You can tell this from what kind of vacation I'd take?

Your Brain is Blue

Of all the brain types, yours is the most mellow. You tend to be in a meditative state most of the time. You don't try to think away your troubles. Your thoughts are realistic, fresh, and honest. You truly see things as how they are. You tend to spend a lot of time thinking about your friends, your surroundings, and your life.

What Color Is Your Brain?

Princesses on Ice

The Evil Geniuses at the Walt Disney company who masterminded the brilliant scheme that is the Disney Princesses have done it again. They have several "Disney On Ice" productions, which includes two Princess shows. I don't know why the "On Ice" piece is so important. Why do our favorite Disney characters need to be ice skating? Why can't there just be a stage show without the perils of performing on thin blades of metal on slippery ice? I guess Olympic non-hopefuls need jobs too.

The good news: the fifteen years of skating lessons have paid off. The bad news: you're an ice dancing table setting.



We were in the St. Louis area over the weekend of the performances, so we took a chance that Madeleine was old enough and got tickets for her and myself. We didn't tell her about it until the Friday of the performance, though, because I couldn't handle a week of, "We go to see princesses now, Mommy?" When we did tell her that we were going to see the Princesses in person, I'm not sure she quite understood, however, and mention of the Princesses really revs her up, so we were suffeciently excited at the start of the performance. We got to our seats with less than five minutes to showtime, which is perfect timing when you have a two year old. We bought a small souvenir, a Princesses on Ice coloring book. The lights went down and the music started and Tinkerbell! It's Tinkerbell Mommy! And then Oh My Gosh! It's Mickey and Minnie Mouse! Madeleine was quivering with excitement. We then saw Jasmine and Snow White, Mulan and Belle, etc., all with Tinkerbell comming out between acts to skate around and wave her glittery wand. The girl was entranced. At the intermission, we fought our way through the bathroom and got popcorn and Sprite to share (soda's an exceptional treat for Madeleine) and went back to our seats. The music as good, the lighting and set pieces were pretty cool. The skating was fair. Not that I think I could do any better. I can't even make myself stop when I'm ice skating without running into a wall. All was well and beautiful and princessey in Madeleine's world until the firebreathing dragon came out breathing fire and scaring the bejesus out of her! The dragon was from the story of Sleeping Beauty, and the prince had to slay it to get to Sleeping Beauty. The dragon was a three-person puppet, that actually blew fire effects from it's mouth and I thought was pretty cool.

Madeleine did not.

She climbed up my shoulder, crying and shaking. I tried to get her to put her head down and not look, but she wouldn't. She was too horrified. The dragon also stopped directly in front of us (we had second row seats) and set fire to the ice at one point. Again, pretty cool as far as I'm concerned. My daughter, not so much. Finally, Prince Phillip slayed the dragon, kissed Sleeping Beauty awake, and they started skating to "Once Upon A Dream", which Madeleine loves. She stopped crying when she recognized the music, but she wouldn't relax her body and sit down in my lap for the rest of the show. Mercifully, the next princess was Cinderella, Madeleine's favorite, and the last act of the show. Cinderella came out in her pumpkin coach, unfortunately from behind the same curtain the dragon came out of. As soon as the curtain was drawn back, she started to shake and whine, but relaxed when she saw the coach and who was inside. For the curtain call, all the princesses came out and skated with their princes, and then Tinkerbell came out riding inside Cinderella's coach. The coach stopped in the center of the ice, Tinkerbell waving and blowing kisses like a fool, and then for some reason, the body of the coach rose into the air a good 12-15 feet, fireworks shooting off from the corners and comming down from the light rigging. Good grief! I had just gotten my two year old calmed down from the most frightening experience of her life, she's still skitish, I'm trying not to make any sudden moves and the Disney on Ice people shower us with fireworks! When the show was over, we waited for the crowds to clear out and some skaters came back out when the house lights came up and demonstrated some fancy ice skating jumps and stuff. I got Madeleine off my neck when the lights came up, but she would not take her eye off that curtain where the dragon came through until we left the arena.

On the way back to Belleville from downtown St. Louis, I tried to get her to talk about the show. I asked, "What was your favorite part? What are you going to tell Daddy about when we get back? Did you like seeing Ariel and Cinderella?" All I got from her was, "I'm not scared. I'm not scared" with a little dismissive wave of her hand. I tried several times, but I got the same response each time, so I finally gave up. She was still awake when we got back to my mother in law's house, and she and Shannon both tried to get her to talk about the show, but all she would say was, "I'm not scared" and wave her hand in front of her. This went on most of the weekend, but by Sunday there were small signs that she was starting to process the night. We continued to talk to her about it, and to try and get her to talk about it too. We also talked a lot about the dragon, how it was a puppet, only in the show, and wouldn't hurt her, but it was okay to be scared. Slowly, she started talking about it, and everyday, she'd talk about more and more, including the dragon. It's been a month, and now she talks about it with gusto. "Pemember when we saw Princesses on Ice, Mommy? And the dragon came out! And we saw Belle and Ariel and the bubbles came down from the ceiling?" Thank God she has some fun memories of that night. I was a little worried I had scarred her for life. I probably did anyway. It was bound to happen eventually. I was just hoping to wait until she was a little older.

The "waterfall" behind Madeleine is the curtain the dragon and coach came out of. I could not get the girl to smile for these pictures for anything!

Easter part the second

Easter morning with the Ramsays
Saturday evening, we met up with my family and toured Mom and Dad's new house in Holts Summit. Then we came back to the Ranch, had a nice big Easter dinner, and everyone else went to Easter Vigil. We did Easter baskets on Sunday morning and had breakfast.

Madeleine went nuts over her Ariel doll.

This is a portait of the grandkids we had taken and gave Mom and Dad for Easter.
Maia, the monkey, and Noah, the bunny with Gramma and Granpa

Portland

Later in the afternoon, we drove to Portland to have an egg hunt and dinner with my mom's family the Schmids. There was something like 12 dozen eggs and only two kids to really hunt them - Madeleine and Shelby, a cousin's daughter. Noah and Maia also "hunted" eggs, but really, it was up to the girls to try and find all 150 or so eggs. After the egg hunt, we changed into our church clothes and headed for Columbia to go to Mass and attend the baptism of our godson.

The Ugliness of Easter No One Tells You About

Noah Crawls!

As promised. Plus, good bonus stuff from Madeleine.

Sit N Spin

For some reason, YouTube viewers have watched this video 26 times.

Easter part the first

Decorating Eggs
Becca and Maia spent the week here, and we had them over on Tuesday to dye eggs. This was Madeleine's first experience with dyeing eggs, and she did pretty well with it. Her favorite part was the glitter shaker. Happily, we managed to glitter the eggs without glittering the entire kitchen in the process. It was also Maia's and Noah's first time, too, but Maia missed out by sleeping through it, and Noah missed out by not having a clue what was happening.





Grandma C's
On Friday we packed up and went to Belleville, and on Saturday morning we celebrated Easter with Shannon's family. We did Easter baskets for the kids and then we had an egg hunt inside. (It was 26 degrees and incredibly windy)

Madeleine discovers the baskets. "A party! It's a party!"

After the egg hunt, we had to pack up again and head back home. We met my family at my parents' house and drove to Holts Summit to take a look at the new house they just signed on and will be moving to this spring. We had Easter dinner with my family, and then spent the night at my parents' house and woke up to do Easter morning with them. We went home, showered and changed and drove to Portland for the Schmid Easter. The Schmid family is my mom's side, and each year we have Easter dinner and an egg hunt. We visited for a little bit, then after the egg hunt, we had to pack up one last time and head to Columbia for the 5:30pm Lifeteen Mass. Our good friends Ricky and Tania Willmann had asked us to be godparents to their son Craig and he was getting baptized at that Mass. I'll have pictures and more stories later about the rest of the weekend.

Obla-di, Obla-da

Success!

Enjoy the videos. Please remember they were captured with my cell phone, which, while awesome, is not high-quality. The picture is grainy and the sound is tinny. But it's still fun!

Noah vs the Mylar Balloon

Happy Easter!

I've got lots of great pictures and some funny stories to post from this last weekend. Our big news right now is that Noah is crawling for real! Gone is the "wounded solider" elbow creep, replaced with actually hands-and-knees locomotion. I think I may have figured out how to upload video from my phone to youtube, and if it works, I'll post a video of my little man on the go. I've got some video of Madeleine singing and telling stories that are hilarious, and I'll get those up too, if I can.

I hate Pachelbel too!