date night...

Nope... not me and Jeff.... it was another daddy-daughter date night...
(the red dress got another night out!)

Saturday night, Jeff took Clara out on a date. They started out with dinner at the Pump Room and then went to see the Joffrey Ballet's Winter Fire. She had such a special night! What a lucky little girl to have a daddy who takes her out to share something that she's so passionate about... ballet!

presidents' day weekend...

For Presidents' Day weekend, we went back up to our house in Michigan. It was good to get away again together. This time of year gets crazy and stays crazy all the way until we put them on the bus to camp in June!

We got in late Friday night. Jeff and the kids got up early to ski Saturday morning. After lunch I walked over to watch them do the Nastar Races. I only took the flip, not my camera. I guess I'm still feeling the ski/snowboard photo overload from winter break and didn't want to add any more to it :-)

Neither kid had a great day time-wise, they both just earned racer pins from their runs...
... but they still had fun and Jeff and I could really see an improvement in their technique (especially Alex).

Once back at the house, we decided to break out the puzzle Alex had gotten at Christmas...

... my parents had bought it for him on our trip to Wisconsin in August.

That night and the next morning the trio skied some more. Sunday afternoon, we were all going to try cross country skiing. However, Jeff called from the ski rental and said that he had been told that none of the beginner trails were open due to a lack of snow. He said that the kids were insistent on giving it a go, so he would still take them. It was up to me if I wanted to go or not, but he wouldn't suggest it. Well... I'm so glad I didn't go!!! An hour or so later, the kids come bursting into the house yelling "dad needs ice... dad needs ice!!". And boy did he! His knee was about twice it's normal size! Apparently, the trail they went on had lots of little hills and none of them knew how to stop! They all took decent tumbles. Alex was okay... Clara had pretty good bruises all around one knee... but it was Jeff who got the worst of it. We all decided to take it easy the rest of the afternoon.

Mango found out how much she enjoyed hanging out in front of the fire...
... she could barely keep her eyes open.

The kids wanted to play in the snow and sled, however, we had forgotten to pack their snow boots! Now that things are going on clearance, I'm on the hunt for cheap boots a size or so too big so we can just keep them up at the house for next winter.

After dinner, the kids wanted to ski some more, so Jeff drove them over and picked them up a couple of hours later. They're so lucky to have each other to pal around with! :-)

And then, one last photo...
... the kids on their laptop on Monday morning before we started getting the house ready to lock-up.

It was such a great weekend together... except for Jeff's watermelon sized knee, of course! :-)

behind again...

We were away for the weekend and I have photos to post, but I'm running behind as usual. So, another bullet point list will have to do for now...

1. Alex is home for his first sick day. He's doing better today, at least the fever is gone that he had when he got home last night, but he's pretty congested.

2. Alex picked a bad day to be sick. His homebase teacher just emailed me to let me know that Alex had been recognized as a "Shining Example" this morning during their morning meeting. Very proud of that boy!

3. Clara is about a week away from her solo festival for flute. We're seeing progress! Thankfully, I have retained some basic flute knowledge and have been able to help her some. :-)

4. Over our weekend away, I got totally hooked on the show Downton Abbey. I had seen people talking about it on facebook, but I hadn't checked it out for myself until now. I've finished season one on Netflix, now I'm watching season two on the PBS site. I'm going to be sad when I'm all caught up!

5. Alex got the cast list for the upcoming show with School of Rock. He's playing guitar on three songs and singing lead vocals on two!!! He was totally shocked to have lead vocals! He'll also be playing guitar on those songs, so now he needs to practice playing and singing.

6. Clara made her final summer decision this week... choosing her usual, beloved summer camp over ballet. The decision is getting tougher and tougher for her, but her time at camp is time well spent. It is such a great atmosphere with great people, plus she's just a kid and needs to have time to run and play!

Okay... my patient calls!

fall flag football...

In the fall, Alex played flag football on a team for the first time...
This was his very first day. This league worked well for us since there was no separate practice day. Practice was for an hour before the game....
These are the only photos Jeff took...
... because shortly after these were taken...
... Jeff found out that he was going to be coaching Alex's team! :-)

msu football...

Jeff and Alex always try to go to at least one Michigan State football game in East Lansing each year. These are Jeff's pics from their trip in September (?)...

On campus, ready to go to the game...
(I didn't give Jeff proper photo credit in the photo above, I was on autopilot and didn't think that it was worth redoing)

Alex with his game face on...
Looks like Grandpa found it a little frightening :-)

Alex with Grandpa and Grandma...Alex again...
Oh look! It's Alex...
The view from their seats...

backstage at boris and a birthday...

A couple of random photos from the little camera...

The boys cracked me up. Anytime anyone had any piece of technology, they would all gravitate that direction and then stand over the person...
Honestly, they were the most laid back, easy to deal with group as long as at least one of them had something electronic! LOL!

Oh... and do you like Alex's pants? The boys were supposed to wear dark colored pants under their costumes. Alex had come straight from school, so he had on his light colored uniform pants. He had to roll them up so they wouldn't show.

A snap from Clara's birthday lunch at American Girl...
Since we moved back to Chicago, this is a tradition every year. We have always gone on her actual birthday in the past, but this year we went on one of her days off of school in October. Grandpa and Grandma Michigan were there to share the day. Just brought the point and shoot since we had some serious birthday shopping to get done that day :-)

thanksgiving weekend...

Thanksgiving weekend we were at our house in Michigan. I had my big camera with me most of the time, but on Friday night the resort had a Holiday Trail thing going on and I just grabbed the little camera.

For the Holiday Trail, you followed a map and stopped at different locations around the resort. The kids made body scrub at the spa, and made ornaments at the ski rental for example. I took exactly two photos.

By the pool we found Santa...
This ended up being our sole Santa pic of the season. Yes, I later got a photo of Santa on the Santa Train, but this is the only one with the kids.

Also, at the pool you could make s'mores...
... so yummy! This was probably Alex's favorite stop.... except for maybe the ski rental were he got eggnog... the kid LOVES eggnog. :-)

back to boris...

I debated about what order to post the photos from little camera and I finally decided to just go with the most recent ones first and then work backward.

The last photos before the daddy daughter dance were from Boris at the Lyric. The day the decided to do group photos, I didn't have my big camera, but thank goodness my little one was in my purse.

The boys of Boris in their dressing room...
And now hamming it up in the rehearsal room...

They really had a lot of fun together and get so excited about working with each other! The boy on the far left was also in Macbeth with Alex. This was Alex's first time to be in a show with the boy second from the left. Same with the boy second from the right, however, the boy's dad was Alex's stage dad in Macbeth and the dad also sings in the choir at our church. This was Alex's third show with the boy on the far right... two with the Lyric and another show they both did with Redmoon a couple of years ago. He was particularly good friends with the boy who was the cover for this show, they also were in Macbeth together.

Once in the rehearsal room, some of the adult supers started wandering in...
Soon, almost the whole super cast was in the rehearsal room. I had been handed so many cameras by the various women in the cast, that I took photos with their cameras, forgetting that I wasn't using my own! I finally remembered my own camera, but by then the group shot was breaking up.

A photo of Alex and his stage mom for that show...
(I'm bummed that I got her with her eyes closed!) She kept referring to Alex as "my little Russian prince, Alexei" :-) The costumes for the women were just gorgeous!

scenes from the dance...

Jeff took my little camera to the dance with him. You may remember that I lost.... ummm.. misplaced my cord to that camera some time this summer. Well... I finally gave up looking for it and on Sunday we picked up a little card reader just for this camera! Wow... I found quite a backlog of photos when I went to download these. So, you may be seeing some random old photo posts for a while :-)

Anyway... here we go...

Clara and friends...
Apparently glow necklaces are very versatile. First they were crowns/headbands/hats...
Then a giant ring...
And in the videos Jeff has on his phone, I saw that, at one point, they were being used as a jump rope! I'll have to get the videos from Jeff... they crack me up... the girls were having so much fun dancing!

Although, Clara does not seem to be having much fun being photographed by her dad...
:-)

And finally a formal shot of the crew...
Like I said before... it is such a fun tradition! I just wish we would have discovered it when they were all a little younger!

(FYI... my girl is tall! One might think by looking at this photo that she is the oldest. In age order, she is smack dab in the middle of the five (two older, two younger), with the oldest being about 15 months older than her.)

The Chicago Theatre

Backtracking a bit.

Back in January, the kids in Clara's level at ballet were invited to take a special private tour of the Chicago Theatre before class. I went along as one of the parent chaperones. Do you think I would turn down an opportunity to take photos inside a really cool Chicago landmark? :-)

However, once again, I only brought one lens and it wasn't the best one for every situation. And I hadn't felt like dragging my flash along, so I did miss some shots because of that as well.

The chandelier in the lobby...
I've only been to the Chicago Theatre to see shows, so it's always been dark enough inside that I missed a lot of the details...
Clara and I were there last summer to see Steve Miller Band.... oh how I love Steve Miller Band :-) (Clara, sadly, did not feel the same way.)

Clara listening intently to our guide...
When the Chicago Theatre first opened, it was a silent movie theatre. This is the original organ...
... it even includes buttons for the sound effects used during the movies!

After looking at the main part of the theatre, we headed backstage...
To check out all of the signatures of the famous (and not so famous) people who have preformed there over the years...
Apparently, this is the signature that started it all...
... Frank Sinatra was the first to sign the wall backstage.

Oh... Olivia Newton John...
... I so wanted to be her in my early elementary years. :-)




See... totally wrong lens...... almost pointless to have taken that photo... but I did it anyway.

I had to take this one...
... when I first moved to Chicago, it was during the run of this particular production. The commercials were non-stop... Go, go, go, go...

Clara requested this photo...
Checking out more signatures in one of the dressing areas...
I followed along taking random photos...

And finally, they ended up on stage...
... where they decided to perform the dance from their jazz class (with no music) for the other tours who were in the theatre! LOL!

It was a really great tour and such a neat experience for the girls!!