Catching Up

It's been a busy couple of weeks since getting back from our Disneyland trip. Immediately on our return, we were thrown into a pretty hectic week with dress rehearsals for the play Little Women that A. was in, then two performances on the weekend and her violin recital that same weekend as well! I also played a duet with her at her recital, which means I had to really knuckle down and practice so as not to embarass her (I am much more likely to mess up on stage than she is!). I was also training pretty hard for a triathlon I did this weekend. Of course, there was also Mother's Day which I meant to blog about (and may still do so), but suffice it to say that we had a wonderful day together - the kids and my hubby brought me breakfast in bed, we went on a family bike ride, enjoyed the sunshine and, as with every day, I was grateful for this amazing opportunity of motherhood that has come my way.

But despite the overall activity, many small and wonderful things have also happened. M., who has had long hair for a very long time now, decided to cut it all off and donate it to Locks of Love. He had been mulling it over for some time, but the decision came very rapidly one morning and we took him up on it and took him to the hairdresser's. Wow, he looks so much older (and of course just as wonderfully cute and handsome) but very very different. I'm still getting used to it! We've also had the tadpole project going (they have front legs now!), the usual activities (another Karate belt test coming up in two weeks and we are all practicing hard for that, A.'s end-of-year dance recitals will be the same weekend, planning summer camping trips, too!), and on our way to my triathlon this weekend we took a side-trip to see a B-17 that landed at our local airport.

This was perfect timing since we've been watching a fair number of WWII movies lately. We saw Memphis Belle again, one of M's favorite movies, and we also watched Tuskegee Airmen and had some great discussions about racial discrimination stemming from that. So when I was out hanging up laundry and I heard the unmistakable rumble of four radial engines overhead, I called the kids to come quick and we saw this beauty flying above. She's been out at the airport all weekend and we got to take a tour and crawl through all of the spaces inside. When you see a movie like Memphis Belle and then you're actually in there looking at the real plane, it has such a huge effect. Looking at that ball turret hanging below the plane and imagining being squashed in there and completely exposed to enemy fire, well it's pretty chilling. We found, as usual, that the people who fly around with such a museum piece are always willing to talk about it and talk history. They've immersed themselves in the history of the era and love to share. The last time we were looking at an old warbird like this, the gentleman talking to us about it started telling us about when he had been on a ship at Pearl Harbor and had to jump overboard into the harbor and watched all the boats going down. It is amazing to be able to hear history from a first-hand perspective, and as the people who experienced this amazing era are starting to become few and far between, it's great to have the opportunity to talk to them while they are still here to tell their own stories.