This past week, my daughter received her official housing packet from American Ballet Theater. She will be housed at the University of Texas at Austin. In the past years, she stayed with the family of friends so she has been anxiously waiting this arrival.
As she began reading what seemed like a thousand page document, I saw her overflowing with excitement. Each step in the process of preparing to leave for this four week summer ballet intensive makes it that much more real to her. She auditioned for ABT way back in January. Then she waited to hear results from that. She auditioned for other companies and waited to …
New phone technology lets me share moments from Katie's day at school. I hope they're learning a little while they're having so much fun!
You can teach old dog new tricks. I know that. I am an old dog, after all, and I have learned a few new tricks lately. The real trick, though, is getting that old dog to take a deep breath and be brave and take a chance on doing things differently. And before long, that old dog will have a hard time believing she was so reluctant in the first place.
I remember a time when my girls were in elementary school and I …
Do your teens spend time together?
During Spring Break, both Gus and Max were home with me. Well, sort of. Max was off at Disney with his school band for four days. Gus was with his Beloved. Although, Gus and his Beloved were at the house there is really no part for me to play in this teen romance. Unless they need a ride to satisfy their whims: one day to get milkshakes, another to go to the beach.
I hadn’t planned for this year’s Spring Break like I did last year’s when we went to Paris. (sigh!) And since I didn’t win the lottery a few weeks …
Greek Easter at Midnight Mass
In my family, my teen celebrates two Easters because he is Greek. The Christian Easter which has passed is usually not the same Sunday as the Greek Orthodox Easter. I believe there has been a few times where both have fallen on the same Sunday.
However, most of the time one comes before or after the other. Our Easter Sunday was spent relaxing and of course eating the usual. Dinner consisted of ham, mashed potatoes, beans, corn, and dessert.
For the Greek Orthodox Easter, we planned a trip to Wilmington to visit the Orthodox church for their celebration of Easter. In Greek culture, there …
All Grown Up
Where did the time go? How did this happen? it was just yesterday that she was the cutest little curly-headed baby girl! My oldest teen turned 18 about 2 weeks ago – unbelievable! What a milestone and right of passage. Turning 18 is still one of the most important events of the teen years, second only probably to turning 16, of course. But turning 18 means something else significant – and that is, graduating from high school , which is just around the corner. And from there, she will be on to the world beyond.
In Kassiane’s case, I mean that just …
Spring break is here! Spring break is here! Can you tell I’m excited about a whole week without a schedule and homework and projects and pressures? While I’d love to be spending the week in some tropical locale with some nice people bringing me cool drinks by the pool, I’m pretty excited to have some unstructured time here at home.
It’s a safe bet the teens will spend some time goofing around on the beach. We also have friends from out of state visiting mid-week. And, thanks to the Easter Bunny, we have a whole bunch of new movies to watch. It sounds like my kind of week.
I think we adults …
At this time of year in our school schedule, we begin winding down our workload and begin completing our classes and to-do lists. I always look over our progress and mentally plan for the next year. This year has been a whirlwind of activities, and classes, and extracurricular activities. I can’t believe that my daughter will soon be completing her first year of high school. The past year has been a blur and I feel I have not enjoyed her as much as I should have.
I try not to think of the three years ahead of us as being the last ones that she will truly be home. She’ll come …
Some decisions our teens can make on their own.
Part of my experience with Gus living at NCSSM is that I really don’t know what he is doing on a daily basis. He might have decided to eat junk for all his meals, or to do his laundry just once a month or to not brush his teeth. I don’t really know. He certainly has to face making some decisions on his own.
But sometimes he makes decisions that he talks to me about. After the fact, but cluing your mom in at all counts I guess. The decision he shared with me recently did surprise me a bit. …
My son is a Toys R Us kid!
I don’t think my teen will ever grow up! We were driving around town the other day and he wanted to go into Toys-R-Us . I asked “why in the world do you want to go into Toys-R-Us ?” His response was that he wanted to look around. I thought I was going to fall out my seat from laughing so hard.
I can remember when my son was little how we would visit Toys-R-Us quite frequently. Not to buy toys, but my son would love to go in to just look around going up and down each isle looking at toys. …
This is what you get when you ask your teen to smile for the camera at the circus. Speaking of clowns...
I think there’s a part of Mark that turns 10 again when the circus rolls into town. About the middle of last week he started mentioning that the circus was going to be in town. When he came home from work on Friday, he seemed very sure we should go. Friday night was the only night it would work, and we had less than an hour before the show started. It was a bit of a circus right here in our house getting ourselves mobilized and out …
This past week, my daughter received her official housing packet from American Ballet Theater. She will be housed at the University of Texas at Austin. In the past years, she stayed with the family of friends so she has been anxiously waiting this arrival.
