Welcome to Hogwarts

As many 11-year-olds have dreamt, Libby and 10 of her friends received their Hogwarts letters a few weeks ago.

The young witches and wizard arrived excited and dressed in capes and house colored ties.  They passed through platform 9 3/4 to enter.  Our own Voldemort waited in the shadows to scare the living daylights out of them.

The guests proceeded to Ollivanders to prepare their wands.

The great room was decorated with floating candles.  These little buggers were a bit of a pain and a few fell down.

Some guests RSVP came via owl!

We had a Honey dukes counter.

And a potions class.

Hagrid made the cake.

We had these amazing cookies as a favor.  Along with these amazing mugs with vinyl decals for the Three Broomsticks and The Leaky Cauldron.  My talented generous co-worker made these happen for us.  They looked so fun filled with butterbeer!

The whole group showing off their divination balls.

My mom came to help and she got really into it!   She even started reading the books!  The two of us had so much fun setting it all up.

My sweet girl loved every minute.

This was one of my favorite birthday parties to host.  It was like stepping out of the mundane into a world of ancient spells and polyjuice potions.

washday

Libby had her first paid job today making 50 small arrangements for my friend Tiffany's business, washday floral.  She finished all her schoolwork early to free up her day. She put down the screens and set off to work with her hands.  She loved the vibrant colors of the ranunculus.  It is therapeutic to play with lovely blossoms and to smell the eucalyptus.  And in the car on the way home she held her earnings in her hand and a new sense of accomplishment in her heart.

February 2021

Covid birthdays can be a bummer, but Jeremiah and I still managed to celebrate my 40th with great friends.

Here is Tommy dressed like he is 100 for the 100th day of school.  He was very resistant to doing this, but I thought Carroll Manor moms would go all out as in years past.  When we signed on to his call, only 1 other kid had dressed up.  The kids were saying things like "I don't want to look old." And "dressing up is dumb.". Tommy wanted to sink through the floor.  

Then one boy, I think maybe Ben, said.  "I like Tommy's!  That looks cool.". Then all of sudden the tide turned and other kids agreed and Tommy could laugh with them and enjoy his silly costume.  Thanks to Ben, we averted disaster and my little boy's confidence was bolstered rather than destroyed.

In January we were lucky to be invited to Massanutten with my parents for a week of skiing, ice skating, and snow tubing.  Tommy caught on quickly to the skiing.  After a few runs we could all dismount the lift without falling into a tangled mess of bodies and skis. Luca convinced James that they should do the black diamond slope.  James said he mostly rolled down it.  He attempted taking his skis off and walking but that didn't work either.

On our way home we drove a portion of skyline drive.  We stopped at my favorite overlook.  And I took their picture at the tree where we stopped the first time we entered the park years ago when they were small.

Back to Busy

 It feels like we have gone from 0-60 in a second here with the return to in person school (2 days a week) and sports ramping up.  I have forgotten how we managed it!  On any given Saturday morning it seems we're supposed to be in 6 different places!

Before the ramping up of activities, we took one last relaxing week at Costa Del Sol with my parents.  The weather was perfect.  We had our easter dinner on the beachfront patio.

Here is Tommy on his first day of in-person first grade.

Scenes like below will soon be a distant memory. 

One of the recent additions to the schedule is Tommy's baseball.  The first practice he hid behind Jeremiah's legs and wouldn't let the coach get near him.  I understand his shyness after a year of staying home with his own family.  He is warming up to it all though.  He asks me to play catch a lot and his throws are getting hard enough to hurt my hand!

Lastly, our recent gathering of the cousin crew at Mom mom and Pap pap's house.