Weekend

We are generally homebodies on the weekend.  This weekend though, we crammed in every possible activity we could come up with!

I found out Friday morning, because evidently I live under a rock most of the time, that they were putting on Much Ado About Nothing downtown.  Actually, I think I had heard this, but it had not stayed in my head that long.  I was probably picking out curriculum or telling Nate to, "Please stop jumping the couch for the love of all that is holy."  It was the last weekend that it was running.  Much Ado is my favorite Shakespearean piece and Kate is really into Shakespeare at the moment, yes, at six.  She has memorized a fair chunk of Hamlet's "To be or not to be..." soliloquy and she loved Midsummer Night's Dream put on by the downtown library.  They set it post WWII and added musical numbers to it.  The littles loved that the actors 'hid' in the audience: running around, sitting on people's laps and blankets, and hiding behind small children during the eavesdropping scenes in the garden.  The kids really enjoyed it (as did I) and didn't get restless until almost ten (them, not me)--way, way past their bedtimes.  Even with that, they did manage to make it to the very end.  Kate is already asking about going next year, since they are putting on Midsummer Night's Dream, and also if she can act in one of their plays in the future.  She will be our little thespian!

On a side note, we have lived in the area for 2 years and never run into anyone I knew from before (we have friends, family, and family friends here, since I only grew up about an hour from the north side of town).  In two days I ran into a cousin at the park with our children and at Shakespeare in the Park we ran into a friend of my sister and cousin.  I hadn't seen either of these two people in 15 years.  Thanks to Tori for the family picture!

Saturday morning Justin took the Buick for emissions testing, for the third time.  The first time the wait was estimated at three hours, the second the gas cap evidently leaked, but this time it passed.  Whew!

Then we headed to a pioneer days festival.  We watched a blacksmith, saw an infirmary, learned about mourning customs, saw traditional cooking,

listened to traditional music, wrote with quill pens, 

the littles rode in a 'train' pulled by a tractor (Nate cried horribly when we left),

and Kate learned to dance The Virginia Reel.

The 16 year old fellow, Oscar, was very good with her, and Justin even let him live.

Her sister, who wanted to dance, but couldn't work up the courage teased her that if she danced with Oscar, then Kate must be Oscar the Grouch.  This offended Kate greatly until I laughed at it and told it was just silly.  Then she laughed too.

Saturday afternoon I had won tickets to see Last Ounce of Courage.  I never win anything and entered on a whim, never thinking I would possibly win.  We bought the littles tickets and took them along, since it was rated PG.  Justin and I can neither one completely decide what we thought of the movie.  It had some really good parts.

We spent the rest of the evening explaining to our children that actors aren't really hurt nor do they die when their characters do, that the jail wasn't real, and how they knew which key to use (not quite sure why that was suddenly a question, since we each have several keys on our key rings).  It was the first time our kids were really exposed to any sort of violence (it was very tame by today's standards), since we don't watch much in the way of TV or movies unless our Saturday morning Veggie Tales, Gumby, or Fraggle Rock and occasional episodes of The Electric Company count as much.

Sunday was church, leading children's worship, chatting with the parents/grandparents, and after seeing 'long wait' next to Aladdin in our Netflix queue for a long time, we finally got it to watch with the littles as a substitute for those Saturday morning cartoons we skipped for pioneer days.  A day of rest!

I hope your weekend was wonderful too!