Because our numbers of grandchildren are swelling, Groups 3 (the Princesses) and Group 5 (the Babes) began their Grammie Camps together. The older girls were tutors and the younger ones were Tutees. The help of those older girls was priceless!
We started with little gifts for the little girls. Story books with their own little plastic CD players with three princess song CDs was a real hit!
The music for this group was The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies from the Nutcracker. Thanks to a delightful friend who owns a designer costume factory in China, we had some pretty cool costumes as they danced to the music. Perfect sugar plum fairies!
The dance was spectacular with the Babes joining the Princesses for the splendor of Tchaikovsky!
Next we had a talent show. Since these girls are bursting with talent we were all thrilled with the performances:
After the older girls helping the little girls learn about our ancestors who are buried in the Bloomington Cemetery, we stopped at the Bear Cave for dinner and some shakes on our way to search for the gravestones of my parents, grandparents, great grandmother and a cousin who died because they couldn’t get him a new drug called penicillin in time.
They found the graves lickety split and now know more about their ancestors than maybe their parents do.
Here lies my father Roy Jacobson, born in 1892, a saint, a farmer with a life full of hard labor and many hardships along with the joy. He was the 2nd of ten children with goodly parents and profound love for the earth.
And here is my pizzazy mother who had a passion for music, sports and people. She influenced the lives of at least 1000 school children and 1000 piano students as well as all of her progeny. Two of these girls are named for her!
My grandparents were true pioneers and here they lie with Uncle Jay who died at age 18.
My wonderful Grandmother left Denmark after joining our church with her husband five small children. After burying their 14 year old daughter before they left, they entered the ship to America in Liverpool along with their remaining five children. Someone got on the ship with the measles and three of those children were buried at sea and a fourth died just as they sighted the Statue of Liberty and was buried in NY. She walked across the plains 1000 miles pregnant and then was sent with her husband to settle Bloomington in the 1860’s. Her tenth and last child was my grandfather who was born in this little town in a one-room log cabin in the dead of winter.
We had to leave rather quickly because we were being swarmed by mosquitos and we needed to find a bathroom right away!
After our journey to the land of our ancestors we delivered the little princesses back to their parents and the old girls (The Babes) continued with their portion of Grammie Camp at the Lighthouse.
Their special gift this year since they are all artists was an acrylic art set which they were over the moon about. Wish I’d have taken one more picture here as they are so blurry, but just imagine it was because they were so thrilled that they couldn’t sit still (for sure, it wasn’t me)!
After a nice breakfast out on the deck overlooking the lake, we got down to the business of art and music.
Their music this year, which they had been listening to was Pictures at an Exhibition by Modest Mussorgsky. The story goes that Mussorgsky’s dear friend who was an artist died and he decided to compose a tribute to him by chosing his choosing his favorite pictures and imagining that he was walking around the art gallery where they were displayed and composing what he felt as he looked at the pictures. Between each picture there is a promenade as he moves from one picture to the next. The girls painted what they felt when they heard the music. The pictures were titled things like The Gnome, The Old Castle, The Hut of Baba Yaga, The Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks and the Great Gate of Kiev. They came up with some pretty creative stuff with their new paint sets! SO fun!
We finished the morning working on our new FAMILY TREE! We have a family tree that we painted many years ago that shows Rick and I on the trunk and the kids on the branches. With the very important part showing the roots….the ancestors that made them who they are! We cut up an old family calendar to get some pictures of the families but still need several faces as well as the new babies that have been born in the past few years.
This is a fun way to show where the kids came from with sixteen ancestors as the deepest roots who are all part of them.
We ended our fun time together with another “rock moving extravaganza”. The girls are all hard workers and such good girls! We are truly blessed!
1 comment:
Oh my word MOm, THANK YOU for writing down all these great details and the pictures to go with them! These kids had the time of their lives. Love you forever.
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