Spring Break in Atlanta

After seriously considering a ski trip to Colorado or a week at a beach with the girls, the travel requirements of Randy job once again took precedent and dictated where we went for Spring Break this year, as is the norm in the Curtis family.  We drove down on Friday the 19th making it in 10 hours, staying at the Renaissance hotel at the airport.  We got a balcony with a fabulous view of the runways, though during the day it was really too noisy to enjoy for any length of time, though it was fine from inside.  On Saturday, while Randy was going through the smelling boxes of old military real estate documents at the Atlanta regional archives the girls hung out at the hotel and pool.  With the archives closed on Sunday and Monday, the family went sightseeing.

Jande and Cate on the hotel balconey

On Sunday, we visited the Martin Luther King National Historic Site visiting his grave, the Ebenezer Baptist Church on its 125th Anniversary and touring his boy hood home.  The tour and lecture at his boyhood home went along to understanding how he came to lead the civil rights movement.  He had many advantages being raised in a wealthy African American home, not the least of which was his upbringing by MLK Sr. and rest of his family.  He was raised and molded to be the man he became.  We are all fortunate that his voice of nonviolent protest and demonstration came at that time in history.  It could have been lead by others with far more unpleasant results.

Cate, Randy and Jane outside at MLK boyhood home

After lunch as the Zesto burger joint, we visited the Carter Center/Presidential Library.  I would have voted for Jimmy Carter but I wasn’t old enough too in 1980.  I love Presidential Libraries and homes and the spin on histories they tell, having been to number of them (Washington, Jackson, Grant, Roosevelt (Teddy), Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Nixon, Cater and Regan).  Even when the President was someone you wouldn’t have voted for, these are remarkable men who did remarkable things, though I have to admit that more than a century of Nashville’s society women have emasculated Andrew Jackson’s image and the Hermitage.  There’s a lot to be said for professional historians and the National Park Service/National Archives.

Jane, Bethany and Cate in Jimmy Carter's replca Oval Office

We did a quick recy to see where Bethany's family lived briefly while in Atlanta in 1974.  We didn't linger as even the crack and meth heads seemed to have abandoned the area.

You Can't Go Home Again Visiting the old Sage home in Atlanta

On Monday, Randy took the girls to Zoo Atlanta.  It was a gloomy, damp and cold day and they let us in for half price (still a steep $27) because so many animals were inside and not on exhibit.  We pretty much had the place to ourselves, which was nice as we didn’t have to fight to see the Pandas, which were the best part of the zoo.  The girls were cold enough outside that they even succumbed to visiting all the displays in the heated reptile house.

Jane and Cate enjoy their 1st Coke

During the week while Randy worked, Bethany and the girls explored Atlanta.  On Tuesday, The girls went to the World of Coca Cola Museum and both Jane and Cate enjoyed their first taste of Coke with a smile (it will be awhile before they get another as we’ve refrained from getting them hooked on the corn syrup-caffeine joy juice).

The girls dancing at Olympic Park

On Wednesday, they went to a Princess Dianna exhibit at the Convention Center and dreamed of becoming a princess.  Thursday was the CNN tour followed by frolicking in Olympic Park among the remains of the 1996 gala.  Friday was the family’s last full day in town before having to head home the next day.  The girls picked me from the Archives for lunch of breakfast food at the Waffle House (yummo!) and then Bethany took them to the movies, The Tooth Fairy.  That night we celebrated Cate’s 6th Birthday as a family at Oz pizza in East Point (more yummo!).

Dad and the girls snuggling in the bed at the Renaissance

The next morning they girls took off and Randy went back to the archives.  Sunday found the girls home in Webster Groves and Randy with a day off with nothing to do but drive to Savannah.  Along the way he stopped at Macon, which bills itself as “The Pinkest Place in the World”, at least during the Cherry Tree festival.  Visiting turned into a triple treat with a lunch of boiled peanuts and a visit to the Georgia Music Hall of Fame to see the special Johnny Mercer Centennial exhibit.  At the gift shop, I bought a book and several CDs and listened to Mercer all the way to Savannah (“The Country’s in the Very Best of Hands…”).  Throw in seeing the first Redbuds trees in bloom of the year on the way down, which always puts me in a good place and I was in high spirits for the rest of the day.

Randy in the "pink"

Cate turns 6

Jane made up the following list of items Cate might want for her 6th birthday after some deciphering of her spelling, which is still far worse than her dad’s, much to her mother’s disappointment:
  1. Littlest Pet Shop toy
  2. A puppy
  3. New clothes
  4. Books
  5. Lilly having puppies
  6. Movie
  7. Telescope
  8. Gift card to Chevy’s
  9. New Dancing Shows
  10. TV in her room
  11. Barbie
  12. Own personnel swimming pool
  13. Costume
  14. Own playground named after Cate!
  15. Computer
  16. Braids in hair
  17. Pinkalicious doll
  18. Nail polish
  19. Clothes for her American Girl Doll
  20. Necklace

So what did she get?  Jane gave her a $5 gift card to McDonald’s, two notebooks and a pin.  Her parents put braids in her hair, took her to Chevy’s for dinner and gave her a rock tumbling kit and a book.  Besides instilling low expectations, she really has everything she wants.

Cate displaying her cookie cake

At 6, Cate is typically whimsical and cheerful.  She loves to dance and twirl and her smiles and laughter fills our days.  Mostly agreeable, she is strong willed, bordering on stubborn at other times.  Her best friend is her sister, though the way they fight; you have to wonder, especially since she really doesn’t like conflict or unhappiness in stories or TV shows.  She loves staying up and sleeping in (when Jane doesn’t wake her up to play).  She likes most foods but is way too casual with her posture at the table.  She is entropy when it comes to her room or her footwear which she leaves all over the house despite her father’s threats of throwing them away, which he follows through on (but not before letting Jane know when he does, so she can pull them out of the trash).  She is well liked by her teacher, peers and her family.  She also loves to draw.

Cate's depiction of Facial Expressions

April

It was a very busy April with lots of kids related things to do every weekend.  Yeah! (?)

Among the highlights was the second weekend when Randy’s college roommate Jake came into town from San Francisco.  He wanted to show his fiancée Andrea, his old stomping grounds and the highlights of St. Louis, including the culinary ones.  Over the course of their stay we ate at numerous restaurants (e.g. Imo’s, City Diner, Rich and Charlie’s, Amagehtti’s, Kaldi’s) and took in trips to the City Museum, the Jewel Box, the Zoo and the Botanitcal Garden.  It was great fun and Jane and Cate loved the vacation spirit of it all.

Jake and Andrea with the Penguins

Jane at MOBG Japanese Garden	Cate stopping to smell the flowers

April Showers

That same weekend was the bag distribution half of the Girl Scouts of Eastern Missouri’s April Showers personnel care products collections (soap, shampoo, toothpaste etc.).  The next weekend, the Daisies of Troop 1711 picked up the items for local donation.

The WGCS Daisies gather to pick up donations for April Showers

Slow and Steady Finishes the Race?

Earlier that morning, Jane, Cate and a number of their classmates participated in the final 1.2 mile run of the Go! St. Louis – Read Right and Run Marathon for kids.  Held in conjunction with the main St. Louis Marathon, the RRR goal is for kids to READ 26 books, RIGHT the community with 26 good deeds, and RUN 26.2 miles over a six-month period.  Its all on the honor system and different people had challenges meeting different parts of the stated goals.  With parental leadership (or lack there-of), ours was the running.  We did walk that distance and more with the girls on a semi-regular basis ahead of time (i.e. to the library, park. etc.) but never really progressed into running it and it showed on race day.  Jane and Cate started out great and both finished and got metals but we didn’t keep the times.  A bit more practice ahead of time is warranted.

Jane helping Cate carbo load with pancakes before the race

Looking good at the start

WGCS Trivia Night

That night was the school’s annual Trivia Night and Silent Auction, which is far and away the PTO’s biggest fund raiser.  Our table won the trivia portion of the night but didn’t win the spending part.  Still with the winning bid for the weekly loaf of Breadsmith bread was ours, along with a number of parties and other outings.

Randy and Bethany at Trivia Night

Bethany took pictures of each class to be signed and autographed for the auction, so we have got copies of the Kindergarten class and First Graders (sans autograph) for far less than the winning bids for those items.

2010 WGCS Kindergarten Class

2010 WGCS 1st Grade Class

The following week was the WGCS Choral Concert with a World Music theme.  For weeks leading up to this, Jane and Cate serenaded us in Chinese, French, Swahili and a language or two I’ve forgotten.  A couple of songs Randy recalled learning in his youth and he joined in the serenade on the way home much to Bethany‘s delight (?).

Jane and Cate before the concert

Jane plays the xylophone at WGCS Spring Concert

Spring Camping on Tuxedo

Our annual father-kid camping trip was scheduled for Saturday, and as has become our habit in recent years, we picked the rainiest weekend in April.  The kids are experienced campers to the point that a little drizzling would not deter them but the forecast was for big rain all weekend.  So as before on the rainy weekends, the Curtis and Holmes girls and their Dads camped at our house while Bethany enjoyed a weekend away at a local hotel.  On Saturday, it was overcast and it drizzled but we set off to explore the Mississippi River near the confluence with the Missouri and the Melvin Price Locks and Dam.  While the Visitor Center was good, more memorable was the numerous fish decaying on the shoreline on the Missouri side and the numerous fishermen go for the large catches just down from the spillway.

Holmes and Curtis girls on top of the Melvin Price Locks & Dam

On the way back we visited the Lewis and Clark River DuBois encampment museum in Wood River (another excellent museum) and drove by the Confluence Tower, which wouldn’t open for another month.  Following lunch at the City Diner and a recy through Tower Grove Park, we decided to finish the afternoon off at the Science Center.  As we were leaving it started to rain and the tornado sirens went off.  Within ½ mile, it went had to pull over on Oakland not being able to see anything.  The worst passed within 10 minutes but as we got home and watched the news of where the tornados hit across the state, one was very close to our chosen campground.  We were all exceptionally glad we decided to stay with the permanent structures for the weekend.

Goofing Around in the LEM at the Science Center

Cinco De Mayo in Columbia

The first weekend in May, we made a family road trip to Columbia, MO to visit the Holmes clan and attend their Cinco De Mayo Party on Saturday the 1st.  Why drive two hours each where for a margarita party you ask? Actually that’s reason enough for us but when you add in fajitas cooked on a 3 ½ foot diameter skillet (with berry crepes for dessert), go-carts, trampolines and ending with a ten foot high bonfire.  It was a Big Fun event with lots of parents and grade school age kids.

We went up on Friday night to have Shakespeare’s Pizza, one of the best local pizza places along with the Holmes and Hammond clans.  The next morning the Hammonds and the Curti went hiking in Rock Bridge State Park, visiting the Devil’s Ice box and more importantly wear out the kids a bit.

Curtis girls and Hammond boys at Rock Bridge State Park

Curtis girls and Hammond boys playing in the creek Any guesses what happened next?

Field Day

We volunteered to help with the annual spring Field Day for the school.  Randy drew supervision of the Sponge Relay Races; the point of which is to move a bucket of water by running a soaking wet car sponge to another bucket.  The kids got moderately wet, except for the ones who thought putting it on their head helped (it doesn’t).  After watching the “cool dads” running the “Swamp Monster Relay” another water game spray them with cups and buckets of water.  Randy came up with the variation of tossing the sopping wet sponge between the buckets instead (Cate and Jane had already finished).  This resulted in VERY wet children who did the catching.  The kids had a blast, although it’s unclear if Randy volunteers next year, he will get responsibility for a water game.

Cate soaking it up at the Sponge Relays	Jane Taking off at the Sponge Relay

Bridging from Daisies to Brownies

Girl Scout Troop 1711 bridged up from Daisies to Brownies in the rite of passage from 1st to 2nd grade.  Because of the rain the previous few days, the event was moved indoors.  Fortunately someone in the troop, had connection with The Edge of Webster (http://www.theedgeofwebster.com/), a nice 200 person meeting/catering hall in the Owen Ridge Campus redevelopment of the old Petrolite chemical plant/lab on the northern edge of Webster.  All the other troops from WGCS were there and it was a pleasant event.

Troop 1711 Daisies bridged to Brownies

Shrek-lettes

We got to go to a sneak preview of the Shrek-The Final Chapter in 3-D on Saturday the 15th. It was quite the happening… Cate cried through half of the movie, so Mama had to do a little make-up repairs job when we got home.  We have to say, if we had had little green babies, we think they would have turned out kind of cute!

Jane and Cate at the Shrek 3D Premiere

Bethany and her Shreklettes

The Ides of May also marked the day when our very pregnant Lilly-dog left home to go have her puppies out of site.  Sometimes things don’t always go well for ALL the puppies and while we won’t lie about the facts of life, too much realism by seeing it up close and personnel seemed best avoided.

WOW - Webster on Wheels

The following weekend was the second annual Webster on Wheels bike rally put on by the scout troops at Bristol.  There’s a 1 mile and 5 mile route.  In a half baked thought we signed up both girls, even though both have training wheels on their bikes.  Although they’ve practice on the very flat Deer Creek Bike Trail, they having trouble going up the slight grade on our street to Bompart and going back down, is “too fast” and they brake the whole way or just drag their feet.  At WOW, we left near the back of the pack but within 1000 feet of the school, we owned last place.  Jane lost the tread to one of her training wheels and Cate need a good push every 50 feet or so.  It didn’t help that we tied a record for the warmest May 23rd in history at 92.  At about the 2,000 foot point, Jane and Dad were ready to call Mama to pick us up as the SAG van was way beyond us.  Cate refused to give up though.  Sure she was crying and demanded a regular “good push” but she wouldn’t let it lick her.  That was the bright spot in an afternoon of overreaching beyond their abilities.  Fortunately, past the half way point, it was flat or down hill but our progress was still glacial.  We came in shortly after the leaders of the 5 miles finished at about 35-40 minutes for 1 mile (yes we could have walked faster).  A return to this annual rally may be more than a year off.

Jane and Cate at the start of WOW Rally

School’s Out for Summer

There was much rejoicing in the Curtis Household as School ended on Tuesday the 25th, two week earlier than we ever recalled as kids (probably something to do with starting two weeks earlier…).  Clearly the person most looking forward to summer vacation is Bethany, as her nearly full time jobs of PTO Secretary, Room mother and Girl Scout Troup leader goes on hiatus.  The Secretary job may not sound that cumbersome with typing the meeting minutes and producing the monthly newsletter.  The bigger part of the job is as the communication director, which it involves daily coordination with the staff and nearly daily emails with all the parents.

On the up side, the girls did well this year.  Their reports cars were good and both finished the year as one of the class’s four All-Star for receiving the most Dolphin Dos (Atta-boys, as opposed to Dolphin Don’ts).  It nice to know that even if they’re not angels at home, they behave at school.

Lilly Has Puppies

On Monday the 24th, Lilly had a litter of two puppies, about a half a week earlier than expected.  They’re both girls: a black and tan and a red one.  Since there were only two of them, they were atypically large at 10 ½ ounces, about the size of a regular hot dog in a bun.  We went and visited them as soon as we could.  Lilly was really glad to see us but she wasn’t too interested, as she quickly whined to return to her pups.  Her new maternal instincts made her seem more mature as she had a clear mission that didn’t involve seeing to her own desires for food or attention.  Although, the temperature outside was in the high seventies, the roomy was kept at a tropic 95-100 degrees for the new borns.  Just another reason, we’re good with Lilly being sent away to give birth like some shameful teen in the family way sent out of town for a few months in the not too distant past.

Lilly's puppies

Grandpa Curtis Visits

Randy’s dad came in-town the week before Memorial Day weekend for a visit.  Although he’s made annual trips to visit the last few years, there was more a purpose to this one.  He was in the process of downsizing his household in preparation for a move to half the space and was looking to pass on a number of his prized possessions and mementos ahead of time, including a good portion of his extensive Wedgewood collection.   So he made the solo cross-county journey in a small moving truck, through snow, rains and heavy winds.  It’s unclear when he and his partner Gaye will sell their home in rainy, cool Brookings, OR and return to the sunny clime of Monterrey but it’s clear that Ron is ready.  Upon arrival to the high eighties and humidity of St. Louis, he noted it was the first time he’d been really warm in about a half a year.  We didn’t share his affection but then again, this is a man who enjoyed the Houston weather for 8 years.

It was a good and pleasant four day visit of mostly low-key hanging out at the house.  We did go to the Zoo on Friday and enjoyed rides on the Zoo-line Railroad and the carousel in addition to the animals, though to be honest the rides were a bigger pleaser with the girls.

Grandpa and Randy with the girls at the Zoo RR

Aunt Rhonda and the girls ride the Carosel

Jane Piano Recital - #2

On Saturday 5 June, we attended Jane’s second piano recital held al fresco in the open common area across the street from her instructor (Michele Vanhoose)’s home in the Webster Acres neighborhood. It was a warm day but there was lots of shade so it was pleasant enough. Happily for us, Jane selected the opening theme to Fiddler on the Roof (something we liked) as her main piece, as we had been listen to her practice it for weeks ahead of time several times a day. She also had a duet with Bethany of a less notable piece that was nice to see from a generational standpoint (several of the parents who played as kids did the same at the instructor’s urging). Cate is probably going to start lessons with the same teacher in the fall.

Bethany and Jane’s Duet

Margaret Park

Spring saw the renovation of our favorite local playground, Margaret Park after being closed since the end of last September. With grant money they added new playground equipment, picnic shelter, fencing, landscaping and a water fountain, with the later being the favorite of kids. The only thing they kept was the merry-go-round, which greatly pleased us, though we remain surprised that the insurance companies didn’t kill along with all the other favorites of our youth. Try and find a public teeter-totter. I miss the puzzle maze, the parallel bars, jungle gym and concrete sewer pipe that Hudson School used to have. The cool shade of the interior of the 4 foot, 30-inch pipe was a simple pleasure that safety weenies have killed.

Cate Jane and Li enjoying a spin on the renovated Margaret Park merry-go-round

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