21 Days...

It's been only 21 days since my last post, and boy is there a lot to catch up on in my humble little blog.  Here goes.

First, the girls had their week-long choir day camp in preparation for their Nashville Sounds National Anthem performance.  The day camp was held in Brentwood, TN which is about 30 minutes from our home.  As an aside, Brentwood is a beautiful area where the churches are the size of stadiums and, within gated communities, there stand some of the most spectacular homes one could imagine.  There is one that looks like Mr. Darcy's Pemberley mansion--really.  Although lovely, I couldn't get past the idea that these were places that probably only a family of 2.5 lived...and that only if the Duggar family lived there would the size of the home seem to be justified.  Maybe.  Anyway, I was talking about day camp and the Sounds performance...here are some pictures: 

Gathering outside the stadium on a heat advisory day.  Not ideal, but not as terrible as I would have predicted.

The most underpaid guy in uniform on the field.

Ready to take the field.

The kids were filmed for some local television coverage.

I remember when Moo was a toddler, and this kind of heat would have turned her the color of her shirt.  Glad that phase is over. :)

She's not upset in this picture, it just looks like it.  She was upset later, when we said she couldn't have cotton candy.  Because we are mean.

Now, the videos:

The situating of the choir was a bummer as far as photo and video ops go, but the sound was nice nevertheless.  Both girls are in the front row, Moo is the 4th head from the right on the screen.  Belle is just about impossible to see, but is right in front of Mr. Josh, the director that evening.  The choir has three or four directors, and I am curious to see how that plays out during the course of the year.  My thinking is that Providence knew that only 3 or 4 directors could possibly fill the shoes of our previous YFVS director.  :)

The next day after the performance, we got up super early to make a road trip to Illinois in order to surprise my mom for her birthday and to visit with my friend Sally who is in town on furlough.  It was just the girls and me, since Steve had to work and we wanted to make the 18 hour round trip ride worth it by staying a week.

My sister had a cupcake decorating project to take on right away.  It was a perfect project for the girls to help with, and it was a frog theme (my mom loves frogs).  Hope these pictures do them justice:

The girls and their older two Rothrock cousins start work on their fondant frogs.

The little eyeballs are especially cute.

Awww...Monet's water lilies.  Sweet.

Drew is brother of the year, no, century.

Here is the youngest cousin in his element: at the train table mumbling to himself.  What a little monkey he is.

Um, Drew veered from the frog theme into the Godzilla theme.  I think it works, don't you?

Creating Godzilla takes a steady hand.

Ask Drew about the unfortunate placement of Godzilla's belly button.  Eww.

The finished army of frogs (random fact of the day: a group of frogs is indeed called an army).  Complete with cat tails.

The completed batch of water lilies.

This is a picture of the cupcakes after they made their way to my mom's counter after the big "Surprise!".  You'll notice in the center of the frogs there is a "frog king"...that was Belle's contribution.  They also made some tadpoles and frog egg toppers.  Weird.

Posing for their very surprised Mimi.

Happy Birthday, Mom!  We love you.

The rest of my trip is largely undocumented by photographs.  It consisted of a couple visits with Sally, a knit night with my ladies knitting group over at Despy's house while the girls went skating at Funway, a visit with my friends Anna and Shelley, and time with family.  Here is a picture of one of the visits with Sally and the girls:

It was a good visit with everyone, but way too short. I already can't wait to see everyone again.