Sweet 16

Happy birthday to this beautiful human being.

We had a pretty low-key day. I had to work, but the kids were home and Alan came down for the day. Lex and B’Lake had to leave at 3pm for a robotics event, so I came home at lunch time for the birthday celebration. I never got around to making a cake, but we have plenty of sweets around here these days and Alan brought her a birthday cupcake. She got a new laptop, an awesome hiking backpack, flowers, and more. She was pretty happy with the birthday presents. :)

The boys left at 3pm, I got home around 4pm, then Eve, Alan, and I spent the afternoon/evening watching silly TV and eating sushi. It was a good day.

Rotary Update

We spent the day today at a Rotary Exchange Student event. Each of the outbound students presented on their designated countries, we learned about insurance, the visa process, and more. Lots of nitty gritty. Eve wore her blazer (and jeans!) and did the most entertaining presentation. Not necessarily the best, but definitely the most in-depth and funny. She got lots of compliments afterwards. :)

I was hoping for more placement information, but they don’t actually have that info yet, so we continue to wait on that. In the meantime, lots of paperwork to do!

One Act time again

The One Act is back, with Eve on stage and Lex on lights! What a brilliant duo. The show was called Variations on a Theme and was a series of variations of how a scene at the train station could play out between a guy and a girl. The guy was at the station and each scene was him imagining a different outcome. It was cool and deeper than I was expecting as the guy worked through his feelings about their relationship coming to an end. I enjoyed it.

The cast will perform one more time at a Festival in April when many different high schools come together to perform their One Act plays. It should be interesting. Eve is excited for it. Lex will be at an FRC event that weekend, so he won’t go to the festival.

A little story

Eve had a plan with a friend today. She drove herself to Hanover (with me in the car!) and I dropped her off at the boba tea place to get a snack then go to the game store. I felt weird leaving her alone, and commented on it. As I spoke the words out loud, it occurred to me that in under a year she would be alone in a far away country! I’d better get used to her being in Hanover without me!

Time can slow down just a little. Please and thank you.

A day trip to Boston

Eve and I had an awesome day shopping on Boston yesterday. We aren’t big shoppers in general, but I was finally ready to buy new living room furniture and I couldn’t find anything perfect around here. We drove down to Ikea with a list and all the enthusiasm. We tested all of the couches and many of the chairs and tables at Ikea, both because we wanted to buy them and because my sciatic feels better when I sit down. LOL. So we did lots of chair testing while I waited for the meds to kick in. We got some little stuff and a BLÅHAJ (Swedish for “blue shark” and something Eve has been wanting for awhile), but didn’t love any of the couches.

Then we went to Starbucks (I needed a pick-me-up!) and Target for some clothes for Eve. She never asks for new clothes, so when she does I say YES! 😄

With caffeine, snacks, and meds in my body, we headed to Jordan’s Furniture, a store that is even bigger than Ikea and a true shopping experience. They even has an IMAX theater and an “Enchanted Village” thing and lots of other random “experiences,” plus furniture!! We explored for awhile, until we found the perfect couch!! It was soo soft and comfy and we both loved it. A nice sales guy from Southie came over and helped us getting it all ordered. It took awhile and I was running down, so I went out to the car to get our Starbucks beverages and buy a little snack at the fancy Jordan’s snack bar, while Eve stayed with the sales guy and discussed colors and end tables. She was an AMAZING partner in the furniture shopping process. She advocated for the practical when I wanted to luxurious, she was chatting with the guy and held her ground when the guy tried to upsell us on stuff, and she kept me going. Also, she’s just a fun person to have around!

We ended up buying two couches and two “cocktail ottomans,” which are the big, firm, padded ottomans that are popular these days. We didn’t find any end tables that we loved, so we’ll buy those somewhere else. We were going to get two chairs to put under the TV, instead of the couch that’s there now, but both of the couches we bought are bigger than what we currently have, so we decided to hold off and see how it all fits in our space first. Once we have the new couches and ottomans in place, we can decided what else we need. Jordan’s will deliver the furniture too us sometime in late February or early March. That will be a fun day! (hopefully the cat and dog don’t immediately “claim” them!)

When we finished furniture shopping at 7pm, we stopped by Petco to buy new (bigger) shells for the hermit crabs, then stopped at the Olive Garden for a little dinner. We got home at 11:30pm! We were both exhausted, but it was an awesome day. I can’t wait for the new furniture to arrive. :)

I’m lucky to have this girl in my life. <3

Herman, Sherman, and Jessica

Meet Eve’s newest friends — hermit crabs! She has been talking about them for awhile, but I told her I maybe it’s not the best time to get a new pet since she’s going away this summer. Instead she talked to her bestie who offered to “babysit” the hermit crabs for a year while Eve’s away. LOL. What are besties for?!

So on Friday we went and bought some hermit crabs. She named them Herman, Sherman, and Jessica. Your guess is as good as mine as to who’s who. She’s pretty psyched though.

She’s going to….

SWEDEN!!!

https://youtube.com/shorts/BJb2wiN328Y
(I just spent far too long trying to get this 7 second video to embed in this post. YouTube changed something and I can’t figure it out. So, click the link if you want to see her finding out her country assignment.)

Last fall Eve applied to be a Rotary Exchange student and today we went to a district meeting and found out her country assignment. Sweden! It was her second choice, but she is happy and already getting excited about it. She immediately started asking me lots of questions about the language (she loves languages) and I got to display my poor memory and lack of language skills. We might be relearning the language together. 😄

Tonight we went through my hope chest and found a few of my stuff from Sweden so many years ago. I have old journals I kept and my calendar book (pre digital calendar age!) and some photos and stuff.

Let the fun begin!

Hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work she goes…

Hannaford’s finest

Eve had her first day of work today and she sure did dress the part! She read the dress code at the last minute and realized it ruled out all of her athletic wear, so she grabbed a pair of jeans from my closet (from way back when I had lost a lot of weight!) and threw on some tall boots, just for fun. 😄

She’s so cool. She was putting on her mirrored heart shades as she walked towards the building.

Her bestie also started work at Hannaford today, so they got the tour together and did the training videos together. Eve said she did some bagging for a few customers too. Good thing I’ve trained her well on that front! 🤗

She came home in a very positive mood and even made herself a healthy dinner!

She has two more shifts this week, one with her bestie and one without. I hope the positive attitude sticks around.

Rotary Exchange

I guess it’s about time to start documenting Eve’s next adventure — Rotary Exchange Student! She applied to be a Rotary Exchange student for the 2023/24 school year, her Junior year. We completed round one of interviews and paperwork, and yesterday we did round two of interviews. We spent a few hours at a Youth Exchange event yesterday, meeting the Rotarians, several inbound students, and several other outbound applicants. It was interesting.

Eve is pretty excited to go to Norway, the UK, or Iceland. Last week they sent a list of currently available countries and it was way shorter than expected and did not include any country she was interested in. We got nervous and I think she started having second thoughts. At yesterday’s meeting they handed out updated country lists, which now includes all of the Scandinavian countries and many others. Eve was much happier! Me too, truthfully. She enjoyed meeting the other outbound applicants and left the meeting in a pretty positive mood.

At some point between now and January she will have a chance to select her top three countries and indicate up to three that she would not go to. There is another Youth Exchange event on January 7th and we are told that if all goes well they’ll tell the kids which countries they’ll be going to. That should be right around the time we hear back from the colleges Lex applied to as well.

Dear Santa, bring me tissues this year. 😢

All good changes. All good things. All part of growing up and spreading their wings. Sometimes parenting is both amazing and terrifying at the same exact time.