The Great Puppet Caper

Any of my regular readers know that I have developed an enthusiasm for puppets in my classroom.  They help students to sing improvisationally and the also add a little bit of magic to the classroom.  This year, my friend Leah (who is really the puppet instigator!) helped me re-organize my classroom and take back a corner of the stage (which is attached to my classroom and is part of my teaching space) that had previously only been used for storage.  It is the best corner in the room and it has irked me for two years now that I had to use it for storage.  Well, no more!  We re-stored the items that needed to be moved, thus emptying the beautiful corner.  Now, puppets don’t just arrive from thin air or, worse, a puppet stand.  No, these magical singing creatures arrive through magical portals.  Leah is the master of the magical portal and, as a gift, created this awesome castle for the inhabitants of the magical kingdom of Arioso Land.  But Arioso Land is much more complex than that!  (Remember, I have to see the same kids in kindergarten, first, and second grade, we can’t just do the same thing every year!).  There is also a barn for the farm animals of Arioso Land (for kindergarten) and, soon, there will be a magical tree for the animals of the Arioso Land Forest and Meadow.  As we decided what furniture to bring over, I was lamenting the barren state of the ugly white walls.  And then it struck me!  I needed a mural.  Luckily, on top of being a portal master, Leah is also a butcher paper genius!  We quickly collected all the beautiful colors needed and a free rug (hidden on a stage in a different school that no one was ever going to use!) and went to work.  A few days later we had this:

The wide view.  Barn on the right, castle on the bookshelf.

Up close of the barn.  Roof opens to let characters in and out.

Up close of the castle Leah made for me, door has a toggle latch so that it opens flat like a true drawbridge to allow the king or queen to emerge.

Close up of the flat flower and the 3-d sun that was used as a sun mask in a play once.

All this is well and good and I’m feeling pretty excited.  Leah has even promised to make me a tree with branches that I can change the leaves on to match the seasons.  But in order for the real magic to take place, one must have all the necessary characters.  The magical kingdom is pretty well populated what with Queen Aflute and King Sammy (if you haven’t seen them, you can check out some of the older posts!) and even the queen’s assistant Igor Stravinsky and the town gossip, Mrs. Clotilda Szfortzando (again, see the Queens’ Birthday Party post).  And, soon there will be twins, a prince and princess who have yet to be named.  And a voice teacher.  And probably a villain.  But the farm and the forest are in need of inhabitants.  This is where our friend Sheri comes into play.  As we built the portals one steamy August day in Sheri’s trailer classroom, we discussed where we could find puppets.  Sheri suggested Craigslist.  I didn’t take that very seriously because it seemed like it would be hard to find anything there.  And yet, later that very night, Sheri emailed Leah and me with a link.  Not only was a church on the Seattle side having a giant puppet sale but there was my most coveted puppet, Tapanga the Orangutan!  For far less than at any puppet website or store!  I called the man immediately and scheduled a visit for the following Wednesday at 6:30PM.  When I told Leah of my success, she had to come along too!  Sheri was busy this week or she would have too. 

We caught the 4:30 ferry with Leah driving.  I’m not familiar with Seattle or comfortable with city driving but Leah forged on ahead.  We spent an exciting hour finding all the forest and farm songs from all the teacher books we packed as the ferry motored towards Rush Hour Seattle.  Bravely we debarked in “Mama Sue”, Leah’s trusty car, and managed to find route 5 north despite a poorly marked detour through “SoDo” (South of Downtown…not the prettiest part of the city).  As we entered the ramp at 5:30PM we knew it was trouble.  Traffic was at a standstill.  And yet there were people weaving in and out with no turn signals.  Let me tell you, had I been driving the hands would have been waving in the air, the eyes would have been clamped shut, and there would have been yelling, lots of yelling.  Luckily, Leah is braver than I am and she got us through the worst of it.  Soon enough we arrived in Shoreline, WA at a Nazarene church.  Darryl, the puppet man, arrived a few minutes later and had us cart trash bag after trash bag out of a large room and spread all the puppets on the floor in the hallway.  We made quick work.  It took us all of thirty seconds to pull out my orangutan, my rooster, our two matching jack rabbits, and a nest of little red finger puppet birds that I thought I could use.  We felt bad and sifted through the other puppets for a minute or two but knew there was nothing else that either of us wanted.  However, it quickly occurred to us that our friend Sheri, who had, after all, pointed us in the direction of this puppet sale, was in need of a Goony Bird.  (We all have one, it’s for a specific song that we do).  And, lucky for her, they had TWO, GIANT, ENORMOUS goony bird puppets!  Oh the delight!  Of course we picked one out (the chubby one!) and loaded our goodies in the car.  We realized that if we took a different ferry home we would pass right by Sheri’s house and get to leave her present on her porch as a gigantic, goony surprise. 

Sure enough, when we arrived at her house, she had the perfect little chair for the mother Goony bird and we set her up for what will surely be an exciting discovery whenever she makes it home tomorrow! 

***She came home with a little two-year old visitor who proceeded to drag this six-foot puppet around her house making it kiss and bite for the entire day!  She is looking forward to finding the most prominent place in her classroom to display her.

Here are my other treasures from today:

A jack rabbit, an orangutan, a rooster, and three red birdies in a nest. 

Now, on to the forest animals…I need a wolf, and a squirrel, and a raccoon and…. J

***UPDATE:

I wrote this post about a week ago.  Since then, here are some updates.  Leah created this bare tree on my wall (it's three-dimensional if it's hard to tell in the picture, made of crumpled paper).  As children in kindergarten, first, and second grade sing solos in class this fall, they will receive an apple with their name on it that we will hang on the tree.  I also have some fall-colored maple leaves to add. 

Next, I created a tree for the forest/meadow creatures.  It's a magical forest so it will have rainforest as well as woodland animals.  Tapanga the Orangutan fits perfectly inside:  

Just a close up of the somewhat glittery leaves and the little flowers.

Finally, I went to the puppet store with Leah to find one or two other characters for the forest and instead came out with this father/son duo to live in the farm.  

You might think they are rats, but they are mice!

I also met my new principal today.  He seemed very nice and game for just about anything (he told me how he dressed up as Thing 2 with his principal as Thing 1 last year to give their superintendent...the Cat in the Hat, of course...a hard time during Dr. Suess day).  I think he might need to pick a principal puppet for when the king notices how many young people there are in his kingdom and decides to build a schoolhouse...  Oh how this can grow! :)

The "just about" final product:

Crystal Mountain

Guys, if you are about to propose to your girlfriend or couples, if you need a getaway place to get married...I've found it!  The breathtaking views from Crystal Mountain were so stunning today, a mostly clear day, that I can only imagine how beautiful the scene would be for a proposal or wedding pictures!  In fact, I don't have to imagine the wedding scenario too hard since I saw at least three wedding parties and two weddings in progress (one at a time, of course).

I should start at the beginning.  Rich had a three day weekend this week and we thought we should take a little weekend getaway.  Sadly, so did everyone else on our side of the state and they had thought of it first (the probably know their schedules more than two weeks in advance!) so all hotels and campgrounds were booked solid.  We knew it was going to be hot so I spent all day on Friday and part of Thursday, researching places we could go to the beach.  I really, really wanted to go swimming!  I checked lake after lake after bay after ocean.  Nothing was available.  I had the added trouble of needing a dog-friendly place because our regular dog sitter has had surgery and is unavailable for a few weeks.  One of the last places I discovered was called Crystal Mountain.  It was hard to distinguish what this place was, exactly.  I could tell it was near Mount Rainier (a definite plus, as any of you who have read pretty much any of my posts know, since I'm obsessed with that mountain!) and that there was some kind of gondola...and not much else!  I really can't say why I was so attracted to the gondola.  Ever since being a very young child and going to Riverside Park where there was a giant ball on a wire that would take you from one side of the park to the other (saving so many steps on those long hot days!), I have been terrified of these things.  And, yet, whenever there is a gondola or a tram, I sign us up!  Actually, I think what attracted me most was that Crystal Mountain was on all the dog-friendly lists of places to visit and that included the gondola.  Ruby and Otis on a gondola ride?  They'd love it!

It turns out that Crystal Mountain is a ski resort.  There are several lodges on site and in the summer they are open for hikers.  We arrived in the early afternoon and hit the gondola.  As we waited in line, Otis would occasionally stick his head through the metal barrier and surprise some lucky man in shorts with a little kiss on his calf.  He's so crafty that Rich and I never noticed until it was too late.  Luckily, the men in question both thought it was hilarious and didn't mind.  Other than that, and a few stray barks at the other dogs waiting in line to board the gondola, their first experience waiting in line for a gondola was handled expertly, as though they had waited in many such lines during their short lives!  The closer we got to boarding, the more we realized with horror that we weren't going to have our own car and we were about to subject strangers to the dogs' first gondola ride...not what we had in mind, at all!  And, worse still, the gondola doesn't stop moving.  No, you have to jump in as it swings through the boarding area.  My stomach was in knots.  How would this go?  Would they get on?  Should I try to board and carry Ruby?  I HATE gondolas, why did I think this was a good plan?  Was I about to plummet to my death?!  Luckily, these cheery thoughts distracted me until I was suddenly settled on the bench, with Ruby in my arms, being hoisted backwards up a mountain and facing three strangers.  They happened to be the nice kind of strangers who think our dogs are adorable and Ruby and Otis seemed content to have them continue to believe that they were adorable and both just rested passively in our arms.  In fact, the couple across from us even offered to take our picture!  (Following proper etiquette, we took their picture in return).  

Waiting in line and the bars that Otis used to his kissing advantage.

Still waiting in line...and glad it was shady!

Our first clear view of the gondola.

Ruby rested in my arms the whole way.

A family picture with Otis blowing kisses to the man in the opposite corner and wishing they we real kisses.

I was forced to hold it together since I was stranded with these other people and I even managed to look at the view and enjoy the ride up.  The very best part was at the last second before we reached the top when I glanced over my shoulder and saw my good friend, Mount Rainier, RIGHT THERE, staring back at me.  So exciting!  We exited the gondola car fairly gracefully and were magnetically drawn straight to the scary ledge (mothers shouldn't bring their children there, ever!  And other people's children, whether they are 3 or 30 shouldn't go either...I had to look away from many of them as they clambered MUCH to close to the un-guarded edge!) to see the beautiful mountain.  I was planning on warning people not to look at the pictures if they wanted a good surprise, but I didn't do a very good job taking them (despite my lesson on aperture during the cruise and much to my EXTREME disappointment on arriving home!) so feel free to look.  You won't spoil anything!

I zoomed OUT on this, it was much closer in real life but I wanted more details.

A better view of the river flowing off the mountain.

Being the good little Pacific Northwesterners that we are, both Rich and I were wearing our Vibrams for our "hike".  It turned out that unless you wanted to hike down a ski trail...and then back up...there wasn't much hiking to do.  That was all right.  We saw a nice uphill trek into some trees and figured the view would be lovely so off we went.  We passed a wedding ceremony in progress, and discussed the merits of their choice.  Not private, obviously, since there we were discussing the merits of their choice, excellent photographs but the ground was so dry and dusty that that girl better not have any hope of doing anything with that dress other than throwing it out!  The wedding parties did get front of the line gondola privileges, though, so I'm sure that was nice for them since most of us waited about thirty minutes to get up and about forty minutes to get back down.  But I digress.  The walk we took was very dusty and the rocks were sharp and plentiful.  The payout of the view at the top was ok, but nothing we couldn't have seen from down below.  Add that to my needing to stop every five feet or so to take pictures, get the dogs water, or get myself water...and not much walk was had! :)  Oh well, we managed to take up about two hours of view-catching before the ride back down.  

Some wildflowers and the view opposite of Mount Rainier.

A great family picture...we asked the guy to yell "TREAT!" before he took it and it worked!

The view from the top of the walk.  Mt St. Helens is over there but she was hard to capture.

Resting after the somewhat strenuous walk.

Us in front of what looks like a fake background!

Again, luck was with us, after our forty minute wait in the gondola ride.  (Otis was very tired and would often lie down on the jagged stones and would have happily let us drag him along on his belly, if we hadn't pulled up him by his harness straps and made him walk every few minutes.  Ruby, on the other hand, was manically trying to throw herself off the scary cliff, probably after the very fat chipmunks that kept taunting her along the way.)

I didn't get him lying down but you can imagine it was the next step!

Prowling under the tree so I won't catch her trying to hop off the cliff!

See that little fat chipmunk?  What a tease!

Anyway, luck was with us.  We had two very nice couples in the gondola on the ride back down who told us about their various cats and dogs and laughed at how funny the dogs were riding along like they were humans.  They went so far as to ask us if we had trained them ourselves.  I said "Oh yes, we "trained" them ourselves..."  and conveniently left out the truth that they were so tired from hiking around in the sun, they would have done just about anything to sit quietly and rest, having nothing to do with their trained-ness!

Otis, happy to be reclining in a lap, finally!!

Ruby, sitting next to me on the bench like a regular little person!

Rich explaining to the crowd what kind of dogs we have and no, Otis never barks and sheds all the time and yes, Ruby barks all the time and never sheds...They have a cavalier/poodle mix that barks all the time but never sheds (in case you were wondering!)

Once we hit the car and had the requisite water break for the dogs and snack and water break for the humans, we headed into Rainier National Park to drive around the base of the mountain to the other side to come back home.  We have only been over there twice before and it was cloudy for the approach each time.  Imagine my happy surprise when I managed to find two stunning views (sadly, I found them as we were whizzing by them in the car and happily, my husband is very understanding about these things and is willing to turn around twice to get back there so I can take the pictures!) that I HAD to have pictures of.  (Bad grammar, I know!)  And I didn't ruin those pictures so I had something to be happy about!

The view from the road.

The requisite "heads and a background" shot.

Tall grass...and a mountain... 

The view from the second turn around spot. It looked more like a painting as it got dark.

I think this on canvas would be fun!

You know I couldn't pass these two up!

Taking a break to smell the flowers!

And, as always, this is how we know it was a successful day (this is AFTER they split a hamburger patty from Burger King because we forgot to bring their kibble.  They didn't seem to mind...)!

Cousin Weekend 11

Last weekend was our eleventh annual Cousin Weekend.  Three of us have gotten together for a weekend in the summer each year since 2002.  This year we met in Colorado.  My flight out was in the morning and the sky was cloudy.  I was so disappointed because summer is the best chance to have clear skies and, as a result, a great view of Mt. Rainier, Mt. St Helens, and Mt. Hood.  I have only seen this view once (in February!) but I didn't have a camera ready.  This time, I was ready!  Luckily, there was a break in the clouds and I could at least see Mt. Rainier.  That mountain is just so beautiful!

On Saturday, after having stayed up really late chatting and watching the opening ceremonies, we headed into Boulder to a very cute salon where Granny treated us all to a pedicure (thanks, Granny!)  It was a very cute salon with a shopping area that sold interesting jewelry, scarves, sandals and various lotions and make-up.  The girls who took care of us did a really good job and we ended up with pearly, purple, and orangey-pink colored toes!  

Afterwards, we headed into the foothills of the mountains, where we saw some incredible views.  Amy is always eagle-eyed when she sees a car pulled over on the side of the road because it often means interesting wildlife.  This ride was no different and we came across a biker on the side of the road with a camera aimed into a field next to the road.  At first we (somewhat scornfully!) thought the guy was taking pictures of a horse!  But then Amy realized that it was not a horse...it was a moose!  I have been wanting to see a moose since I was in middle (or high?) school and I went outside after lunch and found that I had missed a large moose in the field by about ten seconds.  I saw a baby moose, once, in Amherst, which actually ran right next to my car, but that was also sort of sad because there was no mother with it.  Anyway, this time we hopped out of the car grabbing our cameras and realized this was a mother and a calf.  They were not very far away and we were all just a little nervous but there was a small fence that they would have had to get over to get us and we figured that would give us enough of a head start if we needed it.  The mother moose did not seemed to be at all concerned that she was attracting a crowd (about four other cars and the biker all stopped during the few minutes we were there.  

The baby was shy and had hidden itself on the other side of the bush by the time I got my lens cap off.  However, they were both pretty calmly enjoying their snack when the owner of the field showed up.  You'll probably have to enlarge this picture by clicking on it to see the details.  Anyway, the owner showed up and chased off the intruders!

Since we were stopped, we took our annual "three heads and a background" shot and then hopped back in the car and headed down the road.  The views were stunning and I had fun taking pictures from the passenger seat as we rode along.

We of course had an excellent time visiting, seeing the mountains, and watching the Olympics.  As always, the weekend came to an end too quickly. Lucky for me, the consolation prize was another chance to see the big boys from the air!

And our feline hosts were very social (as are all of our furry friends, no matter which ones they are!) so the blog wouldn't be complete without these handsome pictures of Tunison and Jackson!