It just occurred to me that I’m a month late on my update. If anybody was looking for it – I apologize. It simply got away from me. A couple of months ago our ceiling literally crashed down around us. Our house had these old, elaborate plaster ceilings and they are quite heavy. Apparently with time the plaster separated the drywall from the ceiling joists and one Saturday we heard a giant crash at about 6am. Thankfully nobody was injured but it has been quite an ordeal getting things fixed. The floors were also damaged in the crash so we decided to replace all the ceilings and floors in the main part of the house. We then lived in the bonus room over the garage and our bedrooms while Tim replaced everything. During that time he got an illness that had him out for a couple of weeks and that delayed things even more. At the same time, school and life are still going on and I was trying to have this impact the kids as little as possible. The good news is that the house has now almost had a complete remodel and we should be done with projects for a while. Tim isn’t back to 100% but he’s much better and life is getting back to normal.

Top row = Taya, bottom row = Emi

The girls have mainly been busy with school and their theater classes. They put on a production of Annie and it was really good! They were both orphans in the ensemble. Neither of them wanted to audition for a speaking role – they’re still too nervous and insecure for auditioning- but they sang and danced in most of the scenes and they were absolutely phenomenal. I was so proud of them and more importantly they were proud of themselves. It was a lot of hard work with rehearsals everyday after school in the 2 weeks leading up to the shows but they never complained and were excited to perform. This program has really built their confidence. They are now rehearsing for Mary Poppins. The shows will be the last 2 weeks of June. My sisters are coming in to watch but the girls don’t know, so it will be a big surprise. For the Annie shows they had some classmates and neighbors come and they really felt special.

They also both played soccer this year and while I still don’t think they love it, they did much better than last year. Taya enjoyed being goalie and Emi had some good plays in defense. What they’ve really been working on is gymnastics. I had them in a gymnastics class for 2 years and they couldn’t be bothered. They never even worked out a cartwheel. Now they’ve taught themselves front and back walkovers, handsprings and the splits. Taya can even do an aerial cartwheel and Emi is not far behind her. The reason for the sudden obsession with gymnastics is that they want to be on the cheer squad. I signed them up for the local team and practices start in July. I’m not sure how I feel about competitive cheer teams but they have some friends that do it and are very interested in doing it too. We’ll see how the summer and fall go. Maybe next year. The thing they need to realize is that they’re never going to be the top of the pyramid. They are too big and nobody is going to be able to fling them around. Also they sport focuses so much on appearance and the girls already get so much attention in that area. They talk about looks a lot and can be too focused on their clothes and hair etc. I want them to know that their worth is not tied to their looks. They are kind and smart and funny. We’re trying to focus on how the inside is better than the outside.

We’ve got one week of school left and the girls are counting the days down. They’re ready for summer. I’m not sure I am. I’ll let you know how it goes in my September post.