THE HOUSE OF PLAGUE ... but we got better

We got lice! Yes, it's true. As near as we can figure it, Emma picked up a louse or two passing around her funky hat at Field Day near the end of her school year. Because I had hurt my hand, I couldn't do as much with her hair as usual, so the lice had plenty of time to breed MORE lice ... and then we took them to Texas before discovering them! Shortly after the first louse crawled off her scalp, Em was begging us to shave her head. Turned out that, while she had a veritable louse metropolis on her head, Grace and Kate had just a few nits — which is pretty disgusting as it is! We shampooed and nit-combed for hours, and then we applied the Cetaphil treatment, in which you massage a whole bottle of Cetaphil liquid soap into the kid's head, then squeeze out the excess, then blow-dry. In these first three pics, Em and Kate's hair is DRY. It's just shiny and rubbery from being coated with Cetaphil. The idea is to suffocate the lice, and it worked great; we didn't have any recurrences. But still: having lice was horrible. At least no one else got them but the Kratzes, although my poor mom spent a ton of quarters washing nearly everything in her house at the Stafford Wash-a-Teria and, back at home, Greg basically bagged up the entire house and had recurring louse-anxiety attacks.




Bearing up well under the rubbery head. At least the stuff washed right out and left a nice clean smell when we were done! Thanks to Jen for suggesting this treatment, after getting advice from a friend who's a hair stylist.


To begin our lice recovery efforts, we (of course) went shopping! The kids are wearing new outfits from JC Penney, which has surprisingly good stuff for surprisingly low prices! I hadn't been in there for years, but I think I'll be going back. Who would've thought? I, myself, got a couple pairs of new shoes at Macy's. They were having a great sale, so I got these great brown wedges, and Mom treated me to some super-pointy-toed black pumps that look like they lace up. They're witchy and elegant and cool and I wore them for the first time last week.


Above and below, Max made himself a "bed" with some rugs on my mom's kitchen floor ... and then really fell asleep that way! Only on my mom's floor (well, on Marilyn's, too) would this not horrify me.


Near the end of our time in Texas, we had a girl's day out with all the girl grandkids, Mom and me. We went to a candy store, a gift store and Charming Charlie's, a super-cool accessories store, and here we're waiting for our lunch at Jimmy John's. Aren't they all a bunch of beauties?

Happy 7th, Junie-O!

Kate celebrated her 7th birthday while we were in Texas, and we loved sharing the day with Grammy, Ba, Uncle Z, Aunt Jen, Uncle Brad and all the cousins! Above, Em and DeDee share a chair ... and everything else they possibly can.

Hannah snuggling with two little softies while Kate gets ready to open her presents. She basically got a total wardrobe update, plus tons of cute toys. We went home with twice as many clothes for her as we came with, and they are all very, very cute on her and fit her personality.


Apparently this was a pretty cool gift, judging from the girls' reactions!


Getting ready to blow out the tall sparkly candles on her Cold Stone ice cream cake. Delicious!


Um ... DeDee doing something DeDee-ish. I think. Maybe she's singing opera?

Jebby likes ice-cream cupcakes. A lot. Then again, so do I. They are so choice. If you've never had one, I strongly urge you to pick some up, she said, quoting "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

Finishing out the school year

Is it pathetic to be doing the end of last year's school year during the middle of THIS year's first semester? Well, whatever. I'm all about continuity. Let's look at the end of school/beginning of summer in pictures:
Above, Kate does her spotlight and tells her class a bit about herself with the help of her amazing teacher, Miss Prescott.


Emma plays in her final, end-of-the-year band concert. She LOVED band, even though she could just about use the euphonium case as a spare bed.


Gracie got the academic achievement award for her class! We were really proud of her, and we LOVE her teacher, Miss Garber, who is a math-teaching genius (though she's no slouch in other areas, either!). Emma had Miss Garber, too, and Kate has her this year. Hooray!


Max plays with members of Emma's class, above and below. I often took him to school with me on Fridays to help in Ms. Egbert's classroom, and he became sort of a class mascot. The kids were great to him. I often said throughout last year that there's NO WAY it will ever be QUITE this good again: each of the girls in a class of great kids, with a teacher who's about as good as a teacher could be. What a blessing it was! (Having said that, I must say this year is going pretty swimmingly, as well — DOUBLY blessed!)

To celebrate the end of school, we went to Myung Ga, a great local Korean restaurant, with our friends Alex, Jacqueline and Cindy Bruce. In the pic above, Kate is totally ecstatic because soup is her favorite food, and this is the BIGGEST BOWL OF SOUP EVER!


What can I say? My oldest daughter is a goofball just like me. She's wearing Max's clothes in a very creative fashion in this pic in an attempt to appear even MORE mutant-like.

Above and below, we had a tea party to celebrate the end of the year, complete with our own little tea sets, sparkling grape juice, various other treats and (the centerpiece of the festivities) gorgeous mini cupcakes from So Cupcake, a local bake shop that we love. All those cupcakes you see in the center of the table are different delicious flavors: strawberry cheesecake, cinnamon sugar, vanilla, lemon, chocolate brownie ... mmmmm.
Side note: check out my fashionable hand wrap. I was just starting physical therapy for my hand after having surgery at the end of May. Soooo glad we're past that stage.

The travel goes ever on and on

Back from our summer of travel ... with just a little travel left!
Pictures to follow ASAP ... here are the trips:
Los Angeles, California, in mid-May for Cassie's law school grad
Sugar Land, Texas, for three weeks in June/early July for Em's basketball camp, Kate's birthday and lots of family-type hanging out and fun! My mom and Z came back with me and stayed a couple weeks, and at the end of THAT visit my dad came, too. They left July 20.
End of July-early August: South Dakota and Iowa for Greg's folks' 50th wedding anniversary celebration, family reunion, trip to Brookings to see the Weirds and trip to Iowa to admire Aunt Lisa's keen new house! WHEW!
Still upcoming ... the Johnsons and the Thomases arrive tomorrow night (Wednesday, Aug. 12) for a week of fun followed by the Young-Johnson reunion in Altamont, followed by possibly more family visiting.
And then the travel will be over for a while ... and then MAYBE we can all draw a breath!

Field trip fling

Junie and I had so much fun during her first-grade field trip! She keeps pointing out that it was actually field TRIPS — Museum of Natural History in the morning, then lunch, then Red Butte Gardens. Unfortunately my camera card ran out of room before the gardens (which are gorgeous — visit their Web site at http://www.redbuttegarden.org to check it out), but here is a glimpse of some of the fun stuff we did at the museum:


Kate sports a mantis puppet at the museum's insect display (check out her cute little Field Trip Journal, in which she wrote and drew faithfully everywhere we went) ...


... and tries to leap like a frog at the "Toadally Frogs" exhibit, which is fabulous and full of live frogs and toads, like this ...


... golden tree frog, which was clinging to the acrylic side of its enclosure in just the right spot for Kate to pretend to "hold" it. Moments later, the keeper dumped a bunch of crickets into this enclosure, and this golden frog leaped into action (and off the wall) and gulped down about six of them in less than a minute. Of course this carnage was a huge hit with the first graders (and this mommy, too).


Kate and a couple of her classmates, Nathan and Erica, peek through the mouth of a velociraptor. If you throw change down its throat it says, in this deep growly voice, "Thaaaaaaaank yooooooooou!" Also a big hit. Check out the museum at http://www.umnh.utah.edu .

Pretty Pianistas

Here's Gracie showing off her technique — and her beautiful hands — at a recital right after she participated in Federation of Music Teachers judging. It was very rigorous this year, and she did a great job overcoming her nervousness and showing how well she knows her two pieces. She ended up getting an "Excellent" rating, which was one level below the highest, "Superior," rating. She was disappointed at first, but the judges gave her some really good constructive suggestions, mainly on overcoming some of her nervous "tics" and movements, and we're going to work on them. She handled the news with the kindness, emotional maturity and, well, GRACE, that I have come to respect and love so much in her. As for me, I know my shy girl did her best and bravest and is only going to get better from here.


Gracie takes a bow. She did a beautiful job on her pieces at this recital — the pressure was off!


Junie performs her Federation pieces at the recital. In the past few months her skills and her love of the piano have blossomed amazingly. She loves practicing and perfecting her assigned work, and I practically never have to remind her to practice — she just does it, because it's her idea of fun! She got very generous comments from her Federation judges and ended up getting the highest, "Superior," rating. She did great!


Junie takes a well-deserved bow at the recital and shows off the cute daisy in her hair!


Em displays her skills at the recital. She is a very relaxed, emotional player and really seems to "feel" the music. She got great marks from the judges for her expressive playing and her dynamics. She freaked out a little during judging because she's picked up the habit, from band practice, of tapping her right foot on the ground while she plays. Well, the Federation piano, a beautiful grand, was on a raised wooden dias that was hollow — so every foot tap sounded like BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Despite the, um, percussion accompaniment, she did beautifully on both of her pieces and ended up with a "Superior" rating. That means she's garnered enough points in her first three years of participating in Federation judging to earn a "Gold Cup" award, which is — you guessed it! — a gold cup. She also gets to play in a Gold Cup Concert tomorrow night, two days after playing in a Monster Concert for band! (more on that next week!)


Em takes a bow — dig the fabulous skull-and-crossbones-printed footless tights!

Max's month

Max had a month of ups and downs, as you'll see! This first, kind of scary picture, is our little boy the evening after he was anesthetized for an early-morning dental appointment. Mommy didn't much like holding him after the first shot to help him go under (it reminded me of those gazelles they "dart" in old episodes of "Wild Kingdom), but he came through fine except for a little drowsiness and a stubborn refusal to let me take these leads off his chest and abdomen. I finally got them off right after taking this pic — when he was asleep!


Sleeping again — Greg often remarks on my affinity for photos of the kids sleeping — this time in mid-play session: feet resting on his car track, belly-down on a board book, potty in the back corner and his new "rotten" pillow cradling his head. Our little boy!


Max loves this fire truck book, which he got at our school's Literacy Night. He and Em enjoy a reading session under the same blanket — they did this themselves, and I thought it was pretty cute!


While Em and Gracie played at the house of some friends, Max and Kate helped me mow the lawn. Here they are sweeping up clippings ...


... and here's Max sporting some unique broom action!


Earlier this week, he romped around in two of his favorite clothing items: blue "Cars" robe and "Huppaman" cape. So the past few weeks started a little rough, but they're ending with fun!