A Star is Born

Since I'm so far behind on blogging (my version of scrapbooking with three kids), I think the best thing to do is to start with this past weekend and work backward. As you know, Sunday was Mother's Day. Although it was far from a restful or relaxing day, it was a wonderful day all the same.

It began with me waking up to the sensational smell of chocolate chip muffins baking in the oven. And since I had been in bed since almost midnight the night before, I obviously wasn't the one cooking them. But even sweeter than getting up early to make me muffins on Mother's Day was Josh getting up extra-early to make a Publix run to get one important, missing ingredient.


I had casually mentioned the night before that we were out of eggs, so Josh set his alarm clock for even earlier than he had originally planned to so that he could get to Publix and back, mix up a batch of delicious (but in no way healthy) muffins, and bake them.

And he did it all before my feet hit the floor.

Between the two of us, at least one has to be at church really early each week. If Josh runs sound, I get the kids ready and meet him there. And if I play in the band, he takes over getting everyone dressed and loaded up. Sunday was Josh's week for sound, but he snuck in a few minutes late because he stayed here to help me with the Sunday morning madness of breakfast, getting everyone dressed, finding the inevitable lost shoe, getting everyone down to the car, strapped into the car seats, and out the door (a process which Josh likens to "herding cats").

As I mentioned in my last post, the service was particularly special for us not only because it was Mother's Day, but because we were spending it sharing about our new baby.

Herding my precious cats and sharing about the newest kitten to come...it doesn't get much better than that!

I think I've posted before about Abby's little ballet class that she's been involved in for several months now. Well, this weekend was her recital. And it's a good thing that I had a yummy treat for breakfast that morning, because my fancy Mother's Day lunch was a plastic container full of rotini pasta that Abby and I ate in the dressing room before the show.

Now you need to know that the original intention was for Abby to lay out of this first recital experience. Once she's comfortable in a situation, she's wide open, and she gives it her all. But until that point, she's much more of an observer...so much so that she'll melt into a scared, pitiful mess if she's pushed. So we really thought it would be best not to force the issue this go-around and just let her get a feel for what a ballet recital is like.


But one thing led to another, and she ended up in the recital. We went into the weekend expecting lots of tears (or at best, a "deer-in-the-headlights" expression), but instead, this is what we got...


She couldn't wipe the smile off her face!! Some friends of ours who were sitting in front of us jokingly asked me if I had turned into a pagaent mom and rubbed vaseline all over her teeth to make her smile constantly. And she didn't just enjoy the opening parade-of-ballerinas...she did every single move of their dance with a huge smile on her face.


She even said after her recital that she "loved dancing on stage with all those people watching". Who knew?!?


Since Abby danced right on through naptime, we had a carload full of sleepy children when we left. But they each found their respective soothing body parts, and they rode home quietly.