Life in the Fifth Grade

Tonight I fell asleep on the couch at 730.

Today I...

...picked up my colleague at 645 and drove to Crowder's mountain.
...hiked up to pick up my kids from their overnight "rising up" trip to Crowder's.
...hiked down Crowder's with 48 kidlets and all their gear.
...interviewed two candidates for a job at school
...sat through two long meetings

and

...finished up casting details for our play.
...finished progres reports.
...finished prepping for tomorrow.

This girl is done. Night night.

The Chosen One

By order of the Queen, I can announce that the fifth grade of Trinity Episcopal School has selected the most excellent comedy by William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night's Dream, to perform at May's end.

American Idol Ellen

On Tuesday night my sister got to see Idol live with some buddies from work. Here she is with my favorite two contestants. Jealous!

Hey! Stop Polluting the Oceans!

Happy Earth Day, 2009!

The 2nd graders at Trinity led the day with an indoor parade - hilar and precious. And kudos to Mr. Luft for his thoughtful Earth Day attire.

Non Sequitor

Lately, small, quite random, events have popped up in my life. Or maybe I have just started paying better attention to them. Anyhoo, I thought I would start posting them every now and then on the blog. Here goes:

Today, while sitting on a picnic table during recess, three ducks (yep - ducks, not geese) swooped over the playground and into a neighbor's bushes. Myself and about 6 kids ran to follow them and watched them scurry into the backyard shrubs. There also might have been a little hanky panky going on between the girl and boy duck.

And not a pond in sight. Weird.

Dexter Abbott Pay

Sarah and Joe welcomed their third son into the world this last Friday. Baby Dexter came in at a whopping 6 pounds 7 ounces and mom and baby are happy and healthy. Early reports say he looks like Joe. :)

I love what Sarah wrote in her announcement email about the two big brothers' responses to baby number three:

"Bradley is more than enamored with his new little brother and Bennett is curious about him in the same way he is about dogs and cats."

Love that my friend can write with such dry humor and honesty even after a c section.

Enjoy the sweet pictures...

fondue, cash, crash

Friday night I had the privilege of celebrating Laurie's impending nuptials with her ladies at a fondue dinner. Brother Bryan did not disappoint with his legendary fondue and I thoroughly enjoyed learning the thrilling "Left, Right, Center" game. The bar tender was also quite adept and enjoyable. Thanks to JoEl and Meg for loaning me $3 - sorry I lost it immediately. Dang it.

The "crash" onomatopoeia in the post title is an homage to the crappy ending of the night when laurie, christy, bryan, and a neighbor's cars were broken into. Not the kind of bachelorette drama l was hoping for... :(

Final Four on the Patio

We may not have hawks, and we did not have our beloved Deacs to cheer on, but we did have mucho fun-o a few weekends back when folks came over to watch the final four. It was a beautiful spring evening with baggo, burgers, babies, and basketball a-plenty. Many of my work peeps showed up and everyone else agreed I work in a rockin' place with rockin' people. I especially loved spending time with the sword (mop) wielding Peter from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (Keller).

Kudos to Dave for his bringing his vision of setting up the TV out back and thanks to all of you dear friends for spending the evening with us. We loved every minute.

No Hawks

Sadly, our red shouldered hawk family did not return to our backyard this year. I'm not gonna lie, it took me a while to get over it. I even asked the peeps at Carolina Raptor Center why our hawks would break up with me and she was pretty much like, "Well, Emily, they are wild animals so we don't really know why they nest where they do." She also mentioned that the erratic weather patterns this year have caused many raptor pairs not to nest ... basically, it's not about you, Emily - it's about them. :)

I mention this now only because a friend sent along some photos of baby great horned owls here in town -- copy and paste the link below to check out some amazing pictures.

Hoot, hoot....

http://photographicmoment.net/p32630100/h20addc57#h20addc57

something's growing...

no, we are not pregnant, but hopefully i fooled some of you with the title of the post! hehe.

ellen and john have fruit trees in their back yard in LA -- so jealous, btw. check out the young fruit spotted this week...




Raise your children well, smells...

the leonard boys

lar and frank brought the boys into town this weekend and I finally got to meet sir george...check out how precious he is (and sam and their mommy, of course!) ...

Daily Candy

In light of my last post, check out today's post on Atlanta's dailycandy.com ... hilarious timing...

ATLANTA | April 1, 2009

Smell Ya Later
Better Marriage Blanket
sleep tight!

Your relationship of late: fresh, fruity, and (sadly) rooty-tooty.

Your partner’s nocturnal emissions have you worried that the honeymoon is over. And great meals just keep amounting to a hill of beans.

Bring back the love with the Better Marriage Blanket.

The BMB’s activated carbon fabric layer lessens the blow of late-night bombings using technology that originated from government-issue chemical warfare suits. In other words, your Aunt Agnes’s bean-and-sausage soup has finally met its match.

Plus, it’s washable, dryable, and even flame retardant — for those nights when cabbage is on the menu.

Put one on the guest room bed and tell your family and friends. You may feel silly tooting your horn over a blanket, but don’t worry.

No one gives a poot about that.