other except a few people who cross between lunch/church or orchestra/church/band, but all of them think you are great!

12. You are one of my favorite people to be with and I know Dad feels the same way. We are pretty lucky to be the parents of such a kid! Happy 14th Birthday!

You love Maruchen Ramen noodles which I refuse to buy because of the crazy amounts of junk in them. But at the book fair for Jonah and Gavin we found this recipe book and couldn't resist. Then I found the organic noodles with just a few ingredients and bought you a case. You were thrilled!!

Do you see that crazy scar on your elbow? Yes, it will likely be there when you are 65 years old only it will be all wrinkled and loose. DO NOT PICK YOUR SCABS CHILD!

Checking out the new Zildjian cymbals:

JRR Tolkien

In the 4th grade at our school, the kids pick a famous person and put together a "living museum" about their life. Gavin picked JRR Tolkien from a handful of great options he had come up with. He spent several weeks on this project learning about Mr. Tolkien and putting together a time line of his life (in the background of the first photo). He was most surprised to learn that Mr. Tolkien had two books that were in the top 10 grossing books of all time: The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings as well as learning that he formed a literary group at Oxford with another well know author:  C.S. Lewis called the Inklings. In addition to the time line he had create a speech to recite when parents would come and push his "start" button. He was fabulous as he spoke with an English accent, sucked on his real tabacco-free pipe, and paused to contemplate what to say next as that too was part of his "script".

I present the young JRR Tolkien: