The Pearl Curriculum

It all started with a conversation about Valentine’s Day. Let me relay our first-ever “what shall we do for Valentine’s Day” conversation:

Lindsay: PHIL! It is almost Valentine’s Day! What are we going to do?!
Phil: Uh……..I’m going to play softball.
Lindsay: (insert the “absolutely not” face here). You’re doing WHAT?!
Phil: Softball game….7 p.m.
Lindsay: Hm. (long pause….lingering disbelief…..down-playing the day’s importance….aiming to be realistic….”getting a grip”….). Okay hunnie, let’s celebrate it on the 12th instead!
Phil: (after checking sports calendar). GREAT IDEA!

This was really just the beginning of our Valentine’s Day planning. The plan developed into something much more extensive. We continued to discuss Valentine’s gifts, dinner and activities, and decided upon making gifts, dinner a la Phil, and a girlie-movie marathon. How could I possibly be upset about the reschedule? Phil was going to do arts and crafts in my honour…..and further suggested I select my three favourite romantic comedies to view that evening. I was full of GLEE!

My glee didn’t last for as long as I hoped for. As the hours got fewer and the day grew nearer, I found myself in some sort of an arts and crafts panic. I lost all of my arts and crafts confidence in a recent craft FAIL – in a project that was intended to bring great joy and many compliments. On the contrary, my custom-made, personally-designed Starbucks tumbler remained looking quite messy and amateur. It serves me right for being so cawky in the creativity department…so I suppose I deserve the stress I felt over creating something crafty for Phil!

I had many ideas in my head for his gift…..a collage of pictures (but we lack many nice ones), round two with the tumbler (but he would never hold something so “un-masculine”), a poem (bah…that was even worse than idea two), an “Adventure Book” like Ellie’s from “UP!” (nah – he hasn’t seen the movie..yet)…..And so I stressed and struggled to come up with something I could make for Phil as a Valentine’s Day gift.

Then it came to me. I had to revolutionize my type of “craft”. I had to make something that he would never, ever be able to guess.

And so I switched to arts and crafts of the electronic kind. VOILA! Here you have it: The Pearl Curriculum - a writing space where we can keep our family and friends “posted” (haha).

I hope this blog leaves you with a smile each visit, as we laugh and laugh off our adventures in the Middle East and elsewhere.

With love,
Lindsay (and Phil….)