Days with the Dorans

We had to laugh at this "Family Tree" that Miss Madster made! Joey has sworn off girlfriends for a while (not a bad idea after the last break-up that wasn't so pretty). I know my kids love me blogging about their love lives... I don't really that much. We took Victor out to lunch with our family. I'm sure he loved it~ and judging Ali's face~ she loved it too! BWAHAHAHA!

We have had quite a bit of theatre in our lives  lately (which is a great thing). We were SO excited to score tickets to Roald Dahl's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory in Detroit!! We were able to get five tickets for FREE from friends who weren't able to use their tickets and then we bought one for Jeff (who sat two rows behind us).  I would go to the theatre all the time if we could afford it!! Roald Dahl is probably my favorite children's author having loved him when I was little and now he is a staple read-aloud in my classroom! I also was a fan of the movie (the original more so just because it reminded me of my childhood even though it didn't follow the book as much). The show was SOOO good! It was much better than I could have imagined and Jeff said it may be his all-time favorite (which is saying something because we've seen some amazing shows). It was so clever how they did everything. I would highly recommend it and the kids loved it to...

We so loved treating Grandma to a trip to the theatre last year that we thought we'd make it an annual thing. There weren't a lot of shows to choose from that worked into our schedule so we went to the Blue Man Group which was certainly different than anything that I had seen before and I didn't know quite what to expect. The Bigs had seen them in Disney so pretty much knew what was going to happen though there were some parts of the show that were different. We were glad we went and got to see it. Above all we loved spending time with Grandma and being together.

After what felt like forever it was finally time for the Bigs to fly to Florida with the marching band. Ali was fine the week leading up though she's decided she's not going to do marching band next year but that of course all changed the night before (just like I knew it would). They had to be to the school by 3:30am so I had Jeff drive them (knowing Ali would ask me until the last minute if she really had to go~ she did). I had mixed feelings- sad that she was dreading it but hopeful she'd have a great time. There was no doubt that Joey would have fun. They were on different buses. Joey was so good at sending me picture updates. I worried that I missed something but I knew there were people (adults) there that could stand in if there was an emergency. Ali didn't really communicate with me at all. Shannon posted some pics on FB for me and I was glad to see this. Jeff didn't take any pictures when he dropped them off. He said he got there and the kids...