Gift of Music!!

I am going to brag, but it is my right as a mother. John has been playing the violin for about two and half years, which is not that long, but he is really good. For his Christmas concert he had to audition to see what chair he would get and he got first chair. He did not think he would since he knows that there are several kids who have been playing much longer than him. This video is of John walking out to tune the rest of the orchestra and then their first number. It was a great concert full of Christmas music to get us in the mood for this wonderful time of year.


Just a few days later we were able to go to John's first piano recital. John loves playing the piano and has fiddled around on it for years. This year I decided that I better get him into lessons before he picked up too many bad habits. He surprised his teacher by picking this difficult piece, for a first year student, and then surprised her more by actually being able to play it. The gift of music is something he has certainly been blessed with and Matt and I love having our home filled with music!!


Sorry they are not the best recordings but they were both done on my camera.

The Nutcracker

As a family we went to see the Nutcracker Friday night and we all loved it. I was not sure if it was going to keep Abbi and Jess' interest for the full two hours, but it did. I loved the questions that I kept getting from Abbi. She wanted to know who all of the characters were and what there names were and what they were doing. Thank goodness I have seen the Nutcracker before and know the story because she was not happy with the simple answers or watch and see. In the program was a short version of the story and John read it to Jess while we were waiting for it to start, so that helped the two of them understand the ballet. I was very impressed at how well the dancers did, it made it so fun to watch.

I don't have any pictures because I forgot my camera, which ended up being fine because we were not allowed to take pictures of the performance anyway. It was a great night out as a family, one I am sure the kids will always remember.

Photography!!

So as many of you know photography is a hobby of mine. I love taking pictures and then editing them. It is especially fun for me when the subjects are my kids. Here are some pictures that I recently took while at a local park.


Jessica is always so photogenic and loves to come up with poses as we do our photo shoots. She is always finding fun places and then says "mom take a picture", the one of her standing is one those poses that she did all on her own.



John often does not like to do a photo session as he finds them "boring" and is getting "too old"!! But he was very fun during this photo shoot and most of the pictures turned out great. He is growing up way too fast though and no longer looks like a child, he is turning into a very handsome young man.


Last, but not least, is my beautiful Abbi. She loves to take pictures and is very cooperative, but on this morning it was very chilly, that is why her coat is on. No matter how much I tried to convince her that she would be fine without her coat for a few minutes she would not take it off. Towards the end of the shoot she did finally take it off, but I love these pictures with it on.

Matt Loves Halloween!!!

Halloween turned out to be so much so fun this year. My kids are finally at an age where I don't have to drag them along, as a matter of fact they drag me now, and we can stay out longer than 20 minutes without whinning. Our Halloween fun started on Friday night with us attending our wards Trunk-or-treat. It turned out to be a chilly night, but that is to be expected in South Dakota. Jess wanted to be a mummy so I attempted to make her one by tearing up some material and wrapping her up. By the time we were done with the trunk-or-treat she was carrying half of it in her hands. But it was cute while it lasted!!

Abbi wanted to be a fairy this year and I decided I could make her costume as well. I made her little skirt and bought the wings, it turned out looking cute. Here she is pretending to fly.

John was a scary looking scarecrow that scared all of the little kids, but he loved it.

Because the mummy costume did not work well Jess decided to be something different Halloween night. She got into our bin of costumes and found John's old vampire costume. Here is Matt putting on her makeup. She looked great as a little vampire.


While Jess was going through our bin of costumes Abbi saw this old skeleton cosutme of John's and decided she needed to be something different as well. She loved the skeleton costume because it glows in the dark.

Not what Abbi would typically be because she is always all girl, but she loved it.

We also have a Halloween party every year and invite family and friends over. One of the highlights of the party for the kids is when they get to do Matt's treasure hunt. Matt does very elobarate treasure hunts that invovle a little haunted house for the kids. This year Matt's theme was Egyptian Hieroglyphics. Clues were hidden through out the hieroglyphics that the kids had to search for using clues that Matt gave them. Once they were done they had to find Cleopatra (me) and tell her the answer to the clues. If they were right I led them to their treasure. Here are a few pictures of Matt's hieroglyphics.




This was all painted with paint that lit up under black lights. It was really neat looking when all you could see were the hieroglyphics all lit up.

This is Matt's mummy that the kids named Larry Legs.

Here is John's Fall Orchestra concert. It was short and sweet. I only recorded the 6th graders, but after them the 7th and 8th graders played. The whole concert was only about 30 minutes long, but they all did a great job.

Nervous Boy!!

John has been playing the violin for a little over two years now and he does well. John has always been the type of kid that does not really get nervous in front of large groups. On Thursday I finally saw him nervous. He came home on Tuesday and informed me that he was first chair for his orchestra concert Thursday night. He was fine with that until his teacher let him know that he had to walk out on the stage after everyone else and tune the rest of the orchestra. For those of you not familiar with a symphony this is what a first chair violin always does. When he walked out on the stage you could tell he was a little nervous, but he did very well.

John also played in church for the first time today. The primary program was today and John played his violin while another boy played his cello and a girl their age played the piano. They did a great job and I know that John is relieved to have this week over.

Sorry I don't have picture because I recorded his concert and did not get any from today. You can trust me though when I say he looked very handsome and did awesome.

Going Punk Rock!!!

Even though this is going to embarrass myself I promised my mom I would do it. A couple of weeks ago the kids decided for family home evening that they wanted to have fun with Matt's hair and my hair.
Jessica fixing my hair beautiful!!!



I was finally able to see what my hair looked like!!

The Beautiful Black Hills!!

Over the weekend we were able to get out and enjoy the hills. The hills are just beautiful and there are so many places we can go hiking and have picnics.

School is in Session!!!

School has officially started and I cannot beleive that I have a child in middle school. John was a little nervous the first day, but he hardly every shows it. He did very well and came home excited to tell me all about his first day of sixth grade. I think his favorite subject so far is orchestra. He has been playing the violin for two years now but in elementary school he only had orchestra twice a week. Now he gets to go to orchestra every day.




My sweet girls were so excited for school to start that they were ready almost 30 minutes before it was time for them to leave. Usually I am dragging them out of bed!!




Jess is in the fourth grade and loves her teacher. Mr. Burke was John's teacher and Jess was wishing all summer long that she would get him for a teacher. When she found out that she had Mr. Burke that made her want school to start that much faster. Jess is still my social butterfly and I think that the only reason she likes school is because she gets to be with friends for seven hours a day. As long as she does well in school that is fine with me that she is very social.


Abbi is in the first grade now and feels so grown up beacuse she gets to be at school all day and even gets to eat lunch at school. Abbi has settled right in to school this year which is a big change from last year. Last year I always had to walk her to her door and wait until the bell rang for school to start. This year she does not even care if I am there, in fact most of the time she is gone without even saying goodbye. :( My baby is growing up too fast.

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Family Reunion

I could make this a very long post with all of the pictures that I have, but in an attempt to keep this simple I will just touch on the highlights of our reunion.

This past week we had a family reunion at Camp Rimrock here in South Dakota. We rent out a church camp all to ourselves, which includes a large lodge and 10 or so cabins. The lodge has a large kitchen and part of the fun is planning and cooking the meals together. What else do we do at our reunions?


We sit around and chat with brothers, cousins, and other relatives that we have not seen in, well way too long.




When the temperature rises the best thing to do is...

Play in the water and float down the river!!



Reunions are for...
playing games and making crafts!!!





We end our family reunions with a dance. Everyone always has so much fun making a fool of themselves that no one cares how much of fool they are being.













It was so much fun and I can't wait until we have our next reunion. See you all in 2011!!!

Tooth Fairy

So my baby girls is growing up. She lost her first tooth and was so excited because to her it marked a major mile stone. She could not wait to show everyone who would pay attention long enough for her to tell them and show them. Then just six days later she lost another tooth. An hour later Jess lost one as well. I think that the tooth fairy is going to go broke with all of the teeth that are coming out in this house.


Abbi looks so cute with her two top teeth missing, it cracks me up everytime she smiles at me.

String Retreat

So as most of you know John plays the violin and loves it. He had the opportunity to go to a week long orchestra camp and had so much fun. It would be boring to me to sit in classes learning to play an instrument for hours at a time, but music is something that he loves and is very good at. We took him to the camp early on the morning of the 27th of July and did not see him again until the night of his concert on the 31st. The concerts that we listened to that night amazing, especially considering the kids only had five days to learn them.

No Excuses!!!

So the last time I wrote a post was right after the kids birthday's and now here it is the beginning of August. I do not know where the time has gone. We have had a great summer so far and look forward to this last month before the kids start school the 1st of Sept. In order to keep this post from being a novel I am going to post some pictures highlighting our summer so far. I promise to be better about posting on a more regular basis once things calm down. Oh, wait my life does not know any other pace than fast speed. I guess I am just going to have to be more faithful about keeping my post up to date.

Cakes

Every year for my kids birthday they get to chose a flavor and design for their cake. Here are the cakes that were made this year. No laughing, I do not claim to be professional.

This is Jessica's cake. She chose chocolate cake and wanted a monkey. I used a moneky shaped cake pan which made it easy. The only problem I had was I accidently bought whipped frosting, very difficult to decorate with.

Abbi wanted a yellow cake that was a princess with a purple dress. I made a barbie cake for the first time, and found out just how much time it takes to decorate a dress. It turned out well, at least I thougt so.

John wanted a marble cake and a violin. I am not an artist at all, so I had John draw a violin on the white frosting with a toothpick and then I did the best I could to make it look like a violin.

They were all very happy with their cakes, and that made all the hard work worth it.