Competitions, fires, and Clinics

It has been nearly a month since I last posted. I can't believe how much time has gone by. I have often thought about how I could post about this thing or that, and then have become busy and forgotten. So I will attempt a mish-mash effort, and hopefully will capture the majority.
My son got to visit French Immersion Kindergarten last month. It was a lot of fun for him in the one hour glimpse he got of the class. The other day he came up to me, and we have this conversation...
SON: Mommy, how do you say "can I"
ME: "Est-ce que je peux"
SON: Essejepa...how do you say "some"
ME: "de"
SON: duh..how do you say "milk"
ME: "lait"
SON: "lay"...can I have some milk?
ME: Est-ce que je peux avoir du lait?
SON: That's what I SAID!

LOL. He's a cutie.

The same week as his visit to kindergarten, I took off to Calgary for Regionals with my chorus. I drove down with three of my riser mates, and it was quite an experience. We had a lot of fun, but it took a lot longer to arrive than I had hoped, with two of them taking medications that, well, required us to stop...a lot. After the first half of the trip, I simply stopped asking if we needed to stop, and kept driving until someone begged to stop. Coming home, we added a car mate, which greatly increased the luggage, as she had just flown directly to competition from a two week visit to Scotland, so with much laughter and creativity, we managed to cram 5 people's luggage plus 5 people into my minivan without having to tie anything to the roof.
The hotel was very nice, and very big, involving escalators and elevators, the elevators being quite annoying, because if you got on the wrong one, it would not let you go any lower than the 3rd floor. There was one that went from the parking garage only to the lobby. And then there were the ones that went from the lobby to whatever floor you needed, but you had to make sure you swiped your room card to make it go...I was up on another floor, helping a riser mate put on her eyelashes, while my roomies returned to our room...I didn't have my key, so had to phone them so one could come up and get me! How embarrassing!
It was the first hotel I've stayed in since joining the Chorus that did not have a mini fridge. I brought all my food with me, knowing how much it would cost to eat out the whole weekend. Thankfully, I had brought a little cooler with me, so I visited the ice machine frequently...but by doing so, I spent about $60 on groceries to eat for 4 days...and I had leftovers!!!! Not bad, when you consider that eating out in the area we were in was costing my roomies about $20-$50 a MEAL.
I had quite an experience with my earrings...when lining up for our competition performance, we sang a song for the other chorus waiting in the lineup (it's a tradition), and right after we sang the last note, my earring fell off, into my hand. The backing was GONE...and there was no time to go looking for it. Thankfully, the costume chair had a clip on, so I traded her my one with no back for a clip on, and wore that. Right after our competition, I found the backing...let's just say close to my heart, but on the other side, all snug in my all-in-one. So I traded back for my earring, and had it on for the Show of Champions. Came down the elevator to line up for the Show of Champions...and discovered I had the backing on the back of my ear, but NO EARRING!!! I nearly had a heart attack! Happily, one of the other Choruses had found it on the elevator and given it to one of my riser mates. So I got it back just before we went off to perform. I was so paranoid, though, afraid it would fall off again....and when performing, you CANNOT be reaching up to check.
Prairie Gold (my chorus) placed 2nd Place Small Chorus, by one point (story of our lives...2003 International Harmony Classic, we came in 2nd by 1 point), and 8th Place Overall out of 16 choruses. Our lowest score ever, I think, but based on the kind of year we'd had, I think we did very well.
The drive home was a fair bit faster, as I drove until they begged, and it was a lot of fun. I arrived home around 9PM, and then standing in my kitchen, talking to Hubby, we heard something like thunder....twice...and THIS happened
http://www.leaderpost.com/news/Fire+damages+northwest+Regina+home/1537066/story.html
This is not OUR house, but rather a few houses down...close enough that there were sparks and embers landing in our back yard. I had two very frightened children, plus the little girl who lived next door to this. She was so scared, poor thing..."What's going to happen to my room? What about my flip flops?"...having that sort of thing happening to the house next to you when you are 5 is a big deal. Not that it isn't a big deal even if you are grown up, but I think it turns little kids' worlds upside down a lot more violently.
Last weekend, we went to a Flash Mob/ Geocaching event. It was a lot of fun. The flash mob part involved a peanut scramble. Son found a white peanut, and as a prize received a travel bug. We are very excited. We have an idea for what to do with it, so now we just need to carry it out and figure out where to hide it.
While we were there, we walked around the lake a little bit, and I had to laugh at how frustrated some poor beaver must have been. You see, there were these saplings near the water, along the walkway. They were supported with wires and sticks and such. A beaver had found one of these saplings, and decided it would make a good addition to its dam, so it had chewed the trunk and managed to fell the tree. One problem. The tree is attached to the ground by the wires! So you see this tree stump that has obviously been chewed by the beaver. Just above that, lying sideways and suspended in the air, is the top part of the tree, the bottom of which obviously matches with the trunk with beaver teeth marks, going NOWHERE. Poor beaver....all that work for nothing.
This past Friday, Son went to the cleft palate clinic, just to have everything given the once over, 4 months after his surgery. He is officially discharged from the clinic, as everything looks wonderful. They said we could get him back in the program anytime we needed, for example, they said when he hits the teen years, as his mouth grows, it may not grow properly and may reopen the muscles or make his adult teeth grow in wrong and his speech may deteriorate again....or it may not....but if anything happens, we can bring him back. Based on the fact his father had no such problem in his teen years, we are optimistic that this will not be necessary.
A the clinic, we met Peanut. This was a very cute, very friendly cocker spaniel, with one very special feature...Peanut has a cleft palate and hare lip. Let me tell you, this makes for an interesting face on a dog. He looked like he was constantly smiling out of the front, left side of his mouth. I wish I had a picture. What a great thing to bring to show to the kids with cleft palates...a doggy just like them!
Oh yes, I am a redhead again, though a darker redhead than usual...closer to my natural brown, but when in the sun, it shows the red very well. Not something that matters to most people, but I know some of you wanted to know if I had done it or not.