The Russian Ballet Presents the Nutcracker

The girls and I had so much fun last night!  We went to see our first ballet, The Nutcracker!  We met my dear friend Giuliana for dinner at Baci in Healdsburg first - best restaurant ever!!  Baci means "kisses" in Italian.  On our way there, Ni'ke kept asking "Are we going to eat at Kisses?"   Almost as funny as Rea asking, "Do you think they'll have dough-nuts at the ballet?"   HUH!?!?  I guess that's the equivalent of popcorn at the movie theater or something...

 My pictures are a little out of order!  I won two more tickets to the ballet from the radio station after we had already gotten our four tickets.  So I asked my friend Daniella and her daughter Gabi if they wanted to come!  Gabi is on the swim team with the kids, and they were SO excited to see her!  Dani and I joke all the time that the three of them look like sisters.  (And somehow I have no pictures of Dani!!!)  But the cool thing is that no one was sitting by us, so after the intermission they came down and sat by us for the second half!

 More pictures from Baci!  Having dessert!  Gotta love cannoli!

My girls and me!

 Giuliana and me!  Thanks for such a fun and unforgettable evening!!! 

The Trombonists!

 Last night was Ma-lak and Rea's band  concert - it was seriously the funniest and most chaotic crazy concert ever.  We got there just as the first wave was leaving, apparently a couple other schools pooled together and had a concert right before ours!  No parking and nowhere to sit, and the kids all had to sit with their parents WITH their instruments till they were called up, and then they had to arrange and organize everyone and THEN they had the concert!  Hilarious.  The best part was every time they finished a song, all the kids stood up and started cheering for themselves, raising their instruments in the air like their battle swords!  HUH?!?!?  I laughed so hard - it was so comical and so fun!   Audience participation during "Jingle Bells" - all the parents had to get out their car keys and jingle and sing along.   (We let Ni'ke and Ya'shar do the honors.)  :)

 Last year Ma-lak played the baritone, and this year he decided to switch to trombone, which is what Rea finally decided on after changing her mind at least 6 times.  This year they were the only two trombone players except for one other boy, and they only had one baritone player!  This is something that has NOT changed in 30 years... When I played the clarinet in band, there were a gazillion flutes and clarinets, and like one dude playing trombone.

 What?!  Could it BE????  A family picture?!  YES!!!  How do I photo-shop in David?... Please note that Ma-lak has not smiled in ANY of the pictures.  He is apparently way to cool to do that.  I kept saying, Ma-lak, just smile like you do when you are just walking around being happy! Show some teeth!"  No luck...

My amazing husband, so cooperative with having his picture taken... (Thank you, my love!)

Ni'ke in a pose

 Waiting for the concert to start

Thankfully Ni'ke hasn't grown much - she is wearing her dress from last year!  I love that dress though, so I'm glad it still fit! Rea on the other hand is so tall and has outgrown everything she owns in the past 6 months.  Her dress is a size 14 girls!! She's only nine.... NINE!!!

Selfie shot!

We were so far away and you could barely see Ma-lak and Rea, but I just couldn't bring myself to climb out over a dozen people and fight my way to the front for a up-close picture. I stayed in my seat where it was safe...

Great job, Matanzas and Village Elementary Schools!!

Christmas Cookies, Anyone?!?!

Wow, the days and years are flying by so fast!  These young ladies are more than capable in the kitchen now, and there's nothing like having my girls baking with me, singing songs, and chatting about life, just like my sister and I did with our mom (still do!) years ago!

The cookies were delicious!  I'm enjoying a nice little four-day stretch off this week before I go back to work for a four-day weekend.  We have a lot packed in, though!  I have a final to do sometime before Tuesday at midnight, and tonight is Ma-lak and Rea's Christmas Band Concert.  And did I mention the girls and I are going to the Nutcracker Ballet on Wednesday!?  What fun adventures!! Pictures to come!

Hair Makeover!

 I love my long hair, but it was gettin' a little shaggy and it was time for a fresh change.  So I called up my girl, Sarah and she did exactly what I asked for.  :)  (Which is always a cause for anxiety with me every time I go get my hair done.)  Thanks for pampering me and making me feel so pretty!

And yes, it was 27 degrees this morning, and I'm wearing a tank top... Don't ask.

KZST Recording Session!

 The local Sonoma County radio station does this really cool thing for the community every year where local businesses or organizations underwrite part of their programming so they can play commercial-free Christmas music on Christmas eve and Christmas day.  This year I was chosen (still not sure how!!) along with a few other nurses at the hospital to record a small "blurb" sharing a favorite Christmas memory!  Julie and I recorded at the same time, and it was such a fun, and humbling thing to get to do!  Thanks, KZST!!

 Jay helps Julie with her "mic check".

Since I was apparently very "breezy" and my segment was too long, Jay edited down my recording.  It was like magic!!  He played it back, and you couldn't even tell there were entire sentences left out!!

Jazzy the Wolf, mascot for the new oldies station!

 We took a little tour of the station and made ourselves at home!

So here's the "unedited" version of what I had planned to say!  (They cut it from 2 minutes down to 36 seconds!!  LOL  I guess I had a lot to say! Shocker....)  Hopefully they got the gist of the important parts!

 

"Hi, this is Sheila Smith, sending you warm holiday blessings from the Emergency Department at Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital in Santa Rosa!

My most memorable Christmas ever was in 1986.  My parents were farmers, raising five kids in the Missouri hills, and earlier that year the crops didn’t bring in a very good harvest.  My mom and dad had always taught is that “a bunch of stuff around the tree” was not the real reason for the season, but they felt bad that they wouldn’t be able to give us gifts like they wanted to.  We still had a tree that year, but it was the saddest little Charlie Brown tree you could imagine – it was so droopy it could barely hold an ornament!  Well, someone in our community knew we were having a hard time, and they submitted our names to the “Adopt-A-Family” organization.  You wouldn’t believe how big our eyes got, when perfect strangers showed up on our door step on Christmas Eve - arms full of groceries, and stacks of presents taller than our dried up little tree! 

So on behalf of every family whose life has been touched in ways you’ll never know, thank you to Adopt-A-Family and other amazing organizations just like it and to everyone who participates.  Your generosity has continued to inspire others - 27 years later I’m a mom with five kids of my own, and they get so much joy from passing on the blessing of “giving” to other people, just like someone did for my family so many years ago.  Merry Christmas, and thank you for giving!"

Fashionista Sisters

These two....  Since they've been at home more and only at school two days a week, they apparently feel that they must cram every ounce of fashion into those two days.  They carefully lay their clothes out the night before, after they've checked the weather of course.  Ni'ke picked out this chipmunk sweater last week.  I was skeptical at first, but it's growing on me... Rea's new thing is hats.  (Mostly borrowing mine).  I gotta say, I think it's kinda cool to have a daughter old enough to want to borrow my things.  It's rather horrifying to me that my 9-year old is able to borrow my shoes though....

You Say "Peronychia", I Say "Gesundheit!"

Please enjoy the following PSA:  Ya'shar is officially the poster-child for why you should NEVER bite your nails... You get nasty infections in the skin around the nail, like this! (Apparently such an infection is called a peronychia!  Who knew??)  He finally decided to show this to me yesterday, on a Sunday evening, around 4:30 pm. I had no idea he had an "owie"....  (sigh)   I'm frantically adding in my head the closing times of all the urgent cares and the nearest pharmacies, subtracting how long it will actually take to be seen, mentally ruling out an ER visit (because now that I work there I know that Sundays and Monday are the CRAZIEST times to go!) even though I know he needs antibiotics, but it's not an "emergency", but the doctor on call for our family doctor is not calling me back, and AAAAAGGGHHHH! So off to Urgent Care we went.  Thankfully, we were in and out pretty quick, but the waiting for the prescription is what took so long!  We are doing warm water soaks twice a day and he will be on some hefty antibiotics for a week. We see our beloved Dr. Cederberg tomorrow who will most likely have to drain it again.....  Yikes!!

Sunday Mornings

Goofy shadows....  This might've been a very nice picture, except for the sun glares and scowling children who can't see!  They've been loving children's church at Stony Point Christian Fellowship, where we've been going when we are not at our church in San Jose.