I think 500 posts counts as an accomplishment worthy of celebration- and so I will appropriate pictures of another celebration-- My friend Elena had a birthday picnic yesterday and I finally got around to getting out my camera. I know Elena through fire-hazard and at any of our events there are, necessarily, nerf guns. It was a gorgeous day, my kite was attached to a bike and happily darting around in the sunlight, and there was hummous in 1 litre containers. A perfect setting for an all out nerf war.
The sky was blue, and I was sitting on the grass which meant that the sky kept beautifully framing people trying to shoot me. I started taking pictures and that soon developed into figuring out the best way to photograph a dart in flight. Most of the time this ended up with me being shot in the face and a menacing picture devoid of darts. Everyone once in a while it actually worked and that was tremendously exciting:
Josh got hit in the face.
I got hit in the face twice and totally missed Josh, but look! THREE darts flying through the air!!
Tom was out to get Ruth.
Gwyn looking all badass and trying to figure out how to cock two nerf pistols at once without the aid of a third hand....
Dear Andy,
You asked me if I had eaten any British strawberries as they are your favourite and you remember eating many of them around your birthday. Well, I am here to say that YES I have, and in fact, I made your grandmother's strawberry pie with them in honour of your birthday. I think these ones were from Norfolk.
Here's the thing though, I got the recipe from my mother's (your sister's) cookbook, and it actually is a little difficult to translate it from American into British. Things like "2 large packages of Jell-O" and "2 packets of graham crackers" are a bit difficult to find/guage volume wise in a country where Jello-O is called "jelly" and it comes already woobley. The crackers I replaced with digestive biscuits and then I guessed at all the volumes. I'm not used to working with jelly or hand whipped cream (thanks, Ella!) so this is not my most aesthetically pleasing result ever, (excuses!) but it was delicious. And enjoyed by many at the picnic today (it disappeared in minutes). We toasted you and your birthday!
Also, this morning I taught some tykes- I had them make you a little birthday card:
So happy birthday, Andy. You're the best uncle a niece could ask for!
I taught in Harrow today and it was a bit of a mixed bag. Unsurprisingly, the lessons that I was prepared for went well! The ones that I wasn't? Not so much...Really, must learn from this.
We're on to a new term which means news songs for my two groups of singing tykes! I'm determined to start part singing with my older ones (5-8), which means I need to make sure that I'm not wandering all over the place pitch wise when I teach them the songs. (I like using teaching as a way to force myself to learn things I ought to have learned years ago.) We're working with "pease pudding hot" which I had them sing, use kodaly hand signals for, hocket (pass) between the boys and girls where one group sang only the words the rhymed with temperature words and the other group sang the rest of the song (pay attention, kiddoes! If you don't you'll get all confused!), and then tried signing with two different starting pitches.
We also had a big discussion about what, exactly, pease pudding is. A boiled pudding a la treacle pudding? A pot pie filled with peas? Some old Victorian food that no one eats any more because it is gross? No one knew. Fortunately Wikipedia has come to the rescue: "pease pudding is a boiled vegetable product, which mainly consists of split yellow or Carlin peas, water, salt, and spices often cooked with a bacon or ham joint." So there you go. Huh.
(Incidentally here's a conversation I had with one of my girls:
"Casey, have you heard of a man we're studying in school?"
"....Do you know his name?"
"I think, I think it's, um, William Morris?"
"Oh my gosh, yes! Have you been to his house in Walthamstow?"
"No, but he was born in Walthamstow!"
"Exactly! What is it that you are studying in school, The Aesthetics?"
"...um. No? The Victorians."
Because 7 year olds will not be studying aestheticism, you ninny.)
The younger group was meant to be singing "rain rain go away" but I got all muddled so they sang "pease pudding hot" as well...which threw off my whole mental lesson plan. Mrhg. Oh, well. I lost three or four of them to their mothers, which is my highest attrition rate ever in this school. Must actually have a lesson plan next time. Ah, well. Their version of a rhythmic rhyme called "chop chop choppity chop" took a delightful turn when one of the four year olds waxed poetic about a "nice piece of meat with a bit of fat around the edge" that we ought to throw into our stew pot. He continued talking for quite a while about this meat with the fat still on it and I grinned at him trying not to giggle at the tiny gourmand.
Speaking of delightfulness, I had a quick visit for tea and ginger cake at Peter's house yesterday. He and Gail say hello and also gave me a clipping from the Guardian of one of the Westminster vergers (who happens to be a friend of theirs) doing cartwheels down the aisle after the Royal Wedding. I've got it tacked to my bedroom wall now. Fortunately, YouTube has many, many versions for you to peruse. Here's one:
Happy American Mother's Day!
Royal wedding fever has well and truly hit. Yesterday I had the privilege of helping the librarians with their bulletin board about the wedding. We nicked a white paper table cloth, printed out a bunch of pictures of Kate and Wills, found some red, white, and blue ribbon and set about making a truly ridiculous board complete with a frosted wedding cake and (my favourite part) 3D cake toppers of the royal couple made out of even more white table cloth.
I love the librarians, and we had a great time chatting in our haste to get this done before the library was being used for a meeting about how we were essentially in a Changing Rooms episode and how we could each take turns to play Lawrence Llewelyn-Bowen. Also, I got to walk around on top of the bookshelves and wield the mighty staple gun. So I was pretty pleased with all of that. (I apologise for the lack of photographic evidence of the royal wedding themed board, we did *intend* to take pictures, but that didn't quite end up happening...)
Today was nursery assistanting day, which unfortunately coincided with the jet lag hitting me. So I woke up to a phone call from my boss 15 minutes after school had opened to the children asking me if I was going to be coming into work that day. (!) An hour and 15 minutes later I arrived just in time to help set up the nursery's English Tea Party. Which was both delightful and adorable. We set up tables outside and put flags on them as table cloths. Each of the nursery classrooms made different foods so we had cucumber sandwiches, flag bedecked fairy cakes, frosted biscuits, crisps, Victoria sponge cake, etc. The children were all wearing crowns and it was both very cute and very British.
The area around the Royal Parks is getting absurd. Yesterday I went to go check out the media circus outside Buckingham Palace. There's a whole structure that's been built there to house all of the television crews. Lots of fancy lighting, giant boom mics, and crowds of people trying to get into the background of things being filmed. My favourite part was watching a horse drawn carriage complete with two top hatted drivers that went up and down the arcade getting filmed again and again from different angles. Don't forget to run along the side of the carriage and record the horse's hooves! Oh, you got that already? Cool.
Hyde Park has some giant screens that they were testing this afternoon as well as beer gardens (Pimm's Gardens, really. This is England after all), sausage and burger stands, and whole fleets of port-a-loos. (Still England.)
I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. The wedding is at 11am, and given my late rising this morning and the potential for transport failure, meh. We'll see.
Anyhow, that's the news from these parts. I hope you enjoy the bunting! (Edit: bunting has been removed due to annoying music and the wedding being past. Pretty dress though, didn't you think? My favourite part was the little flower girl holding her ears during the flyover. I think all weddings need a slightly grumpy youngster involved.)
This is an excuse post- mainly my computer's fan is on the fritz meaning that it overheats and freezes (how it delights me to write "overheats and freezes") rendering it largely useless. I mean, until I fix it...in the mean time Ella has generously let me use her computer meaning that I can, if necessary, be on skype or check my email, but (and here is the excuse part) due to the quirks of her keyboard (it takes a LOT of effort to use the space bar) I'm disinclined to blog a whole lot.
Which is why there will be no real content in this post.
Mostly the reason I'm writing this at all though, is to let you know that my 10 year old yoga pants finally bit the dust half way through class and are now held together with staples.
Sunday was delightful, despite being plagued by jet lag and colds. We slept in and then Gwen showed up for lunch. I hadn't managed to start preparing anything yet, but Gwen brought wine, and Laine had the genius idea of bringing the folding chairs into the kitchen. (I don't know why Ella and I never thought of that, we hang out in the kitchen all the time because it is the warmest room in the house and, you know, there's food there, but we hadn't ever brought the chairs in. NOW, however, they live there. Thanks, Laine!)
Remember our awesome organic food box we get delivered? Do any of you know about Laine's peculiar devotion to cast iron pans? Have I told you that I've been experimenting with pastry? Well. All of those came together in a deliciously elaborate vegetable quiche with homemade pastry and about 10 different kinds of vegetables in it. We had extra pastry (and extra cheese and extra quiche mixture) so in addition to the quiche we also made little baby cheese quiches (soufflees? Kind of?) in a muffin tin. All of this was taking far too long for Gwen so we also made bar cookies with melted dark chocolate on top.
Delicious productivity, convivial atmosphere, and conversation that flowed and flowed and flowed. It was interesting hearing stories being re-told for a slightly different audience. I know how *I* tell the story of Gwen and I becoming friends, but it was fun to hear her version. Gwen has heard all sorts of stories about our family, but this time she got to hear them from Laine. Excellent, good times.
Gwen eventually went home so Laine and I, in our relaxed/lethargic state ended up watching a bunch of episodes of "Miranda,"a ridiculous and slapstick-y comedy that I've rather fallen in love with. Eventually we got hungry again, rummaged around the pantry, and ended up on accident with a divine take on macaroni and cheese involving orzo, sesame oil, tamari sauce, and bok choi.
And that was pretty much it. You'll notice that I didn't leave the house. (Laine and Gwen were both sent off to the shop for various bits and pieces as they became necessary. So I guess the title is bit of a misnomer...)
Heist. It's a pretty cool game. This last run we did sold out in 77minutes. People like it. I was not at all sure that Laine would....
You take a team of 10 people, gather them up at a pub, and give them some sort of back ground about how a bunch of thugs have taken over an abandoned police station and how we need to get the (mumble) out straight away because of (mumble) which is why they'll only have 30 minutes and need to be super stealthy to get around the "guards." Then we give them maps, a bunch of radios with head sets, assorted other useful accouterments like wire cutters, gaffer tape, a nerf gun with one round of ammo, black beanie hats to look the part, coloured ties for identification and code name purposes, and express instructions not to cut the video camera wire because seriously it's a pain to fix. Don't do that. Then you give them 30 minutes to plan their attack before getting them to follow one of the "guards" to the station and letting havoc break loose from there.
Laine was kind enough to play a round for me so that she could understand what I'm always talking about. She made herself very useful in that she became the point person to relay lock codes through, but she also placed herself in the one spot the guards definitely wouldn't catch her. Clever and good at risk management, my sister. Also, silhouetted against a window which meant that I could see her the entire time, which was entertaining.
My role is to be the operations person for the team; meaning I give them their instructions, story, and equipment and then follow their progress and the guards' progress by listening to my radios from my secure spot outside the game boundaries. If the team needs some help, they've managed to get a box out to me, or the game is getting close to ending- I call that over the radio. Other than that I tend to listen in and chuckle at how completely their plans have blown up. (Because the plans always blow up. Always.) And cheer or jeer as necessary.
Laine hung out with me during my second and final round of the evening, so she got a good taste of how much fun listening to the radios is as well. At the end we helped the fire-hazard team tidy up a bit in preparation for Sunday's run and then went home where Laine Facebook introduced me to a bunch of her friends and then we passed out, exhausted.
