Somehow Two Months Are Gone?

We picked Astrid up on August 12, for what was to be a 10 month adventure.  Two months have gone by in the blink of an eye and I have literally NO idea where they have gone.  This entry won't be quite so heavy with pictures, as I haven't gotten too many lately, but we have been BUSY and for once it's not my fault. :-)

Picking up Ruth (16) and Handful (12)

So in my last post we had been to the Color Run with the AFS kids.  The week following was bound to be crazy.  I had been asked and happily agreed to help my local choir master find host families for the members of the Matsiko World Orphans Children's Choir, who were coming through our local UU to do a performance in our area.  I wound up agreeing to have two of the girls in our home, and so on Wednesday, we went to an orientation and potluck supper and picked up our two new family members, Ruth and Handful from Liberia.  Leah had specifically requested that our guests be from Africa and ask close in age to her as possible, and Astrid asked for a girl her own age as well.  Ruth and Handful were the perfect match for our family.  They were lovely girls.  They spent their days with the choir singing around town, and then we picked them up for dinner and fun before bed.  Thursday they said they wanted pizza for dinner, so I took everyone to Cici's Pizza Buffet so they could eat all their little hearts desired.

We watched movies, did crafts, and baked with the girls and Astrid and Leah both were awesome little hostesses.  It turns out that Handful LOVES to braid hair, so Astrid quickly enlisted her to create some new hairstyles, which has led Astrid to become obsessed with learning to braid her own hair.  (She's actually getting quite good at it!)   Friday evening, the choir performed at our church, and we went and were totally blown away by them.  Saturday morning, we had to drop them off and it was sad, sad times.  Handful ran after us in the parking lot and said she didn't want to leave, and we were a little weepy and didn't want them to leave either.  It was a life changing experience having these girls in our house and even though it was crazy and chaotic, it was a blast.  I hope they come again next year!

Our girl power family of 5!

All the Matsiko kids and some of the host families and chaperones

If you ever get the chance to go see the choir, you should take them up on it.  You can learn more about them at http://www.matsikochoir.com/  This was their first time on the East Coast.  The children are from Peru, India, and Liberia.  I got hugs from every single child and every single host family loved having them around.

On Saturday after we dropped off the girls to head to their next destination, it was time for tea!  Our UU church puts on what's called a service auction every year.  Congregants are asked to donate a service (or several services) and we all bid on those services.  My friend Kirsten and I put high tea into the auction this year and hosted 5 ladies from the church.  I pressed Astrid into service as a waitress and Kirsten pressed her daughter Rachel into service as a waitress as well.

The tea lasted for about 2 1/2 hours and the girls were absolutely wonderful in their positions.  Rachel brought them bow ties to wear, and they poured tea and carted food and dishes in and out like professionals.  The tea would seriously not have gone half as well without them.  All the ladies were very appreciative of the hard work they put into it and it was a really lovely afternoon for everyone.

The ladies at tea

The following week was Astrid's 16th birthday!  I asked her several times what she would like to do for her birthday, as 16 is a big deal in America, but she said she didn't want to do much.  I arranged to have a surprise party for her with her track team, but unfortunately due to the rain and flooding we had here in Fredericksburg, that got canceled and canceled and canceled again until we could not do it.  I was bummed out, but we had a small celebration at home.  Astrid's family sent a pile of packages for her and I hid them until the night before her birthday (she had a track meet on the day of and wasn't even home!).  Leah and I got her a cake and we sang to her and gave her gifts.  Leah gave her a pack of gum and some make up brushes. and I gave her a phone card so she has a month of service without having to worry about it.

As an added bonus, Astrid's family packed everything in newspapers and guess who was on the paper?

Yes, George Clooney made the trip from Denmark!!  How appropriate (for those who may not have noticed, we have a large cardboard cut out of George in our dining room)!

This year's AFS VA kids with the Presidential Seal
in the White House

It was nice to celebrate and I sent the second cake I had bought for the surprise party and never used up to the AFS weekend with Astrid later in the week.  The kids had to have their post-arrival orientation, which AFS Virginia combines with a trip to Washington DC.  A local volunteer organizes to get the kids into the White House for a tour (I have never been on a White House tour!  Jealous!) and then they go around the city to the museums and monuments as time permits.  On Saturday, they have their orientation and come home.  If you remember our welcome student, Dipthi, her host family came and picked Astrid up along with Harald, the other exchange student here in F'burg.  They all went out to dinner together Thursday night and then on Saturday, Harald's host dad brought them back home.  It was great because I got time off from shuttling people in my car :)  The kids look like they had a great time and they talked about various situations that might come up during the exchange.  It is a good time for them because they can really support each other and they are the people who best understand the challenges and emotions of being an exchange student.  I think Astrid enjoyed herself, but also was glad to come back home, which is the best of both worlds.  They seem to have a nice group of kids this year.

This year's AFS VA kids at the White House

This year's AFS VA girls at the WWII Memorial

While Astrid was gone, I got bored and decided I would pull out a jigsaw puzzle.  I had kept up the big table from the tea party and it was sitting in the living room just waiting for the next party (at the end of this month) and looking sad and empty.  I thought briefly that Astrid would think I was nerdy for wanting to do a puzzle, but I was missing her and that was making me miss Ine who was my puzzle girl, so I just decided to pull out a puzzle and get to work.  (Of course, my cats thought this was a fabulous idea--there were pieces everywhere for days!)

Astrid walked back in after her weekend away, took one look at the puzzle, and squealed.  Turns out she LOVES doing puzzles and is pretty good at them (not as good as me of course!).  So we have been doing puzzles like crazy.  We just finished our 3rd one.

We are having a little feud over whether or not I can put the puzzles away, as she and Leah think we should glue them together and hang them on the wall, but I am not a "hang the puzzles on the wall" kind of person, so I suspect sometime this week they are going to find themselves back in their boxes, much to the girls' utter dismay.

Astrid finishing the meet at FA, with Leah cheering from the side

Astrid has continued running on her cross-country team.  She has done a number of meets and has done very well.  Her school has hosted its own meet, which Leah and I were happily able to attend.  Astrid ran her personal best and came in 11th.  She has had some trouble with her foot, which we had checked out and thankfully it is not broken.  She got a new pair of shoes and started taking Vitamin D supplements, which has helped a great deal.  The season is winding down, and she has decided to do the swim team next, which I am excited about as I enjoyed being a timer for Ine's swim team and I hope to get my clipboard and stopwatch back!

Astrid has been continuing to love school.  She went to homecoming with a boy from the cross-country team, Chris who we have mentioned before.  Leah loves to yell at Chris, so we just dropped Astrid off at school for the dance so that there would be no embarrassment.  I worked for hours on Astrid's hair, trying to get it to curl, but that girl's hair is determined to stay straight. I rolled it in curlers for hours, and blasted it with hairspray, nothing.  We finally got out the curling iron and did the best we could, but for now it looks like our best option is braiding and lots of hairspray.  She went shopping at Goodwill for a homecoming dress and found a lovely dress for about $5, which is pretty incredible.  She got a pair or shoes for $3, and she looked great!

Lest you think that academics have fallen by the wayside, we also got her interim grades in a report this past week.  She didn't want to know what her grades were, she has been freaking out about them, so I checked them first.  She had all A's and B's except for a C+ in her history class.  All the teachers were very complimentary and said she is very vocal in class about expressing opinions and talking about whatever they are learning.  We are joking now that all her teachers say she has a big mouth. Ha!  But she really is doing very well academically, socially, and athletically.  It is such a hard transition for the kids to make, but she has been lucky enough to be at the right school for her, and she has the right personality and determination to be very successful.  I'm one proud host mama!

In other news, Astrid is in love with all the little kids we have running around the UU and those belonging to my friends.  Her heart has been particularly stolen by a little guy who goes by the handle "Bup".  Bup is the son of my dear friends Nancy and Jason, with whom I sing in the choir.  Astrid met him one time and immediately began demanding to know why on Earth the Bup isn't at our house far more often, so I suggested she could volunteer to babysit him on Wednesday nights when his parents are at handbell rehearsals.  She thought this was a great idea, so now the Bup is here every week.  I asked him if I could take a picture of the two of them, and he has apparently turned into a winker, because in every picture, he was winking.  I was laughing so hard I could barely take the picture.  But I think he likes her.  Not as much as he likes his "Leelah!" but she's a good second option if Leelah is bored.

Astrid also took a liking to Stefan, who belongs to JP at the UU and Leah invited us over to JP's for fireworks recently.  Poor Stefan was sick and so Astrid sat with him and cuddled him during the fireworks spectacular and they both seemed happy with that arrangement.  Sadly I didn't get any pictures of them together, but here's one of JP setting off the fireworks.

JP asked us to bring some kind of dessert to the fireworks fiesta, and I asked Astrid what she thought we should bring.  She suggested that I make shrimp dip.  I made this for the party JP invited us to, and Astrid fell hard in love with it.  It's a very simple recipe from my mother-in-law, but definitely good.  Astrid threatened us all and sat over the dish at the table, happily eating shrimp dip while the other kids ate pizza.  I think she might even have refused some to the Bup or Stefan if they had wanted it.  Haha

"Don't touch the shrimp dip.  Me and my spoon are having a moment"

Astrid also had fall break for a few days, so I took her for her first American cinematic experience.  We went over to see Sully, the new Tom Hanks movie about the Miracle on the Hudson.  We both loved it.  It was nice to be able to do something with just Astrid while Leah was at school.  I have a lot more time with just Leah while Astrid is at school, so this felt special.  She is a big time Tom Hanks fan, owing to her love of Forrest Gump, so this was a great first movie for us to see.  Last week, my Uncle Glen arrived for a day from San Diego and took us all out to dinner and to see the movie Storks, which Leah selected.  It was not too good a movie, but Leah absolutely loved it.  Afterwards, Astrid and Glen had a long chat and he has demanded we watch Where to Invade Next by Michael Moore and even gave Astrid a commemorative postcard.  He doesn't like anyone so the fact he took a shine to Astrid says a great deal about her character!  She even rallied him to her side about a controversy about which she feels very passionately, and he agreed with her that she should "fight the man".  I think I've talked her back off the cliff, however. :)  Finally, I showed her two great movies from my youth, CryBaby, a John Waters film starring a young Johnny Depp, and Ferris Bueller's Day off, a John Hughes movie starring a young Matthew Broderick.  She and Leah took a shine to Cry Baby and watched it 3 times in 2 days.  Now they are both wandering around the house singing snippets of the songs.

Somewhere in October, Astrid also attended a class on Islamophobia--prejudice against or fear of Muslims-- which is a big problem here in the US.  Our church had a speaker, Sister Munira from the local mosque and Sister Munira then went and spoke with the youth group.  Astrid thought it would be good to attend and said she learned a lot.  Here is our youth group after the presentation.  It's important to understand something rather than fear it, and I enjoyed Sister Munira's talk for the adults.  I was glad to have Astrid participate in the youth group experience as well.  She has a good and open heart.


Where food is concerned, Astrid asked if she could try candy corn and she is IN LOVE with it.  I can't get over it.  She absolutely loves it.  I think it tastes like salty wax, but it's her jam for the month.  She is still loving the spaghetti squash of course, and I made a sandwich ring from a Pampered Chef recipe that she also loved.  She and Leah also built a gingerbread haunted house together for Halloween.

It was a labor of love--it required a lot of patience while the frosting dried and sugared up 7 year olds do not have a lot of patience, to say the least!  But they did a great job.  It is put away so that little hands can't eat it all up.  My dad also sent Astrid and Leah a package of Halloween goodies, and Astrid was tickled to get a pair of Halloween socks.  It turns out she's also a fan of gel clings for the windows, which I could do without, but she and Leah decorated with those, and we have spooky pumpkin lights hanging on the mantle now.  She just needs to decide if she's going to dress up to take Leah trick-or-treating!

Finally, last week, Astrid asked if she could go to a local haunted house with some friends.  I didn't really want her to go, but I couldn't really put my finger on why, so I told her I'd have to see what was going on and think about it.  The plans with her friends are all over the place, so I had time to think about it, and ultimately I realized that we've all been so busy, I haven't felt like we've gelled as a family entirely in the past few weeks.  Leah does dance, Astrid has cross country and AFS and friends, I'm busy with the UU commitments I have, we've been out and about, and with homework and rehearsals and practices and such, I was just feeling tired and whirled around. It hasn't felt like the 3 of us have done anything meaningful together in a while, which I guess sounds a bit silly given all you have just read, but I just wanted time for us as a family with few distractions.  So I said all this to Astrid and she agreed and I decided that since I was getting my first paycheck from AFS, we should go out of town for a weekend.  I had 3 possibilities in mind and I asked Astrid would she prefer to do something fun or relaxing or something where there was lots to see and do?  She said a mix of all 3, so we decided to spend this past weekend in Philadelphia.

I celebrated my first paycheck from my new job with two nights in a hotel room with an indoor pool.  We left here Friday evening and drove up to the hotel, stopping for dinner at the Cheesecake Factory in Woodbridge.  YUM!  The girls swam for a while after we arrived at the hotel, but it was late and I was tired so I didn't join them.  They had a great time though.  The next morning we had breakfast and then drove up to Philly for the day.

On the way, we had to stop in Delaware at the welcome center to snap the immortal "Hi.  I'm in Delaware" picture.  There is a movie that was big when I was a teen called Wayne's World in which the stars use a green screen to pretend they are in various locals.  One is Hawaii and they make some jokes, then all of a sudden Delaware pops up and they don't know what to say, so they say "Hi.  We're in Delaware."  It is totally hilarious.  So whenever we go through, we stop and take a picture.  My sister and I did one this summer and then I insisted the girls do one this trip.  It was totally perfect.

I told them to look confused.  This is what I got.  And I can't stop laughing.  Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey would be so proud.

Wayne's World has made the list of movies I need to show Astrid before the end of the year.


Anyway, we drove to Philly and we had a great time!  We started out at Independence Hall, where we got tickets for the tour at 2:40--I hadn't planned on going, but Astrid said it was her history teacher's favorite place and he had been very pleased to hear that she was going, so we added it to the itinerary.  They give out tickets for the tour and since we had a lot of time to kill, we decided to walk for a while.  We strolled down to Ben Franklin's grave and tossed pennies onto his grave.  Ben coined the phrase "A penny saved is a penny earned" and people have been tossing pennies onto his grave for good luck for years.  I recently read an article that the burying ground and church make about $750/year off this tradition, which means they pick up roughly 75,000 pennies per year.  WOW!

After pictures and pennies, we walked down to Betsy Ross's house.  This trip was sorely testing my map reading skills, which are nearly non-existant, but thankfully the city as signs up with arrows pointing to historic sights all around, so we followed those instead.  I remembered going to Betsy's house when I was a little girl Leah's age and absolutely loving it, so I thought that she would enjoy it as well.  For those of you who don't know, Betsy Ross was commissioned by George Washington among others to sew the first American flag.  She did so under wraps, as if she had been discovered, she'd have been found guilty of treason for sure.  We toured the house, which is small, but there was a Betsy Ross re-enactor on site to talk with us about how she came to the decision to make 5 pointed stars instead of the 6 pointed stars General Washington suggested, and she even demonstrated for Leah how to easily make a 5 pointed star.  She answered lots of questions and was really interesting and professional.  When we went downstairs, there were some interactive displays and then a play kitchen where Leah decided to try making something "the old fashioned way".  There was a basket containing dress up colonial costumes, and both girls got dressed up and made pot pies in a bee hive oven. It was really, really fun and something that set this trip aside as being different from bringing Ine to Philadelphia, as we hadn't done the Betsy Ross House.  I love taking all the kids to these important cities and sites, but I think it's important they each have an experience that sets it apart from the person before, so it was nice to shake it up a bit (poor Penny didn't get to go to Philadelphia at all!).

We walked back to the visitor's center and snapped some pictures with local 'celebrities' like Rocky and Ben Franklin, then retrieved the car and drove down to the Philadelphia Museum of Art and ran the steps as was seen in the movie Rocky starring Sylvester Stallone.  The girls went up there like lightning!  I took my slow sweet time trying to videotape them, but eventually made it to the top.  Then we walked back to the car and drove downtown, trying to get our hands on some cheesesteaks.  Unfortunately the line for the first place we stopped was out the door and not moving, so we went to a pretzel place instead before heading back for our tour of Independence Hall.  The tour was excellent and we all learned a lot from our tour guide.  The weather was absolutely fantastic, and just being outside lifted my spirits.  Astrid kept saying how much she liked Philadelphia and how much she loved being in America, which made me so happy.  I told her it made me feel like I'm doing a good job being a host and she said I was indeed.  So I told her she was a good exchange student and patted her on the head. Haha :-)

 

After the tour, we got on line for the Liberty Bell and walked through the exhibits to see what that was about.  Then we were hungry, so we headed down to Reading Terminal Market for cheesesteaks.  Astrid couldn't quite picture what a cheesesteak was exactly, even when I explained it was cheese and steak on a long roll.  She went crazy and ordered a bacon cheesesteak, and enjoyed it very much!  We strolled around the market a bit and then headed back towards the car.  On the way back, she spied a CVS and she and Leah went in for a while to look at make up.  "Just to see what they have"... It was a family vacation with no bad ideas, so I let them shop to their hearts' content and gave Leah a cool $5 to spend.  She came out armed with Tic Tacs and a lollipop, no make up in sight.  But she was happy.

On the way back we passed the Declaration House where Thomas Jefferson actually wrote the Declaration of Independence, so she got to see all the places where the construction of founding of the nation took place.

We drove back to the hotel and I made contact with Bill and Linda Cooper.  Leah and I met Bill and Linda when we were on a cruise 3 1/2 years ago.  Leah let Bill know exactly who was in charge of the ship (PS it wasn't him) and Bill fell in love with her sass. We hadn't managed to see them since then, even though they live so close, but on Saturday night they were going to a show right across the street from our hotel so they stopped in for about 15 minutes.  They brought both Astrid and Leah presents and we had a really wonderful time reconnecting with them.  We are making plans to see them again and perhaps spend a day in Baltimore together!

Leah went for a short swim and then tucked herself into bed.  I started channel surfing and wound up finding Ghost Adventures on the Travel Channel.  My friend Joe talked me into watching the program a few years ago, and I find it absolutely HILARIOUS.  I call it "Frat Boys Look for Ghosts"--three or four bros who have been invited into supposedly haunted houses and they try to manifest spirits and stuff.  Astrid joined me on the couch to watch Zak and Aaron investigate a haunted house that was being used by people on drugs.  The tenants claimed to see and hear all kinds of things.  OF COURSE!  THEY ARE ON DRUGS!  We were laughing so hard.  One of our family's favorite little catch phrases is "Not today, Satan.  Not today." and when one of the dudes ran out of the house in a supposedly ghost-induced psychotic rage, we both said "Not today, Satan" and just about died laughing.  It was so fun.  We also shared a new favorite snack of Astrid's--honey mustard and onion pretzel bites.  It was a great evening.

The next morning we were up and on the road by 7:30 back to the 'burg as I had to sing at church and the girls had pageant rehearsal at 9:15.  We had a nice ride back, the third viewing of CryBaby taking place, and no traffic.  I introduced Astrid to the immortal license plate game and I think we got close to 30 license plates during our travels, which was pretty good!  I took a nap in the afternoon, and then we watched Ferris and ate pizza.  Back to the grind today with work and school, but the weekend was a real lift to the spirits.

So that's where we are.  I think I'm caught up, I hope I haven't forgotten anything major, I hope you enjoyed this post and I hope to see you again sooner than a month from now!