Thursdays

With the obvious exception of Sunday, Thursday is my favorite day of the week. There are no obligations on Thursday. Unless there's a dire emergency, I don't make appointments on Thursday, or do wash, or madly clean the house, or pack/unpack for weekends, or anything like that. Because we go to Wednesday night Bible study all clean and fresh, the kids don't need baths Thursday morning, and half the time I just let them wear the clothes they only wore for two hours the night before. I don't even chose clothes on Thursday!  Thursday night is spaghetti night, and while I'm not all that crazy over spaghetti, I sure can get behind a day when the most I have to think about supper is getting the sauce out to thaw.  I think Lovely Thursdays started back when Elliott had speech therapists and physical therapists coming a lot, and for some reason, it just was never on Thursday, and that day felt like a respite.  Now, I make a concerted effort to protect my Thursdays.  Through the magic of Thursdays, I lay down with an incipient headache this afternoon, and Elliott actually curled up and NAPPED beside me!  Thursdays aren't entirely magical, though-- neither Lincoln or Marilla saw the sense in napping at that point, so I had to slide out of bed and leave the sleeping Elliott there while I went and dealt with the other two.  I will miss my Elliott when he goes to school next year!

We DID have an appointment this Thursday evening.  We had to go watch Cheyenne be Mama Racoon in the seminal play "Chester Raccoon and the Bully" or some such thing.  It was heavy on Morals and Character, a little short on interesting lines or songs.  However, it was great fun watching the kids!

Cheyenne is at the end of the line.

For some reason, she was really cracking up here.

Singing!

Ah-ha!  Here's where I remembered to put my camera on the "fluorescent light" setting.  Much better!

Cracking up again!  I wish this wasn't blurry, it is just the cutest, funniest picture of her.

For her costume, Cheyenne was supposed to wear grey and black (raccoon colors) and then bows in her hair or something so people would know she was the mother.  Well, we had a grey shirt, and I unpacked a winter velvet skirt for the black touch, and she wheedled me into letting her wear her grown-up black high heels!  For the "bow" part, the only thing I could think of was the satiny belt for my pregnancy pajamas' robe.  Since it is generously sized for a fat girl's pregnant belly, we are talking a looooong ribbon.  I had to make a bow, and then make some bows in the tails of that bow.  I was kind of impressed with how cute it looked on her, but when I saw the paws hanging over the side of the raccoon mask, I realized there were just a few too many dangly things going on there!  Oh, well, she felt quite pretty.

For the final song, they all donned sunglasses and had toy guitars.  The kids were encouraged to play air guitar at several points in the song (though how you can really rock out to a song that contains the lines "Citizenship counts! Caring counts!  Character counts!" is a little beyond me.)  This is as jiggy as Cheyenne got the whole time.  I don't know if it's that there's been a lack of music videos in her life, or she just felt the whole thing was beneath her dignity, but while the whole class was whaling around like a grunge rock band, Cheyenne looked like she was playing for an acoustic program on NPR.  A sad mountain ballad, maybe.

This boy on the end took the prize for his air guitar moves.  The funny thing was, he's a fairly quiet little guy most of the time, but he spent the whole show bouncing around being the class clown.  It added some much-needed humor to the performance.

The whole class, at the end.  This play was kind of fun, because it was just their class, not all the other first grade classes, too.  So it was a pretty relaxed performance, with only the families of the kids.  It was nice to match some parents with kids, and learn some more of the kids' name.

Tomorrow, we're off to Evan's Aunt Sally's for the weekend.  It started out as an idea for a family reunion, but several people aren't able to make it, so it's just a nice Memorial Day weekend family affair.  We're looking forward to seeing everyone, and eating the mounds of yummy food it sounds like Aunt Sally has made.  So, enjoy your weekend off, remember those the holiday was for, and I'll be back next week!