Weekend Update

Dear Weather: Get with the program! Tomorrow will be the first of May, and I'd like to be done for a few months with my feet feeling like icicles. Thank you.

Last Friday afternoon, I volunteered as a "book club" leader in the kindergarten class. That involves reading a storybook to a small group (thankfully, my small group was less rambunctious this time than previously; and this includes my kid) and then doing some activities based on the book. We read Dear Bear, about a little girl who is scared of the bear living in the closet under the stairs. Our activities included making bear puppets with paper lunch sacks, cutting and assembling (with glue sticks) sandwiches from coloring pages, and then having a brief tea party with a toy tea set and some pretend tea.

The weekend was cool and rainy. We spent time indoors, watching the Chimpanzee movie at our local movie theater and visiting the play area at the mall. Sunday was a special celebration of music at church, with musical participation from all the choirs -- from the littlest ones, including the three- to five-year-olds choir that Nora sings with -- on up to the adult choir, as well as the bell choir. (There were also some people sitting in the choir loft with trumpets, but they never appeared to play them. I haven't figured that out.) The music was wonderful and joyful, as befitting the Easter season, with the little kids giving a very enthusiastic singing of "We Are the Church" (which I also frequently hear practiced at home).

After church and dinner on Sunday, we headed over to St. Paul for the Minnesota Horse Expo. Unfortunately, I didn't realize until I had time to flip through the program on our way home that Kate Chenery Tweedy, daughter of Secretariat owner Penny Chenery, had been there. (Our family owns the movie Secretariat and has seen it many, many times --- particularly the smallest, most horse-obsessed member of our family.) We did, however, see and pet lots and lots of horses, and Nora took one of the free pony rides. She informed us that Chester was a nice pony. She was also impressed with the horses that had won prizes -- and the pony with the pink nail polish on her hooves. And we watched for a while as some members of a group that does gymnastics while standing on a horse's back demonstrated some of their techniques and talked about their training.

We also finished up reading The Unicorn Princess (Fetlocks Hall) by Babette Cole, a chapter book that was one of our library finds a couple of weeks ago. I don't think we knew what we were getting into: it's the first in a series that's essentially Harry Potter with unicorns instead of wizards. Between the British-isms, the horse terminology, and the words the author made up, I don't think either of us knew what was going on half the time. I console myself with the thought that it's increasing her vocabulary.