Last week the girls attended a week long Musical Theater Camp. They worked on pieces from Shrek The Musical. They really enjoyed themselves. They are always singing and doing shows at home and have so much fun together. Claire's voice has grown so much in the last year. She sings so beautifully and she usually makes me cry. She has developed a nice vibrato and it is pretty impressive fro 5 1/2. Ella also has a very cute voice and sing full songs with correct notes and words.

So in the show Ella was in the opening number. She played Shrek's mom and a little boy played the dad. In the song they were singing to little 7 year old Shrek about leaving home. About it is time for him to go. Lyrics like "It's a Big Bright Beautiful World. With possibilities everywhere. It's peaches and cream and every dream come true........But not for you. Very funny. Anyway Ella did a great job. She really surprised us with her performance. She sang almost all the words and did all her blocking.

The second and closing number Claire and and Ella were apart of an ensemble piece. Claire played one of the little pigs and Ella the ugly duckling. very cute.

Then Claire sang her solo. She played little Fiona. She is stuck in a castle and it is day 23 and she she dreams of the day a prince will come save her. After Claire another girls plays teenage Fiona and comes out a girl playing Adult Fiona. At this point it is has been 4523 days locked in the castle. At the end of number all three girls sing together. Claire did so well. She sang great and seemed very comfortable on stage. She was expressive and believable. We are soooooooooo proud of her. This is what she wants to do and I will do everything I can to support her. In 2 weeks she starts a musical theater class. We both will be trying out for Annie in Sept and I hope this is something we can do together.

We spent the last ten days in Southern California, first in San Diego the wedding of a cousin, second in Orange County with Melanie's cousin. It was a great trip, and our girls were introduced to about 20 of their cousins.

For the second half of the trip we rented a car. Several days into the trip Claire must have been thinking about how we ended up with a vehicle.

While we were driving, she asked "Daddy did you get this car from a store or did you find it and take it?"

I explained to her that we rented it, and chuckling told her that I did not steal it.

This weekend we got a small starter aquarium and a Betta fish to go in it for Claire. She was and continues to be overjoyed. The fish, which she named Blueberry, is entirely her responsibility to feed and care for.

Melanie says Claire spent nearly all of her time at home up in her room with Blueberry today.

Today Claire had a dentist appointment. He informed that Claire's 2 lower middle teeth are loose. AHHHHH - Where has the time gone? Did not expect this so soon. She is growing up too fast.

This weekend I took Claire and Ella camping, even though heavy rain was predicted for Saturday. It was to a local music event that we really enjoy called the String Band Rendezvous.

Saturday was not so good with the rain getting heavier and heavier as the day went on. We left earlier than I had hoped.

But Friday was perfect.

This evening over dinner Claire began an interesting line of questioning me about something she learned in school today.

She first wanted to know if I ever knew about King Maarther. I'm thinking of the fellow with the round table, but she informed me that was wrong.

Intrigued, the conversation continued.

He thought something was wrong.

He thought that everybody should be able to go to the park.

He was a great man.

He talked to the people again before he got shot.

In the last five months or so Claire's progress in learning the violin has been wonderful, almost stunning. She passed from the "Pre-twinkle" phase into "Suzuki book I" and is picking up on songs at a good clip. She has a great ear and can pick up simple tunes in the key of A pretty easily. She only knows the fingerings for tunes in the key of A. She also likes to sit at the piano, on which she has no formal training, and plink out the tunes she knows on the violin. It's fun.

Yesterday Claire, Ella, Melanie and I were going into a building. It had a circle drive in front of it for drop off/pickup. The curbs were all labeled "no parking, fire zone".

Claire looked at these bright red curbs and asked Melanie a very simple question.

"Mommy, is that only parking for red cars?"

Claire started preschool last month at Highlawn Montessori, a school not too far from home (much closer than the 45 minute ride we were seriously considering for the closest Waldorf School).

The Montessori classroom is full of materials for project work. Ella calls it a museum. Every few days she talks about going to Claire's Museum with excitement - taking Claire to and from School is exciting for Ella.

Claire likes the Beatles tune "Let it Be" and regularly asks us to play it on the piano or to play back a recording of it.

This morning both Ella and Claire woke up before I left for work. Ella wanted to eat (applesauce), Claire wanted to dance. I queued up a playlist of every version of Let it Be we have in our mp3 collection, put it on repeat so it would last well past my leaving for work, and went upstairs to prepare to leave.

When I came back down, Claire had put on the ladybug ballet costume that she loves to run around in. Nothing unusual there. She was dancing away. As I donned my phone, wallet and keys Claire danced up to me and explained her choice of outfit.

We arrived at a guesthouse on the beach this afternoon where we'll be spending the next 24 hours. The girls saw sand and went nuts. We tossed our luggage in the room, liberally applied sunblock, put them in bathing suits and went outside.

Claire pointed out to Melanie that the guesthouse had a pool. Melanie asked where it was. Claire indicated to the ocean, saying "it's a really big one!".

Many hours later, after much sand had been thrown, bits of coral and shells collected in a bucket, splashing in the ocean, chasing local cats, getting excited about dogs on the beach, Claire was in a thoughtful mood. We were sitting a little bit off the beach together when she turned to me and said "Daddy, this is the perfect house. I can have swim lessons at this house and play in the water and sand all day."

In late 1996 I grew a full beard. In July of 1997, while in Hong Kong on a two week business trip, it was too hot so I shaved it into a goatee. It's been like that ever since.

Last night I decided that I would shave even that off. It has been twelve and a half years with a goatee. I wanted to go without for the summer.

Claire happened to wake up early today, before I left for work. As we were sitting and talking, she didn't notice that my facial hair was gone. At a pause in our conversation, I said "Claire, did you notice my beard is gone?"

She stared at me, eyes wide, silently taking in this change. She asked but one simple question:

Claire has straight hair.

She likes it this way. Recently she has been telling Melanie that she does not like curly or wavy hair. She's decided that she does not like people who don't have straight hair.

There's a diversity and acceptance lesson here that we are both reinforcing. It's pretty easy in most cases.

"Uncle Mark's hair is not straight. Do you like Uncle Mark?"

"Yes, he's ok"

"Grammie has wavy hair. Is she ok too?"

"Yes, I like Grammie."

"Daddy's hair is crazy in the morning and not straight. Do you like Daddy?"

"No"

Ok, kidding on that last one. I hope...

On January 22nd Claire's violin teacher challenged her to practice for one hundred days in a row. The reward would be going to a pizza and ice cream party in the springtime.

This evening Claire proudly checked off box 100 on the 10x10 square we've been filling out over these past few months. We missed three days, to illness and a holiday. That can be ignored.

I'm proud of her too, and frankly impressed. I don't believe that at any point in my life I've practiced my instrument back to back for 100 days.

Driving home tonight with Claire in my car we had a great conversation. One bit of it started with her asking me if we could do a wedding when we got home. She has this little stuffed pony, and it needs to get married. Tonight. I'm not sure of the circumstances as she did not elaborate. But it was critical that the pony be married as soon as we got home.

I quickly agreed that the pony could get married when we got home. No answer to who the groom would be (the pony is pink! she protested when I asked if it was a boy or a girl).

Satisfied that there would be a wedding, Claire began to plan. This was about a 20 minute drive.