Laura decided last weekend, after starting to learn a new song, that she wanted to sing in the talent show at the fall fair. So we worked hard this week practicing it every day, and I quickly scrounged together a costume for her. And then last night after dinner, she started to lose her voice. She has had a bit of a cough, thanks to the Infamous Back To School Cold, but we put her to bed and hoped she would be better in the morning. She slept an extra 1.5 hours, and seemed all right this morning, so we decided to proceed. (If her voice wasn't well enough to sing, I was just going to pull her from the show and send her to the cheer practice she was going to otherwise miss.) We arrived early to hand in our registration form and give them her music. We got her in costume and had her run through it once more before she went on stage. That was when her voice started cracking again. I was feeling especially anxious, as I always do when she is going to perform (I'm sure I must be more nervous than she is!), and now this. Ugh. So we sat there waiting for her turn, and finally when they called her up, they played the wrong music! She stood there, not really knowing what to do. The MC finally said that didn't sound like the music for Good Ship Lollipop and asked me to go see the sound guy. The sound guy tried to blame me for providing the wrong music. I knew 100% for sure I had given him the correct music, and double checked on the laptop we brought. I gave it back to him and he got it figured out. (No apology.) Meanwhile they had another performer go on, and when she was finished it was Laura's turn again. The correct music played this time, but after about the first verse, her song started to skip and glitch. For the entire rest of the song. (I'm going to blame the rude sound guy for that, too, since the song never ever once skipped for us while we practiced all week.) Her voice did crack a bit on the higher notes, however, she did an absolutely fabulous job of "the show must go on!" and kept right on singing. The whole thing was devastating for me, but she seemed relatively unphased by it. We watched the video with Laura when we got home and she said, "I was a little embarrassed when the sound did that." And that was it. I was definitely more upset about it than she was. We had worked so hard all week for it, only to bust once show time arrived. It was especially disappointing since she was actually pretty good at the song, and circumstances out of our control foiled her performance. Oh well, I guess we'll call it a character building experience. Luckily, when she was practicing earlier in the week (before her voice started to go), Josh had her practice with a microphone so she would be used to keeping her mouth the right distance from it, and we have a recording of it:
Possibly the worst part of the night was when we tried to leave the talent show (the kids had waited for a long time already, and they really wanted to go to the midway), and the MC told us we should stick around for the judging. We hadn't even eaten dinner yet, and Rachel needs to be in bed by 8:30, so we didn't really want to sit around that hot and stuffy building all evening when we had paid to see the rest of the exhibits. Two hours later, we were literally holding the kids back, when they finally got around to announcing the winners. Laura didn't win anything, and we wasted all that time trying to keep our kids quiet while boring politicians droned on about nothing we cared about.
We quickly went on a couple rides after and bought the kids some cotton candy. Josh and I grabbed a quick bite to eat and we walked through the animal buildings on our way out. The fair was a huge disappointment for me this year.
I can't believe we are nearing the end! If I'm being honest, I'm getting a little lazy trying to incorporate everything I can find starting with the letter, and W has a surprising amount to choose from. We missed several things that could have potentially been used, but we ended up with:
wienerschnitzel garnished with watercress
wild rice
wax beans
whole wheat waffles
whipped cream
watermelon
and, of course, WINE! White wine, even! (The children had water)
This weekend was our Second Annual Cousin's Weekend with Josh's Dad's side of the family. The forecast called for rain all weekend, and boy did it deliver! However, we had been complaining about the heat, so I suppose it was due? Last year it was rainy too. Fortunately, there is what they call a super structure on the farm where they can keep equipment and things out of the rain, and those of us that were tenting were able to pitch under there. So at least we could sleep where it was dry.
Most of us didn't show up until Saturday (two nights in the rain might have been too much), but one of Josh's cousins pointed out, "There aren't many people I would come to hang out with in the rain." Have I mentioned how much love this family? Because I love this family, they are such a bunch of gentlemen in a non-condescending way. I was given a jagerbomb while drinks were being handed out (which contained RedBull), and subsequently stayed up until 3am around the fire with a select few. But, as I mentioned before, I love this family, and even though we are two for two on rainy weekends, it is so worth it.
The girls always have fun getting to play with their cousin Ellery, and she has cousins from her other side who join us, as they just live down the road. They had fun playing in the top of the garage this year in and among the berry boxes.
On the way home we have made a tradition of stopping at The Big Apple for some pie in the morning. Summer is officially over for us now. Bring on fall!
For V dinner we had a few options, but not a lot. We ended up having:
veal vegetables vermicelli velveeta
vanilla icing velvet cake
(I considered V8 to drink, but both Josh and Rachel can't do tomato-based things well, intestinally speaking, and I was pretty sure none of us would like it anyway, so I skipped it. I've also started trying to keep to a tighter grocery budget, and didn't want to waste money on it if no one was going to like/ drink it.)
Rachel is back to nursery school for another year this year. Last year Rachel was quite shy and quiet in the classroom, which is the opposite to her silly and fun-loving personality that we see at home. Instead of afternoons, we decided to sign her up for the morning classes that we knew some of her friends were enrolled in to hopefully bring her out of her shell a little; I am hoping since she already knows these kids, that she will be more open to playing and interacting with them this year. But I must admit I'm not particularly looking forward to all the frantic and rushy mornings we are bound to have. Hopefully the trade-off will be worth it! Here she is in her little dress that Grandma made for her, all ready to go!
And here are the girls' "school" photos we had done on Friday. They're pretty cute!
Annnnd, since everyone was posting back to school pics today, I took these of Laura even though she isn't technically going to school. ;)
It has been borderline miserably hot here this week (I've crossed the border and back a few times), but there are so few foods that start with U to work with, we decided to make upside down cake today. The girls were quite interested and wanted to help a lot, and it turned out quite yummy, so I guess it was worth raising the temperature inside out house even further. We also had udon noodles (with beef and beans) for dinner, which also went over well. There were a few other foods I found that started with U, but I couldn't figure out how to incorporate them into our meal, so it was just the two of them this week. We also worked out how to spell "udon" at the table, and tried to solve the mystery of how the cake had some missing bites out of it before dinner. The clue M O M gave it away once Laura sounded it out. hehe :)
