Just a few quotes

Olivia: Old. People. Are. Boring......but not you guys.

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Olivia: MOM! Where's my necklace?? It was RIGHT HERE!!! And it's blue and I CAN'T FIND IT!!!....Oh wait. I'm wearing it.

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Frank (watching The Amazing Spiderman movie): Imagine having to go pee really bad in the middle of a big fight.

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And I'm sure we'll be moving out of this phase before too long, but Olivia is still young enough to have a few remaining "creative" versions of words. Here are a few:

Boxelder bug = Bop-skelder bug, Spaghetti = Skabetti, regular = reglee-er, lemonade = ledomade

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Briar (my great-niece, whose dad works at a jail): Did you know that when you get arrested and go to jail, you only get 3 meals a day???!! They don't even give you any snacks.

Olivia: Well, that's rude!

Briar: I know....but police can't arrest their own daughters so I don't have to worry about going to jail.

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While I'm at it, here a picture and a video from Olivia and Briar's dance recital. In the video, Liv is the 3rd from the right in the front row.

Charlie and the Chocolate Chip Cookies

Charlie performed in the musical Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. He played Charlie's friend, James. It's a part no one really knows before seeing the show, but he was basically the next largest kid part after the 5 main kids. It was a great introductory role to theater, he made some good new friends and he had a great time! He performed very well, and I think he has definitely caught the acting bug. 

For the cast party, they did a pot luck, and Charlie wanted to bake cookies himself. He's made cookies before, but I usually helped him. This time he woke up early to make sure he had time and was determined to have as little help as possible. The only advice I gave him initially was to make sure to cream the butter, sugar and eggs really well before adding the flour. 

He got a little confused right off the bat looking at the directions since I told him to start with the butter. I said, "Oh yeah, they always tell you to mix the flour and stuff in a separate bowl, but I usually skip that part and just add that stuff later." That turned out to be a mistake, but we'll get to that later.

The butter and sugar went off without a hitch. Then he got to the eggs, and his first egg landed half in the bowl and half on the counter-top. So he ended up with 2.5 eggs instead of 2 - not a big deal, but you could tell it was runnier than usual after adding the eggs. 

Then he added the flour. As he was mixing in the last little big, I looked at the measuring cups he used and asked, "Did you use this cup for the 1/4 cup?" "Yes," he replied. "This is a 1/2 cup." Unfortunately, our 1/2 cup has a little lip half-way down that says 1/4 c. so he thought the whole thing was a 1/4 cup. So...too much flour, but we still weren't worried. We added a little extra butter to try to balance things out.

Next, I got a pan of 16 cookies ready to bake and put them in the oven. As they were baking, I told Charlie about a time I accidentally put 1 Tablespoon of soda in my cookies instead of 1 teaspoon, and they turned out terrible. He said, "Was I supposed to put soda in those?" Turns out, when I told him to skip mixing the dry ingredients, he got to the "add the flour mixture" part and just put in flour, skipping the soda and salt. We figured we'd let them cook and see how they tasted, but I wasn't too optimistic. We added soda and salt to the rest of the dough and mixed it as well as we could and hoped for the best.

The next mistake was my fault. I confused the soda-less cookies with the new ones because the ones without soda looked less done (even though they had been in the oven a full 10 minutes longer), so I pulled out the "good" cookies thinking they were the bad ones before they were done backing. It took me a minute to catch my mistake and I tried baking them longer, but they ended up a little stickier than they should have been.

In the end, we ended up with 10 good cookies, 16 slightly undercooked cookies and 16 edible-but-definitely-sub-par cookies. 

On the bright side: Charlie learned A LOT about how to make cookies! And his other cast members enjoyed them so much, he's now convinced he's discovered the secret to making the perfect chocolate chip cookies. He made another batch to bring to the last performance and replicated it exactly - down to the extra half an egg, the little bit of extra butter added after the flour and the soda/salt added after the chocolate chips. I advised him next time that he really should put the soda in with the flour to avoid soda pockets, but he didn't seem convinced.

And She's Off!

Elena's graduation has come and gone. She left to work as a missionary with the Totus Tuus program of our diocese just 4 days after graduating. (For those unfamiliar, with Totus Tuus she will be working with a team of 3 other young adults who will go to parishes around Southern MN leading youth programs for the Church.) She pretty much ripped off the band-aid of our first-born leaving the nest with no hesitation. Fortunately, we know she's in good hands and that she will have a fun, faith-filled summer. She'll get a couple of breaks to come back home and see us and then she'll have a few more weeks to spend at home before leaving for college, so that helps. 

Olivia came with me to drop her off for training. A few tears were shed, and there have been a few debates over what exactly will happen with Elena's room in her absence, but the adjustment has been going OK. The day of the drop-off, Olivia had her cousin over to play, and it quickly became apparent that she was processing everything through her play. I overheard her saying to Briar, "How about you're the older sister, Elena, and you're leaving for Totus Tuus in Sleepy Eye. And I'm the little sister, and I want to stay with you, but I can't." This was followed by lots of "No! I don't want you to leave" and "It'll be Ok."

We've been able to talk with Elena once so far and all is going well. When I see her empty room (honestly the most beautiful and well-cared for space in the house), knowing that before long it will be taken over and changed by siblings, it's tempting to be a little sad. But I know the alternative of having her unable or afraid or unmotivated to go out into the world and find her way would be worse. 

Here's a few senior photos and glimpses of the last bits of her senior year. We got almost none from graduation, but that's probably Ok since her face was a bit swollen (for the 3rd time!) after having further wisdom tooth removal complications. 

My favorite prom picture by far! Her date was a very good sport.

More of Charlie

"Propel" "Precision" "Price" "Pretzel" "Pterodactyl".... I am writing this post to the sound of Elena and Charlie going back and forth stating words starting with the letter P to see who gets stumped first.  This has been going on for several minutes with no indication of slowing down anytime soon.

Although this anecdote doesn't have much to do with anything, it does relate nicely to the topic of this post, which is simply to share some of Charlie's recent Charlie-like behavior. 

I recently showed the boys how to use Canva to create posters/flyers/etc. for a school project. Last night Charlie suddenly started working on the computer making "Vote for Charlie" posters for Student Council Elections. He kept spitting out idea after idea until I finally had to kick him off the computer to get ready for bed. I feel I should add that elections will be sometime next fall. If he keeps going at this rate all summer, the school isn't going to have enough wall space to hold all of his flyers. I'll share them below. (You have to look closely to find his face on some of these)

Side note: I'm not sure if the P competition is still going on, but I assume it is. I thought Elena was going to give up when she said, "Ok, I really need to work on some stuff upstairs," but then she continued with, "so you're going to have to come with me." 

I should explain that he often goes by Dr. Charles at school. It all started when he titled his Google Doc assignment "Queen Anne's Mashed Potato Sauce" and made some comment about pickle smelling salts. His very artistic teacher created these advertisements and hung them up in the classroom.  (I recommend zooming in to read the fine print on the smelling salts.)

And then the other day, we left a bag of little hair-ties out right next to the game of Mouse Trap. And Charlie noticed. When I came back into the room later that day, there were various Star Wars and superhero characters trapped in the game:

And lastly, there is this impersonation Charlie did of Elena. Frank was telling Elena she should get married by 20 so he can be a young uncle. And Charlie said, "That's never going to happen because she's to picky." He started imitating her, and she quickly grabbed her phone and took a video.

Charlie!

Although Charlie is getting older and we see less of him during the day, he continues to entertain us with his imaginative mind. Like his description of the "Man Cave" he wants some day, complete with a bear skin rug and a little cave for his cats featuring a little "mouse skin" rug. Or the other day when I heard him singing for an extraordinarily long time, only to finally realize what he was singing: all the words on the tinker toy box, including the list of all the parts and pieces found inside.

Coco was featured in his science fair project this year. She was allowed to attend the fair as long as we kept her in her carrier. I wasn't sure how she would do since she doesn't typically like being in the carrier, but she loved it. Between the judging and public viewing, Charlie let her outside.  Once it was time to come back in, I brought the carrier out behind the school expecting Coco to be long gone. As soon as I came out, she ran right for me and climbed into her carrier. She sat calmly purring throughout the fair and seemed to enjoy all the kids poking their fingers in at her. 

And the most recent Charlie story is the new name he gave their lamp that's paired with their alexa. He likes to set the lamp to go off in the morning to helping wake them up. Whenever he sets it, alexa responds "OK, I'll set Boys' Lamp for 7:00am." Just for fun, he decided to change the lamp's name. And of course, being Charlie, he thought to himself, "I wonder if there's a limit to long I can make its name?" So now whenever he sets a timer for the lamp, this is what Alexa says:

Happy 18th, Elena!

We somehow managed to raise a Boomer. Well, not exactly a Boomer, but Elena is basically an old lady in an 18-year-old body. I guess "Old Soul" sounds nicer, doesn't it? We'll go with that.

While she does stream music on apps like Spotify, she prefers using CDs in her car, which I'm pretty sure many of my students have never even heard of. And the CDs are mostly things like Hits from the 60s, Elvis and Frank Sinatra. When asked what she wanted for gifts, she requested DVDs (!) of black and white movies. We called her the night before her birthday and asked what she was doing with her last night of being a non-adult. She was watching Casablanca. Of course. She goes to 7:00 am Mass before school and adoration once a week (as do several of her friends, which is awesome.)

She's as likely to be hanging out with women between the ages of 40-90 as she is to be hanging out with other teenagers. She recently had to postpone an appointment to visit one of her friends because Kay had shingles. She even took an afternoon off of school about a month ago to join a woman from our church on a 2 hour drive she had to take. To a medical appointment. And she had a great time. I'm pretty sure this woman is the reason Elena & friends go to Mass every Thursday - she's an amazing woman. 

She just turned 18 this week and it dawned on me that she could now get social media apps like Instagram or Facebook. I asked if she was going to get any accounts, and she said, "No, not for now. They're all dumb." And then she went upstairs to sew herself a skirt. 

We love her in all her uniqueness and gifts so very much. It's been an absolute joy getting to raise her, and although we hate to see her move onto to a life that means we will see her less, we are looking forward to seeing what this spunky girl does with her life. 

Republica Dominicana

Seth and I were able to enjoy another getaway with the Knights this month. This year was the Dominican Republic - I always enjoy getting to go somewhere where I get to practice my Spanish. It was a great week to go - the kids had 2 early outs and 1 late start while we were gone due to snow. It was also not a great week to go since we missed Elena's 18th birthday. Our parents once again took care of the kids while we were gone, and it sounds like they all had a great time. Grandma made homemade donuts for Elena's birthday so she got spoiled a bit at least (plus the early out!)

Seth wore a "Minneota Vikings State Champion" shirt from our recent football season, and a shocking number of people asked him about it. We never imagined it would be such a conversation starter. He's realized that wearing it out of Minnesota might not be the best idea. For one, several people thought Minnesota was spelled wrong. Most thought it said MN Vikings and couldn't figure out how they would be their own state champs. 

We came home to a giant snowman in our yard, but other than that most signs of the storms were gone by our return.

Here's a few photos from the trip.

Not the best picture of us, but there's a rainbow in the background!

One of our desserts - a chocolate concoction in the monkey's head, topped with cotton candy

The pepper grinder at one of the restaurants!

Me in my happy place: a book and sunshine! We stayed in the shade most of the time, though! We burned way too easily.

Elena's 18th

And since not much exciting happened on the trip other than us hanging around soaking up sun, reading and visiting with other Knights, I'll leave you with a few recent quotes. Our kids are still more interesting than we are.

Olivia: Guys, if I don't get some peace and quiet, I won't be able to draw my letters!!

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Olivia: (singing the Circle of Life from Lion King) Naaa Savanyaaaaa Feliz Navidad!

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Frank: Mom, if sharks ever figure out how to get to outer space, we could probably meet aliens.

Me: Sharks?

Frank: Yeah.

Me: Sharks. Like the large aquatic animal.

Frank: Yeah.

Me: I'm not following.

Frank: Well, if sharks are taken out of the water, they can't survive so they have to stay in the water. And if we leave our atmosphere, we can't survive so we have to stay on Earth. But if sharks can figure out how to get all the way past our atmosphere and into outer space, we could probably figure out how to get past outer space into another universe and meet aliens! 

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Frank: Mom, I'm filling this balloon up with carbon dioxide and releasing it onto our plant so it can turn it into oxygen!  (He must be paying attention in science class!)