The German is coming! The German is coming!

No, it's not another wartime invasion, but Stefanie decided to opt in for a German exchange, and part of that obviously was playing host to a German student who would in turn host Stefanie when she went to Germany.

Tina was a lovely girl from a small town near Muenster, but unfortunately Stefanie did not feel the week was successful and was on the point of backing out of the return trip. I'm not sure what ultimate reason was for her disappointment, but Stef found it difficult to be a good hostess while still having a full homework workload and not being free to do what she liked. Tina spent most of the day with her fellow German classmates touring around London while Stefanie and the English girls were stuck at school all day, and then coming home, I guess, Stef just needed her time to unwind and couldn't bring herself to entertain Tina all evening. In the end, we convinced her that her return trip would be far more fun (it being easier to play guest rather than host) and that she should honour her commitments.

Thankfully we were proven right, cuz Stefanie is now keen to do this again next year, oh my!

Spoilin' for a fight

You know how you're just about ready to take someone to task and they take the wind out of your sails by being so agreeable? Don't you just hate that?

Before we went away for the summer, I made sure to tell the school that Larysa's guitar would have to spend the school break there as I had no time to find it, let alone return it to our house. By the time we returned, the playground take on it was that it had been given to some other child in the school who had begun taking guitar lessons. I allowed the self-righteous anger build in my breast until I was ready to "beard the lion", so to speak, and confront our headteacher about their misplaced generosity.

Before I could get even one whole sentence out of my mouth, though, Mrs. Morrissey (who can scare the wits out of any human - child or adult) cheerfully jumped in with: "Oh, I think I just saw a guitar in the cafeteria, that's been there over the summer..." and proceeded to lead me to what appeared to be a snot-encrusted object.

'Ah', I thought to myself, 'at least here I have reason to vent...Someone's taken Larysa's pristine guitar in its case and left what appears to be a case with six week-old snail trails all over it.' I decided not to mention anything until I had checked to make sure it was indeed not Larysa's.
Thank God I did hesitate, because I proceeded to find her music notes inside the case.

So even though I left the school victorious, with the long-lost guitar in hand, I still felt a sense of deflation at not being able to express my worked up feelings that I'd nurtured so well.

Adriana's Birthday

I find most children's parties difficult to plan, but Adriana's is probably the most difficult. It's right at the end of summer, so either you have to let the parents know at the end of the previous school year (and they've usually forgotten by then) or you have to wait until the next school year and hope that there aren't any new kids that you aren't aware of joining the class.

This year, we decided to go for the 'after the new school year starts' scenario and it worked out fairly well considering I had less than 2 weeks to arrange having just arrived back from Canada. I decided to make the planning process a little easier by hiring an entertainer: Mr. Marvel. He's more marvellous than I could ever hope to be to a 6-year old!(Adriana had seen him before at another party and loved it.) Their website at http://www.mrmarvel.co.uk/ says they'll entertain your children for 3 hours with Punch & Judy puppets, magic tricks and a disco. And boy did they ever get entertained! I had a lot of fun too, since all I had to do was get the food ready and the pinata passed off to Orest. I would definitely recommend him to any mother who wants to keep their sanity intact while someone else deals with 20-30 over-stimulated kids.

Adriana reading

Adriana has come on strong with her reading since she's been back at school; to the point that she's now reading chapter books. I have noticed however that she tends to gloss over words that she's not so familiar with or change them into words that she thinks they may be. So the other day, "fair lady" became "fire laddie".



Then in another book, "creepy crawlies" became "crappy criers".



The funny thing is, I'm starting to like her versions better...