Write My Life

Jennifer woke up earlier than normal today. Why? It’s her birthday!

With a busy day ahead of us consisting of church and Jennifer’s party, she woke up early. With the extra time, we were able to let her open her presents in the morning before heading off to church.

One thing I so appreciate about Jennifer is her joy when she gets gifts and how she loves to spread that joy. Her smile is contagious and her hugs are wonderful.

Happy birthday to you, Jennifer!

Jennifer invited 10 guests to her Hogwarts birthday. After receiving invitations by owl, the students all replied and we prepared to host Hogwarts for an afternoon.

The festivites on her birthday began by entering the front of the house, the Gormish Wand Shop. Each student chose a wand from a variety of possiblities. I lectured them on proper use of the wand, care of the wand and what to do if their wand was stolen.

After everyone arrived, we walked to the Great Hall, where the students were sorted into their houses. They sat on a stool and I placed the sorting hat on their heads. The hat shouted out their house name.

They were divided into 2 groups and they each attended Potions and Care of Magical Creatures. In Care of Magical Creatures they recieved a Flobberworm, studied it and learned how to take care of it. In Potions, they mixed ingredients for a spell to tell whether they had a secret or not. Finally, we had the two groups race each other while on a simple witch’s broom. It was a close race.

The students returned to the great hall to celebrate Jennifer’s birthday with a large feast including herbology treats, cockroach clusters, pumpkin pasties and butterbeer.

With eight candles on her cake, Jennifer celebrated her birthday with many of her friends. Her cake consisted of several layers of ice cream sandwiches with peanut butter pieces and whipped cream in between the layers. The recipe came from Schwans. I had torn it out of the magazine. When Jennifer saw it, she chose it for her birthday cake. It was surprisingly easy to make and the children all ate it.

Gifts are always a treat for Jennifer, especially when they are special. She had lots of special gifts this year from her friends. They were creative, fun and showed real thoughtfulness. For example, two brothers got her a stuffed blue dolphin because her jump rope team at school is named “Blue Dolphins.” A couple of her friends also made beautiful handmade cards with elaborate drawings and/or stories inside. Several of the presents were quite creative, including the Hogwarts school book The Monster Book of Monsters.

Jennifer took her turn on stage when her school, Orion, performed a series of short plays. In her play, an adaption of the Robert Munsch story Stephanie’s Ponytail, Jennifer took on the role of a narrator. She enjoyed being able to chose her own costume and reciting her lines.

March 23, 2007

After much deliberation, Jennifer chose to have a Harry Potter birthday party. We have two weeks to prepare. Can we do it? Well, since we did a similar party for Jackie, I think we can pull it off. Jennifer isn’t doing the exact same thing, but it will be similar enough to pull together. The first week I spent shopping for supplies from Party America, Michael’s and Jo-Anns and sending Hogwarts invitations by owl. Now, with one week to go, it is crunch time to get it all together.

So, on Sunday night the Gormish girls turned into professional wandmakers. We used dowel rods and coated them (each one differently, of coarse) with walnut ink. I also painted white boxes with walnut ink to give that “old” feel to the boxes.

Welcome to the wand shop!

March flew by with rehearsal’s, tech week and 5 performances of Fiddler on the Roof, North Star Academy’s musical.

Jaclyn enjoyed the overall producation, rehearsals and songs. We heard the songs over and over again in our house, in the car, in church, etc. She sang them constantly. She played a man in the village, had a few lines in the “Tradition” sequence and performed in the bottle dance in the wedding scene. The bottle dance proved to be the most stressful part of the musical for Jaclyn. She fretted each night about her bottle falling off her head and felt a whole lot less stress once that part of the performance ended. Despite the make-up (she had to have facial hair added), the stress of the bottle dance and long nights, Jaclyn enjoyed the whole experience.

Bottle dancers.

Jaclyn is far left with a mustache.

Photo by NSA parent, Chuck Boeheim