Christmas Cookies!

 

Nothing like some virtual youth group Christmas cookie decorating to end a lovely Sunday! xo

Thanksgiving Box Assembly Day

In which a little bit of the youth group from Plymouth Church (read: Grace and Emma) joined together with the FCC youth group to help assemble Thanksgiving boxes this morning. xo

Preparing For Youth Sunday

This is how our day has begun each day this week. Why are they stretching on the chancel at church each morning you may be wondering?! Well, this coming Sunday is Youth Sunday. For those who don't know, Youth Sunday is when the youth group plans and runs the entire worship service (similar to Children's Sunday when the Faith Workshop Children plan and run the entire service). Grace and Emma have been hard at work choreographing a dance that they will perform during the service. I cannot tell you how blown away we are by what they have come up with in such a short period of time (the idea that they perform during the service was only suggested to them ten days ago)! This is the first time they are choreographing and they have done such a stellar job working together to create such a beautiful piece! I am sure there with be (at least) a few teary eyes in the congregation this coming Sunday. I love that our girls are growing up in a denomination like the UCC and a church like Plymouth. To grow up in a place that is so welcoming and supportive is such a gift! The way that our faith community values and encourages children/youth/families is second to none! xo

Catching Up

Hello, lovely blog reader(s)! My apologies that my entries have been so inconsistent lately! I had all intentions of posting far more than I have and for one reason or another the end of each day arrives and I haven't achieved that goal. It's hard to believe that I have been blogging for nine years now, and there are many times (especially lately) where I feel like the things I post here are too repetitive, too predictable. and so I hold off on sharing which creates long gaps of time between one post and another. I do love sharing about our days and I love that a record is being generated of the girls' childhoods so completely (and I really do need to start printing it out in book form one of these days. So, in an effort to not get too much father behind I figured I'd share a few pictures and stories about what's been going on since I last posted a week ago.


This past autumn, the girls and I were invited to join this wonderful Waldorf co-op! Over the last couple of years I have been feeling like we should find a co-op to be part of but had never found one that felt like a good fit for us and then lo and behold we were invited to join this one! Ryan and Kelsey are two mamas that I had met years ago when all our girls were little. We would gather for lantern walks and other festivals with many of the other area Waldorf homechool families but since the girls and I weren't really there enough (other than the festivals) we didn't know people very well. Fast forward to this past summer when Ryan put out an announcement about a book club and the rest is history. That one time at book club lead them inviting us to join their Thursday co-op. We were honored to have been invited and started getting together with the group on Thursdays in December to do holiday crafts. The co-op is four families, each with two daughters and if you saw all eight of these little girls together you'd think they'd been together since they were babies hanging out on blankets! 

 The new co-op session began last Thursday with the group working on free-hand geometry (which is awesome since that is not a strength of mine). They meet each Thursday from 10:00am-2:30pm and in the words of Grace "It's like the best of both worlds, mama! We get to go to school with other Waldorf homeschooled girls while still being homeschooled!" The timing of this co-op coming into the rhythm of our days could not be any more perfect!

Sadly. our lovely Thursday ended on a not so lovely note. On my way home from the gym I got in an accident. I was at this red light, signalling to turn left, with no one across from me. When the light turned green I began to turn and shortly after noticed a car was coming directly at me at a rather high speed. I knew that if I didn't do something I was going to end up with this car plowing through the passenger side of my car. I drove in such a way that the brunt of the impact happend to the passenger side quarter panel (and the bumper and the drivers side quarter panel). And the worst part is, the car that hit me KEPT ON GOING! They didn't stop and see if I was OK, they just fled the scene. Needless to say, I have been pretty shaken up since and while I have never been a nervous driver before I sure feel like one now. I have NO desire to get back behind the wheel any time soon if truth be known, but sadly I am going to have to face that fear soon as there are days that Dave's not home until after bedtime and I don't want to have to ask for constant rides to and from the studio from the other dance moms for the next month or more.

On Saturday, Grace baked four dozen cookies for the youth group bake sale. Though none of us Tschernes were going to be at church on Sunday (me, because I have to be at work-church and Dave and the girls because they have to be at Wachusett) we still want to make sure that we are supporting the events and activities that go on at Plymouth and we knew that these cookies that everyone loves would be a good stand-in for all of us! Sadly, we weren't able to get them there before Dave had to go to work, but in the end it all worked out! Jane and Bill came to our rescue, 

bringing a Valentine surprise for the girls and joining us for dinner! Sharing a meal with them was just what we all needed after how crazy things had been since my accident (and it got me out of the funk I had been in ever since)! So, while our weekend started on a not-so-great note it sure ended ona lovely one (and another Patriots Super Bowl win to top it off too)! xo