The Curtis Clan - Spring 2014

Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice

Elephant Rocks

The first day of spring we made a trip to Elephant Rocks with a few of the WGCS families who didn’t leave for spring break: the Hills (Mike, Kristen, David and Alex), Boyles (Erin, Caitlyn, and Lanie) along with Sadie, Emma and Li. As always, the kids and adults had a great time.

Jane daner in check	WGCS kids all in one spot (albeit briefly)

Cate posing	Randy following suit

Spring 2014 also saw the girls beginning a second year of doing yard work at their Nana’s house including raking leaves and sweet gum balls and mowing the lawn. They’re getting the $40 that the former lawn service got but it still over paid and has warped their sense of money somewhat.

Cate Turns 10

It was the end of an era for the family at the grocery store as Cate got her last free cookie at Schnucks on her last day as a 9 year old. While seemingly insignificant it was another clear signal that neither girl is a little kid anymore (and apparently no longer needs to be bribed for good behavior at the grocery store).

Cate with her last free Schnuck cookie

(clearly humouring her dad's picture taking)

At ten, Cate remains an unwavering vegetarian for the last two and a half years which gives us confidence that her strong will and morality are in the right place despite the frequent squabbles with her parents about the mundane. Put another way, Cate is merely displaying her Irish roots with an ardent contempt for being told what to do or authority in general without reasons she believes in. This results in frequent familial battles of wills, where even the dog can hold her own. A positive tale of Cate’s resilience comes from one of her classmate’s parents who shared with us the following. The other parents daughter told her of a couple girls giving her a hard time about inviting a fourth girl to her birthday sleepover. She replied that if they didn't like it they could make the decision to not come. The mother asked her daughter how she was able to be so brave and she replied, "Cate helps make me brave." It was a sweet parental moment seeing her character trait put to good use.

Cate is passionate about things that do catch her fancy but is careless or lazy about things that don’t interest her. Her greatest love at this time remains the Harry Potter universe and her adoptive kindred spirit in the series of the unconventional, fearless classmate Luna Lovegood. She has reread the books and has semi-permanently checked out the books on CD from the school, listening to them as she goes slowly to sleep. She remains late to bed and late to rise. Like others, she’s has had difficulty finding other stories and books that come close to sparking her in the same way, though she likes the Warrior Cat series by Erin Hunter.

Cate seems to revel in material disorder. Her room, seat in the mini-van, backpack and bin at school (desks are so last century) are in a constant state of disarray, which is putting it in very positive light. It is a constant struggle to retain her entropy from taking over the entire house or minivan. At times we think it just part of her nature as the scattering of socks and shoes throughout the house has been a constant all her life and she seems to be genuinely oblivious that it’s happening at all. At other times, we suspect it’s her willful defiance of her parental overlords and their mindless regulations. To be honest it’s probably a shifting combination of both.

Cate on her B-day with her Sister a couple STL cousins

She continues with piano and violin but struggles with practicing, particularly of the later. It’s unclear if it’s primarily a growing distaste of the violin or a function of the authoritarian instructor generally disliked by the class. She did buy a recorder from Music Folks in Old Orchard with her own money and has enjoyed playing it along with Jane who bought one last year.

Cate's Slumber Party

Her closest companion remains Jane but Cate has a growing connection to a handful of her classmates (Sadie, Grace, Sophia and Emma) in the last year with a number of sleepovers occurring. The Friday before her Birthday we had a sleep over with seven girls in the basement, which resulted in quite a bit of energy and silliness (picture a gaggle of 9-11 year old girls who all gargling water whilst humming the Theme from Harry Potter.). Jane rode herd over most of the disorder of the sleepover which was nice. Slumber parties haven't really changed all that much in 30 years since Bethany was a girl.

Cate and Sadie goofing on the Church Camp bus

The weekend after, Cate went to a church camp retreat with a couple of her friends from school primarily for the fellowship but we figured the rest wouldn’t hurt. She really enjoyed the weekend with her friends.

Freedom Trail

After Cate’s Birthday, Randy had a work trip to Boston which allowed him to reconnect with a former Dinner Group member Natalie and her family in Brookline. He also discovered the lovely West Newton Cinema, another happy independent theatre find that he hadn't been to before that will make future solo work trips to Boston more palatable in the evenings. The latter part of the week was spent downtown with a contingent of colleagues. A reservation SNAFU had him in a different hotel from the others requiring a hike along the Freedom Trail through downtown Boston past (a fortuitous mistake): the State House, Faneuil Hall, Paul Revere’s House and the Old North Church to Charleston next to the oldest ship in the Navy, the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides”. Taking the $3 Long Wharf Ferry back on the outside of the boat was a treat. Randy also got to eat at Durgin Park "established before you were born" in the Quincy Market and the Union Oyster House (the oldest restaurant in US).

With Paul Revere at Old North Church

WGCS Trivia Night 2014

The first Saturday in April was the WGCS Trivia Night. We again opted for the premium table package with the food and drink buffet included. This year instead of a Sage centric team, we joined up with the past PTO officers to form a dream team with the core of the three of the last four trivia champions and author of the infamous Library themed year: Erin and Will Boyle, Karen and Mike Hill and Kelly and Adam Juriditch. Despite significant partaking of the buffet items, we availed ourselves of a win during the 1980s themed evening, including victory dancing to the 1980s music while cleaning up. The fun continued afterwards as we went dancing to the Blind Tiger at Sutton Place in Maplewood (The Jurditches are co-owners). Like, Totally Awesome Time, For Sure!

80's Trivia winners

Randy and a number of people from his office decided to playing “hooky” (i.e. take annual leave ) from the substantial amount of work and take in the first weekday Cardinal afternoon game (archaically referred to as the Businessman’s Special). A beautiful afternoon and some fine team building.

EC-E day at the Ballpark	View from the $8 seats

Movies for the quarter began with DVD of Frozen that Cate got as a birthday present that got played many times the first couple weeks, resulting in the girl anthem “Let It go” being the soundtrack for the next few months. Let It Go was interrupted with the almost as annoying “Everything Is Awesome” from “The Lego Movie” (at least the implied cynicism about Big Brother for the Awesome song made it more palatable (though we had to explain that to the girls). W also took in the Muppets Most Wanted, X-Men and Close Encounters of A Third Counters. The last was done in order to get the girls getting excited about seeing Devil’s Tower on our upcoming summer vacation. It lead to a nice discussion about what lead the movie to being somewhat boring and definitely dated as opposed when it came out.

In mid-April 17, 2014 we enjoyed having both Jane and Cate play in the WGSD 3rd - 5th grade Strings Concert. There were ~170 kids playing together and they actually sounded pretty good. Apparently there is strength in averaging large groups of mediocrity to become good as a whole.

Jane mostly hided behind the cellos	Cate shares a joke with Grace

Gramy, Jane Cate and Bethany

We celebrated Easter with Randy’s mom Nancy at Manor Grove, bringing in Ruby Tuesday’s and watching the Blues beat the Blackhawks in overtime. On Sunday, we had a fun Easter brunch with the Sages at Rosemary’s sharing good humor and stories with a general absence of drama.

In early may Randy help chaperone Cate’s 4th grade class Field Trip to Tillies Park as part of their Rock and Mineral segment. Actually Shanghaied might be a better description as he brought in a crate of local rocks for the kids to see, stressing the prominence of the St. Louis Limestone which was at the Rock Hill Quarry / Demolition Landfill which they passed by and he insisted on making them peer at through the fencing. Although the Tillies Park sports some fine limestone buildings and fence post, there are no prominent outcrops at the park. Randy did lead the class to a drainage rill that rock had been placed to stabilize the erosion and broke them open for the kids to do the acid test for calcium/limestone. Cate told him twice with great pride that she was super glad he came along and made the field trip a success (not an exaggeration).

Pepper

After a year of infrequent discussions about getting Gussie a friend and sporadic searching on the internet for small dogs to adopt from a local shelter or rescue (Petfinder.com), we adopted a 5 month old miniature Schnauzer the Saturday before Mother’s Day. She came from STL Chihuahua Rescue, who got her and her litter of six siblings from a hoarder/breeder situation. On Friday night, we saw her profile online that she and her siblings were going to be up for adoption at the Kirkwood Petco Saturday morning. We got there early and considered each of the whole litter but our heart was set on the first one we saw, the runt of the litter at only 10 pounds. We weren’t really looking for another pure breed but finding non-pit bull mixes at the shelters has been tough the last decade or so and small puppies go quick.

Curti at the Kirkwood Petco adopting Pepper

Pepper is a supper sweet, cuddle bug that is generally content to sit in one’s lap more than anything else. We spent days settling on a name, though Pepper was the early favorite for most of the family. After a long painful consideration of other options with hope of appeasing the lone holdout (Cate), we settled on Pepper (getting 3 of the 4 votes was best of any name). When we brought her home, she was very timid but she’s grown out of it as her and Gussie play together all the time within a month of arriving. There’s also lots more barking in the house since she’s arrived, mostly from Gussie though). She doesn’t get car sick, so she visits Randy’s mom at Manor Grove every few weeks, which pleases Nancy to no-end. A pretty good Mother’s Day present on the whole.

Jane snoozing with her pal Pepper	Bethany Gussie and Pepper

Pepper buckled up for a ride to see Nana

Randy and Cate go Go-Carting

Adieu to Troop 1711

On Mother’s Day (it was a really busy weekend), Bethany completed here last official turn as Junior Girl Scout Troop leader for the 5th grade troupe with the annual Bridging Ceremony for the WGCS troops (a close second-best Mother’s Day present behind Pepper).

Troop 1711 Junior Girl Scout bridging

Troop 1711’s real last hurrah came the following weekend as we spent the troops remaining cookie money with a trip to the YMCA’s Trout Lodge. The troop leaders Bethany and Erin were in complete agreement that camping didn’t need to be part of the outdoor adventure. The troop hiked, pontoon, boated, rode horses, climbed the rock wall, zip lined, tie dyed and ate Schmores around a campfire. Perhaps the most touching bit was the girls doing their own skits (e.g. Bloody Fingers, etc.) and songs and really coming together as a troop. A nice end for the troop and in a sense grade school for the girls in Jane’s 5th grade class.

The girls doing skits by the campfire	Did you say marshmellow? I want some Schmore!

Cate heading out for a trail ride	Randy zipping along

At Jane’s 5th Grade Graduation ceremony, she was one of three kids to receive the President’s Award for Education Excellence (the others being her best friend Sydney and her rival Catlin).

Jane all smiles for her 5th grade graduation	Sans glasses foreshadowing a future with contacts

School's Out for Summer

On the last Sunday in May 25 we helped celebrate the Tivoli’s 90th Birthday with a screening of “Meet Me in St. Louis”. Jane got the trivia question about the St. Louis-ian with the Million Dollar legs (with help from Dad) winning us a gift card, a CD and an arm-load of nuts. Add to that a complimentary Chipotle burrito with our ticket stub made it a great outing. Prior to that the local TV station ran story of a long-time patron shares his best Tivoli memories. It was the former manager Dale telling our story about meeting at the Tuesday Talkie’s discussion group, marrying and naming Jane after the movie Amélie: http://www.ksdk.com/story/life/2014/05/20/dale-sweet-tivoli-theater/9342937/. It was really nice.

Cate and Jane Celebrate 90 years of the Tivoli

with Meet Me in St Louis

The first Saturday of June 07, saw the girls’ last piano recital for their beloved teacher Michele VanHoose who was moving to Springfield to be closer to ailing family. It was sad but the songs the girls played were fun: Jane doing Red River and Cate doing Will You Won’t You from Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland.

Cate at her last piano practice with Ms Michelle

Jane continued swimming in spring time, taking the intersession at the Kirkwood Y instead being idle for two months. The Friday 4:15 session was not a popular choice, so she frequently ended up getting the practice all to herself. We’ve been happy with her continued participation. She was on the Webster Waves swim team for the summer but missed a couple home meets due to camp or vacation. She did make one meet at the Kirkwood pool in the middle of June.

Jane does the backstroke at the Kirkwood meet

Camp Lakewood

The second week of June we sent the girls off to Camp Lakewood for a week. It was the fifth time for Jane and the fourth for Cate and they’re quite the seasoned capers. Cate took archery, nature and spelunking (mud cave) as her elective activities and Jane choose kayaking, drama and friendship bracelets. The kids love going, perhaps only slightly more than their parents who got a week of date nights, visiting restaurants and seeing movies not usually frequented with kids and binge watching adult TV (Big C and Orange is the New Black).

Cate and Jane ready for their 4th and 5th Week at Camp Lakewood

Cate's cabin	Jane's cabin

On the last Wednesday of spring (18 June), Randy took Jane and Cate to the Webster pool after dinner and letting them play with the new underwater camera that was a Father’s Day and Birthday present purchased for the August rafting trip. Jane raced and beat her dad squarely at swimming again.

Jane and Cate slidding through summer

Jane Underwater	with Cate

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