Girls, Girls, Girls

On Saturday morning all the Georgia ladies of the family piled into the Lucas wagon for a day trip to Knoxville.  The occasion?  My fabulous Aunt Sylvia hosted a mother/daughter brunch in honor of Mother's Day.  When we arrived at Syl's we met up with Mom, Grandma, and Aunt Charlotte in addition to many more ladies--Sylvia's daughters-in-law, their mothers, sisters, daughters, and even one handsome little son who was 3 going on 70:).  It was super special to spend a day with everyone and just to remind myself what awesome women I have in my family.

Once we got there Maggi and Molly spent LOTS of time playing with this cute little kitchen Sylvia found at the Classy Flea in Marietta and Sophi dug right in to the goody buckets!:

I meant to get pictures of all the yummy food--I'm a sucker for luncheon food in pretty serving dishes--but alas, I was too busy eating it...tomato pie, spinach mushroom quiche, couscous salad, ham, fruit, muffins, a cinnamon wheel.  YUM.  And here are some sweet little teacups that Syl's granddaughter made for the kids:

Cute, huh?  Top of an icecream cone on a cookie with a gummy peach ring  for the handle.

Love this one of Maggi and Karma!:

And here are Grandma Dot and Marci sharing a smile:

Here we are gathering to pray:

Marci, Maggi and Stella:

Molly enjoying the spread:

Aunt Sylvia and her nieces:

Sophi, Clark and Sophie eating on a tuffet (that's what it looks like to me anyway):

It was fun to have 4 generations to take pictures with.  I love this one of all the Roach girls with Grandma:

And here are the Bounds sisters with their mother:

Dad stopped by when "official" girl time was done.  Here he is with Charlotte:

And here are the Bounds and Roach girls

And here we are with the little girls too!  A hard pic to get for sure but everyone's there in body if not in face:)!:

Here's another special picture.  Don't know how long it's been since we've taken a Roach family picture with the 5 of us:

So glad we got in a bit of Granddaddy time on mother/daughter day:

Thank you, Sylvia, for such a special opportunity and for such a lovely (and delicious) time together. 

Happy Mother's Day!

When we got back home that same evening Ryan had a special early Mother's Day surprise for me.  I hope to show pics of that soon!!

On Stage

Today was Molly's spring music program at preschool.  Because our sanctuary is undergoing renovations starting this week the program was held in the same place as Guys and Dolls.  Molly was excited about that for sure and told me she was going to "do Guys and Dolls".  She was also quite thrilled about the dress she wore today.  It was a beautiful hand-me-down from her friend Ella and it's great for spinning!

When they were getting lined up she looked out and smiled at the audience.  There's her friend Bella (from my last post) right behind her.

I actually got there in time to get us the perfect seat and wouldn't you know Molly ended up standing BEHIND the blue-shirt kid and the flower pot the whole time.  And of course the batteries went out in the camera too so I had to get up in the middle to walk around and get a good view of her (I'm such a parent.)

 And here she is again this time standing beside her friend Ella (you know, the original owner of the dress:)  (She's definitely a full head shorter than any other 2-year-old.)

And now the greatly anticipated "Five Little Ducks" by the two-year-olds of EBC Weekday Preschool (well, 3 of them at least):

Note: the 2's actually sang two more songs than this but that was when Molly was blocked by the plant and the blue shirt...so I'm just including this one.

And just for kicks here she is with her "best friend", Arena, performing on the real Guys and Dolls stage.  If you listen carefully you'll hear Molly suggest that they sing ABC's and then Arena changes the words which makes Molly crack up:):

Spring Break...a bit late.

Well, it's been nearly a month now since our much anticipated spring break.  I figured it's better late than never to share some pictures from our decidedly low key week.  The hope was to "accomplish" something but I'm afraid the only thing accomplished was a bit of laziness, lots of togetherness, a couple of picnics, some spontaneous out-of-the-ordinary cooking and art projects, and maybe a bit of laundry for good measure...in short, I'm pleased with our "accomplishments".  Since the weeks preceding and following spring break have been the busiest yet, it was nice to finally just hang out with Molly.

Doesn't my baby look all grown up shopping in her heals:

We used some of our extra time one evening to finalize our family car shopping.  We ended up with a Toyota mini van and, though I thought I'd never be a mini-van driver, I love it!

When evenings aren't pressed for time there's more room for this:

This is the playground at a public school less than a half mile from our old house.  They've redone it since we lived there and it's nice, new, and empty.

Molly had her first overnight guest!  We watched Bella for our friends while they had a toddler-free 24 hours to spend together before the arrival of their second baby (who just arrived 2 days ago now!)

It was a good time:)!

My favorite! The girls with Ryan's name artwork:

Listening to showtunes and making some bird's nest cookies:

This girl's a natural in the kitchen.

 I told her to put three eggs in each nest so she'd count them out and then every other one say "oops, I put in four" and then eat one of the eggs to fix it...smart cookie;).  My favorite girl:

We took a day trip to Tennessee to FINALLY meet baby Judah but of course I didn't bring my camera:(.

We ended up the week dying eggs and reading books about Easter (my next catch up post).  We've accidentally made it home with one or two (or four) hospital gowns over the past 2.5 years.  They make great finger painting and egg dying smocks!

She loved watching the tablets dissolve...ahh, memories.
The finished product:

And I couldn't not put this one in:

Coming soon!

It's that time again...

The show this year is on Friday, April 20th at 7 p.m. and Saturday, April 21st at 2 p.m. and 7 p.m. 

"Set in Damon Runyon's mythical New York City, GUYS AND DOLLS JR. introduces us to colorful characters who have become legends in the musical theatre canon: Sarah Brown, the up­right but uptight "mission doll,"; Sky Masterson, the slick, high-rolling gambler who woos her on a bet and ends up falling in love; Adelaide, a nightclub performer whose chronic flu is brought on by the fact she's been engaged to the same man for 14 years; and Nathan Detroit, her devoted fiancé, desperate as always to find a spot for is infamous floating dice game."


Wanna see it?  Let me know when and I'll set some tickets aside for you:)!

Good Reports and Lollipops

I took Molly to another follow up with her urologist this morning and he has both taken her off of medication and declared he doesn’t need to see her for another YEAR!  It was an exciting visit and Molly celebrated by using her drs. office prize lollipop as body paint before coming in for preschoolJ!  It took me 5 wipes to get all the sticky off...

This comes just 3 months after her orthopedist made the same declaration--he sees her again at Christmas.  (The lady who helped us with our taxes was amazed at how much medical we racked up last year--guess we won't have all those copays and prescriptions to deduct next time and I'm okay with that!)    Dr. Smith said she is still more susceptible to UTIs than the average kid for awhile but looks great anatomically and the reflux is now a non-issue!  Another plus is that since she can now pee in a potty (not potty trained mind you)  it won't take a catheter to get a sample if we suspect she does have a UTI...big up-side!!  So, I wanted to share the good news with you all who have so diligently prayed for her from day one (and before).  Praise God from Whom all blessings flow!

It's Cool in the Furnace

This is what I've been working on for awhile:

It's a wall of flames.  Though this is an in-progress pic, all squares in the grid are now full and we are DONE!  The squares at the top are all song titles in the musical It's Cool in the Furnace, a retelling of the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego from Daniel.  The angels on the left side each have one of the 12 first through fourth grade classes on therm.  They're representative of the angel of the Lord that appeared in the furnace to watch over the boys.  For each song learned, a class earned a flame (you know, from the fiery furnace) to keep track of our progress throughout the quarter.  Well, this past Thursday evening it all came to fruition and my elementary kids put on their 8th musical production since I've been at Eastside.  It was a blast:

I don't usually post school stuff on here but Ryan got some pictures so I thought I'd share.  As I said, this year it was It's Cool in the Furnace, a musical written in 1973.  My sisters did it when they were little in the 70's or 80's and then I played the role of Daniel when our church in Connecticut put it on in the 90's.  I love biblical musicals like this that are timeless and tell the story well.  My kids, in 2012, loved it so much and some of their parents were in the same thing way back when...so fun:)

The parents costumed their own children based on some simple suggestions I sent home (using a pillowcase or dad's old shirt with the cuffs and collar chopped off) and everyone looked great!

Kazoos were necessary for Nebuchadnezzar's many fanfare entrances but they had to be easily accessible...so I fashioned a lanyard out of yarn for one and had my fabulous three 8th grade assistants replicate it 170 times over.

Here are the main characters in our story...from right to left, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach (played proudly by a girl), and Abednego.  When I chose this show for the year, I'd forgotten that there were only 2 speaking roles--Daniel (a narrator) and King Neb.  That posed a bit of a problem since the whole fourth grade is promised the task of executing the drama portion of our program.  I took the two and split it into enough roles for 31 fourth graders and all was well.

Our school's athletic director, Coach Jones, graciously accepted the role of Neb and did an excellent job scaring all the children and then being humbled by God.  He's pictured here with his sidekicks:

I made and hung some cardboard flames in the baptistry and, along with some fun lighting by my friend David, that became our furnace.  Here are the boys dancing in the "cool" furnace:

And here's where the angel of the Lord showed up:

The show ends with a goose-bump-inducing power ballad of "Let the People Praise".  I told my kids they'd be waving gold ribbon but instead had some white chiffon on hand.  I cut it into strips and realized the day before that it just looked like they were waving toilet paper in Jesus' name...not the regal praise I was looking for but it worked and maybe people didn't see what I did...maybe.

Some TP praise:

Now shifting focus entirely to Guys and Dolls which should be a blast as well...I'll be back to real life in about a month:)

Making room

When we first moved in I opted not to do much with Molly's room (ha, well if you saw my house you'd think I opted not to do much with anything [I'm not exaggerating], but ignoring M's room was actually on purpose).  We figured that she'd soon be moving out of her crib and we'd address things when baby-room turned big-girl-room.  Then when we found out we were having a baby we decided to wait until we found out what it was and then determine what kind of 2 kid set up we might have.  Well, now I'm itching to get to it and start giving some life to Molly's and Jack's builder-beige rooms!  You might say my intellectual nesting instinct has set in but alas, the energy part just isn't keeping up--what with my "real" job and all.  And because I'd have to blow the dust off my camera to get any real pictures I'm just going to find pics from ye olde intranet to illustrate my ideas.

First off, I've decided to take color inspiration for Jack's room from a childhood favorite (of mine), Caps for Sale.  You know it?

Now, computer monitor colors are tricky but what I love is the blue of the sky (it's the color of our playroom now), the pencil/mustard yellow color of the crops, the off-red color of the title/caps/shoes/crops (it reads orange on my screen right now but it's more red than orange in real life), the smoky blue color of the middle set of caps (it's darker in reality...like the color of the dining room at our old house), and the smattering of black and white throughout.

To be clear, I'm not going for a "caps for sale" theme (and NO monkey theme either), but I'm using the book for a jumping off point and will probably use some of the illustrations as artwork.  Another favorite of mine, Animals Should Definitely Not Wear Clothing, happens to have the same colors going on and it's pictures make me laugh so those'll be included too:

This is Ryan's and my favorite...hilarious right?  A chicken in a wife-beater?!  (oh, and there's an egg stuck in its pants):

As for Molly's room, I'm using her lampshades (which I'm still in love with) to continue dictating colors in there:

Eventually her mattress and box spring will rest on the iron bed I used as a kid and MiMi and Pop have already gotten her this pretty bedspread:

I got some white ruffle curtains on clearance at Target:

and I'm going to add [read: have my mom add] pom-pom fringe to the layers to jazz 'em up.

So, there are a few of my plans because I know you care;).  Now onto the doing...after both of my shows are over!

Oh, and before I go, Jack is supposedly about a foot long and just over a pound by now.  He's an active little thing which makes me smile all the time.  And Molly's is ridiculously wonderful.  That'll be another post for another time.  I'll catch you up on some iPhone pics in the meantime.

Passing the time between arrival and preschool in the morning:

Tornado warning sleepover (after my rehearsal lock-in ended early):

Painting with potato stamps while I make dinner:

 A cutie in booties:

Having a snack while I'm in rehearsal:

Night.

In case you haven't heard...

...it's a Jack!

It was a family affair at the doctor last week as we all (Ryan, Molly, and I) filed in to witness the big reveal.  I must say, I was pretty surprised!  I really was expecting little thang to be a girl and even Ryan, who has said boy from the beginning, admitted to being a bit surprised.  I think when you live in Molly-land it's hard to picture anything else.  We've lived with the exciting news for a week today and Jack is now a fixture in our family by name (instead of just by presence)!  Several people have already asked me if we are planning on calling him Jack Oliver because that's how Molly refers to him always.  Well, we've thought all along it'd be just Jack, for us anyway, but if Molly decides to call him Jack Oliver then good for her (and how cute is that?)!  Lately she completes a family inventory every time we get in the car: "Daddy's Ryan Michael Lucas, you're Ashleigh Roach Lucas, I'm Molly Harper Lucas, and we're gonna have a Jack Oliver Lucas!"  Love that kid.

So, we didn't come away with any super clear pictures of our little man (he was laying on his tummy so we basically ended up with a really good picture of his spine).  I was kind of hoping for a profile to compare with Molly's sono pics.  But he looks healthy and his heartbeat was strong!  He's also measuring exactly on target--maybe he'll be a normal sized baby?!  Molly enjoyed getting to see him and was familiar with all the fancy equipment since she's had quite a few of those herself.  But near the end of the sonogram she declared she was "all finished" and ready for a change of scenery.  She also did pretty well at delivering the news via phone call to MiMi, Pop, Grandma, and Granddaddy but after about 5 phone calls she said "I have an idea!  Mommy, how bout you call the next one!"  She wore her "big sister" shirt and was excited to tell her preschool teachers once we were back at school.

At the doctor's office after the big news:

The pictures we did get of Jack are still waiting to be scanned but in the meantime enjoy a rendering done by Ryan's coworker.  It was waiting for him when he arrived at work after our appointment: