I had jury duty today for the first time in nine years. I didn’t even get put on a panel to be questioned for a jury this time. Just drove the 40 minutes to the courthouse, sat packed in a room like sardines with a few hundred strangers for two hours, then was dismissed and drove the 40 minutes back home. So exciting! ;) Apparently, just showing up counts as serving, so I won’t be called again for at least another three years.
My niece, Nicole (right), had a cheer competition in Dallas this weekend, so she and her sister, Rachel, and their mom (Mark’s sister, Jill) stayed with us. It was a busy weekend for them, but we managed to grab a shot of the kids together before they headed off for the final round. Nicole’s team got first in their division!
A photo that magically appeared on my camera while I was taking a nap. :) Kaylee helping Matthew sort pieces to put together another one of his Mega Blok Halo figures.
The kids normally aren’t allowed video game time on school nights, so after school on Fridays, it’s usually the first thing they want to do. Here Matthew’s helping Kaylee with some Wizard101 strategy.
A late evening of Matthew working more on his English assignment, while Kaylee checks out her latest American Girl magazine.
Matthew had an English assignment to create booklets about the four main characters in the novel “The View From Saturday”. He decided to use the X-Box character creator to do the illustrations. Meet Noah, Julian, Nadia, and Ethan. :)
A rare calm morning – both kids were actually ready for school early. It’s not that unusual for Matthew, but Kaylee is normally scrambling the last few minutes to finish up. Matthew decided to use the time to practice his card shuffling, while Kaylee read the comics from Sunday’s paper.
When I was straightening up today, I found a couple of sponge balls that hadn't gotten put away after a DYMC meeting. Kaylee looked remarkably fly-like when she held them up to her eyes.
For the last few years I’ve been doing all of Matthew’s haircuts. As I am not particularly skilled at cutting hair, we do a simple buzz cut in the warmer months, and then usually just trim up the nape and around his ears when it’s colder. We’ve gone longer than usual this time before cutting it all off. Matthew was not happy when I commented that his hair was starting to look like Justin Bieber’s. ;)
Here he was waiting to head out with Mark to yet another magic lecture. Seems like it’s been magic central around here lately!
Matthew’s been having a little trouble reading the board in a couple of classes, so it was time to get him some glasses. Mark had taken him for the actual exam since I wasn’t feeling well that day, but he was out at yet another magic event (an annual auction) when we got the call today that the glasses were ready, so Kaylee and I took Matthew over to pick them up.
Kaylee commented that he looked like Harry Potter, so he had some fun pretending the case was a wand. :)
Mark went to a magic collectors’ meeting tonight at the home of Arthur Moses, author of “Houdini Speaks Out”.
[No idea who actually took the photo, but it was on my camera, so I figure it’s fair game. ;) ]
Kaylee and I went to the park after school, and on our way back we spotted this Great Blue Heron (I think) wading in a ditch behind a row of houses. It took off when I pulled out my camera. I’ve only ever seen them maybe half a dozen times here, and it’s usually been before it was fully light out after putting the kids on the bus, and I’ve never had my camera with me before, so I was thrilled to get these shots. :)
Kaylee shows off her green tongue and teeth (they looked much greener in person than they do in the photo), courtesy of a packet of Fun Dip from her haul of candy from yesterday’s school Valentine party.
As I mentioned in Thursday’s post, Mark has been busy with producing a local workshop for Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger. The workshop was yesterday. Mark and Matthew went and had a terrific time. Jeff and Eugene were kind enough to stay an extra day to meet with the Young Magician’s Club tonight. This is Jeff teaching the kids a little trick. :)
Kaylee’s yearbook will have a section for family snapshots this year. We hadn’t done one in quite a while, so I set up the tripod and used my remote trigger to snap a few before Mark and Matthew had to run off to the magic workshop. We took a few silly shots at the end. :)
(No, this one was not submitted for the yearbook. I had Kaylee choose a somewhat less crazy one to send for that. LOL)
Another movie night. This time is was “Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole”. Quite good… excellent animation and engaging story. I never knew there were so many different kinds of owls! Anyway, no matter how perky Kaylee is during a movie, as soon as it’s over, she’s suddenly just much too tired to get up off the couch and go get ready for bed. Amazing phenomenon. Maybe we should submit her for a scientific study. ;)
Some years past, Mark had given me stuffed animals as Valentine’s Day gifts. They have been collecting dust in our room, so he decided to dig some of them out and put them on the mantle for a little holiday festiveness. The gorilla on the left plays “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)”, and the one on the right plays “Wild Thing”. I can’t remember what the one in the middle is supposed to play, and I couldn’t get it to work. (Probably needs new batteries; I’m amazed the other two didn’t.) The teddy bear with the giant Hershey’s Kiss is just plain cute. :)
Mark is producing a workshop on Sunday for magicians Jeff McBride and Eugene Burger, who are in the area doing a few events. As part of the deal, he got us tickets for their show at a college about an hour north of here. It was a terrific show, far exceeding my expectations. My favorite part of the performance was when Jeff did a routine with a young boy from the audience. I haven’t laughed that hard in ages. My favorite part of the entire evening though was when Matthew, shortly into one of Jeff’s first tricks, excitedly said to me “best magician EVER … next to Daddy”. :)
Mark had picked up a package of place and bake type Valentine cookie dough a few days ago, and Kaylee has been chomping at the bit to have them. I told her we could make one pan after her shower to have for dessert this evening. She sat and watched them bake the entire time. :)
The parent information night for choosing electives for Matthew’s next school year was supposed to be last week, but it got rescheduled because of all the lovely weather. I went and sat through the presentation and actually asked questions during the Q&A, along with a couple hundred or so other confused parents. I don’t remember things being this complicated with school schedules when I was in junior high.
On a side note, I love the use of typography on the course catalog cover, especially the angle of it. I would have adjusted the kerning in “COURSE CATALOG”, especially around the “T” , but still a very cool design. :)
Lots of time lately working on a new website for the Dallas Young Magician’s Club. Mark and another guy revived the group a few months ago. In the interest of time, I started with a template provided by our web host. Not sure I actually ended up saving a whole lot of time in the end after trying to wade through the code and make it do what we needed, and I can definitely see overhauling it when time permits to allow it to be updated more easily, but everyone seems to be happy with it for now. :)
One of the few times I’ve actually watched the Super Bowl all the way through. (Well almost all the way. It’s a long game, and there are kids in this house after all.) Go Packers!!! So happy that they won, especially for my dad and brother who are much bigger fans than I am. I could feel the cheers from them three states away as loudly as the ones coming from Cowboys Stadium just 40 miles from here. :)
A Dungeons & Dragons Saturday. In the interest of quiet for my recovery (finally on the tail end of this blasted cold), we had the kid who sometimes comes to play with Matthew skip this one. Matthew decided to spend his time watching the game, so Kaylee and I had the family room to ourselves. As bedtime was approaching, she got into a silly pose-y mood and couldn’t get enough of the camera. Not sure if she actually just wanted her picture taken or if it was really more of a delay tactic. ;)
Day four of no school actually included snow! I had to step outside from my warm spot in the house to capture a shot of this pair of extremely rare ice-horned unicorns. :)
Day three of no school. The view looking up from my desk. Icicles on the arched windows make me feel like the house is coyly batting her long eyelashes at me. :)
Day two of no school and being cooped up in the house due to weather also brought with it the unexpected fun of rolling blackouts across Texas. It was a bit disconcerting never knowing when it would hit next or how long it would be off. Our power ended up going out four times, for about 15 minutes or so each time.
During the second outage, I pulled out my camera to distract the kids from their disappointment at the sudden death of their video games. Matthew then decided to use his DSi to try to take pictures of Kaylee. She wasn’t in the mood and blocked the lens with a book, and Matthew got to see how frustrating it is to have an uncooperative subject. LOL
While a winter storm was predicted, we really weren’t counting on school being cancelled, since the forecasts often error on the side of caution. But when my alarm clock went off and I heard the freezing rain hitting the windows, I figured it might happen after all. So I booted up my computer and checked the district website and saw the announcement. So glad they actually posted it early enough that I was able to just go crawl back into bed. And glad I was actually able to get back to sleep, since I’m still dealing with this stupid cold, I really needed it!
