7 Quick Takes about Sitting Down in an Age-Appropriate Fashion, Graduation Burritos, and Serious Goal-Setting in First Grade

It's 7 Quick Takes Friday! How was your week?

—1—

I recently noticed that I make old person noises when I sit down. Kind of a tired groan as I collapse into a chair. I think it might be a learned behavior from my husband, so I made him promise to stop with me.

"But it feels so good to sit down!" he protested.

I know. That's why I do it, too. But we'll just have to enjoy it in silence now so we don't sound like we belong in a nursing home.

—2—

My teenage son got his driver's permit! In a true DMV miracle, there were no problems with any of the documents he was required to bring to prove who he was, and we were in and out of there in 20 minutes.

A bird pooped on my hand as we were walking back to the car, though, restoring balance to the universe once again.

—3—

It took me an embarrassingly long time to realize that this mylar balloon at the store wasn't a graduation burrito.

Yum!

I was disappointed when I figured that out.

—4—

Speaking of graduation, my 18-year-old is officially done with high school now. She covered her cap with little origami flowers made from copies of the sheet music from the Saint-Saëns concerto she was playing at her senior violin recital the next day. 

The graduation ceremony was nice. It was on the football field and they programmed the scoreboard to read "2024." (Although Phillip said it would've been more practical to use the scoreboard to count down how many people were left when they were handing out diplomas.) 

Graduation made me realize that not just my 18-year-old but all my kids are getting older: instead of crawling on my head and begging for snacks the whole time, my youngest just sat there in his polo shirt politely clapping for every single graduate. Time flies.

—5—

My 18-year-old's senior violin recital the next day was excellent. I made a commitment not to share my kids' pictures or videos on the blog, but I really wish I could make an exception this time.

I guess you'll just have to believe me when I say she sounded amazing and looked beautiful, and instead enjoy this picture of a mutant strawberry that I found while cutting up fruit for the post-recital refreshments:

—6—

In the fall my daughter is heading off to study violin performance in college, just as she predicted in the first grade:

Why, yes, I did bring this to her recital to embarrass her, as a matter of fact.

I love a lot of things about this drawing, but probably my favorite is that that she spelled "violinist" not with an -ist like "I want to be a violin player" but with an -est as in "I want to be the most violin."

She's going to be great.

—7—

Here's what it looks like to have both boys and girls:

Looks like Barbie joined the N.R.A.

Step 1: Boys rummage through the recycling to collect empty paper towel tubes, cut them up and tape them together to make a machine gun.

Step 2: Girls find the gun they made, paint it pink, and decorate the barrel with stars and hearts.

Step 3: Since girls aren't actually interested in playing guns and boys don't want to carry around a pink AK-47, it returns to the recycling bin from whence it came.

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