Yesterday v Today

In like a lion, out like a lamb? Well ... I'm not so sure, this year. We've been able to count the lamb days on one hand, this month. Yesterday was one of them. The girls were out, jumping rope, enjoying the warmish weather. It was a perfect March day ... cool enough to need a coat when you walk out the door, but warm enough to shuck that coat when you start moving.

TODAY! The tulips and hyacinth are blooming and covered with snow. The Harry Lauder's walking stick is distinguished with a layer of snow on the curls. It is a heavy, wet snow, so we are lucky we haven't lost power. The girls have a two hour delay for school ... it should still be snowing as we walk to school in a half an hour.

Fangs

We've had a bit of a fascination with fangs, fanged animals, blood, and vampires lately. I think it started with this book: Animal Monsters, by David Taylor.

I think Q6 has been reading it at library time in school, and she came home asking me if there was a blood disease that causes people to want to drink blood, and about REAL vampire. It took us a while to figure that out, but we came up with prophyria, and then when I finally saw the above book we looked up the section she'd been reading and found out we were right.

And so she's been putting almond slivers in her mouth and acting all scary. Vampires who eat their own teeth!

Talent show: New talent

Springtime is talent show time!

As you recall, C8 did the talent show in first grade as the human almanac, and in second grade talking about dogs (after a brief flirtation with Pearl Harbor). This year she decided to play the piano.

I was a little skeptical since she's only taken piano since September, and there were two other girls who were also doing piano who had been taking piano lessons since 2011. And I didn't want C8 to get shown up. But of course that didn't matter, what mattered was that C8 wanted to do the talent show, and she had a goal, and a piece in mind: Für Elise. Well, aim high. And she did great.


And last night, February 15, was the show. Here she is. Again, a bit long.

Q6 sat on my lap the whole time, and when the kindergarten student did her piece on the piano, she sat with her back full at the audience, so she couldn't see us at all. I think this gave Q a little encouragement, because at that moment she said, "Maybe I can do a piece next year, too." and since then she's been thinking about it. I'm going to encourage her to sing and play, because that is what she does at home.

Trasher crasher

Friday is recycling day, and nearly every week our recycling bin is half full or even full up to the top. If we miss a week -- it is ugly. We have to get out the old yellow bin and extra cardboard boxes to contain the recyclables.

However, we've found a way to maybe lessen the overflow a bit. I looked up from the stove and saw something going on outside the back door. When I stepped out to look closer, this is what I saw:

Another dishtowel

Q6 drew this horse based on Lightening, from the Dude Ranch last summer. I embroidered it. Voilà! Another dishtowel! This one took much longer for me to embroider ... Eight Saturdays at the pool during swimming lessons. I love the embroidered dishtowels based on the kid's drawings. They make me smile whenever I use them.

Piano themed pictures.

Just for fun. Q6 and C8 at home. I don't know what was actually going on, but it looked nice.

Our piano teacher has a lovely dog named Amber. C8 loves her of course, but the feelings aren't always mutal. But the other day Amber let C8 hang out with her and pet her.

Last swimming lesson for winter

No, they didn't pass. Q6 is still in beginners 3, and C8 is still in advanced beginners. They were bummed, but I just keep reminding them of how long I spent in beginners and advanced beginners (years!) they don't feel so bad. And I can see the progress they are making.

 

C8 is doing great with her diving (crappy video follows, but her dive was good), her breast stroke, but needs work on the crawl.  I had a hard time seeing what they were doing because they usually swam on the other side of the pool. But C8 does a great job retrieving objects from the bottom of the pool. They had a contest of sorts, once, where three of the kids in the lesson were on one team, and she was the sole person on the other team. Each team had to retrieve 5 objects from the bottom of the pool. C8 won that game.

And Q6 is great at the breast stroke, and even got the legs motion right, about which the teachers seemed thrilled. But her crawl is difficult since her body sinks. And while she is trying to turn her head to the side to breath, she has to doggie paddle to stay afloat while she breaths, because her back end sinks. They just started working on diving, which is fun, but scary for the new diver!

Next session starts in a few weeks ...

Bowling!

I have not been bowling with the kids for a while. So long, in fact, that I think I missed a renovation of the bowling alley.

But we went today, and everybody had a great time. The first game C43 won, beating Q6 by 1 (although he rolled three gutter balls in the last frame on purpose so she could win, she unfortunately rolled a 4 that string).         C8 came in a close third, and I came in last -- by a very comfortable margin, I believe.

C8 got a spare -- best roll for her! And Q6 is fun to watch because of her crazy face and walks.

     

Second game, Q6 rolled two strikes, one for her, and then one for me. SO exciting! I've never rolled a strike in duckpins! Or candlepins! Or big-ball bowling (well, maybe just once). Q6 and C8 rolled a fair number of my balls (on purpose), as did the boy in the next lane (not so much on purpose) who was extremely energetic but rather all over the place.

Thanks to the help I got from Q6 & C8, I won our second game by at least 25 points. Dead last is my usual modus operandi, so this was a nice bonus for me.