Reflections, Reading, and Recital

1. Reflections:

When I was in Elementary School I participated in the PTA Reflections Program. This program encourages children to participate in creating art in their choice of 6 different categories: Music Composition, Dance Choreography, Literature, Photography, Visual Art, and Film.

I remember I entered a story about a school girl who slapped her teacher's face and ran away, (don't remember why, but it is branded in my memory that that was an important part of my story,) and a painting of a puppy. Believe it or not, my story won 1st place at the school level and went on to the district level as well. I won a $50 savings bond at my school level and a $75 savings bond at the district level. So it turned out to be a good experience for me. (Who knew that slapping teachers faces would be received so well?)

Well, this past school year, I encouraged my children to participate in the Hubert Humphrey Reflections Program because it's a good experience. (And also because I got suckered into chairing the event), and Dallin took the challenge. He submitted one of the two Music Composition entries. Dallin entered a song he wrote entitled "The Monster," and was the only one in the pre-K-2nd grade division, so he won 1st place, and therefore his entry was sent on to be judged at the state level.

He felt so special to get his 1st place ribbon at our award ceremony (and thankfully he didn't realize he'd won by default.) So you can imagine his elation when we got a phone call informing us of his winning 1st place in his division for the whole state of New Mexico! He said, "No way, Mom! Does that mean I'm famous!?! Wait 'til Uncle Nathan hears about this!"

Well today, he got a certificate in the mail and a $10 gift card to Walmart, which he is very excited to spend. Way to go, Dallin!

Here is a recording of Dallin playing his composition. (the pictures are just random piano pictures that we have, to illustrate that it's Dallin playing it. Though his age at recording was slightly older than some of the pictures shown.)

It's exceptionally short, so enjoy all 20 seconds of, "The Monster."

2. Reading:

This past week, I finished reading Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine. I suggested it for a book club that I attend. And I think I was the only person in the group who enjoyed it. I thought it was wonderful! The movie stinks, but I loved the book. I felt bad that no one else in the group liked it. In fact I started thinking that I must not have a very sophisticated taste in literature. Truthfully, my favorites tend to be written for children and young adults. I love Shannon Hale's The Goose Girl, and Princess Academy. I love Harry Potter and The Lord of the Rings series. My kids and I are eating up C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series. I enjoyed the Stephanie Meyers Twilight series and the Uglies series by Scott Westerfield. I like to curl up in bed at the end of the day and enjoy a little of the surreal. Nothing too heavy or hard to get through or very thought provoking. I guess I read for escape rather than enlightenment. And ya know what? For now, I like it that way. Maybe I'll want to be enlightened in a different phase of life.

3. Recital:

Today Dallin played in his 2nd piano recital. He played "The Caravan" and "The Magic Man." We were very proud of him, but he mentioned afterward that he could play it waaaay better when he was practicing than when people were listening. I told him, the same thing happens to me. I don't know what it is about performing but that extra pressure somehow trips your brain up. And that is one reason we have recitals, I guess. So our brains can have practice getting over that performance glitch.

Anyway, here is Dallin with his teacher Dillon. (If the piano looks familiar, it's because we had the recital at our house.) Dillon is a phenomenal pianist. I've included two video clips below: Dallin's song is first, (it's about a minute long) and the next one is the song Dillon played for us. Just wait, in a few years, Dallin will be wowing us all with his performances of Chopin too! (p.s. I love how Dallin gets out his books even though he could play both of his songs in his sleep.)

Dillon and his students who performed today:

Christmas Carol Train Tour

Ah, what can I say about this experience?  Here is one of those times when I feel that everyone around me is thinking, "Why does that woman have all those kids?  And why on earth would she go out with all of them in public?"

So I ventured out this morning with my four kids, (ages 7, 5, 3, & 18 mos) to go to the Amtrak station downtown to check out the Christmas Carol Train that is touring the United States promoting the movie starring Jim Carrey that is coming out this November.  (November 6th in case you're interested.)  It was free, and I thought, "Hey, this might be fun."  Besides, Sean loves trains.  

It's a long story, so I'll try to condense it: (And if you don't want to hear it, just skip down to the kids' pictures; those are pretty cute.)

An hour's wait in the hot sun, one sippy cup for all of us to share, no snacks, no strollers allowed, so Hayden is not contained, Hayden gets hot being held in my arms so he keeps squirming to get down.  When I let him down, he bolts out of line, or under the train, or a number of other places where Dallin and Daphne are yelling, "HAYDEN COME BACK!" and I am running after him and saying, excuse me, excuse me.  After waiting in line for 30-40 minutes, Sean tells me he has to go potty, the people in front of me in line kindly offer to have Dallin & Daphne stay with them while I take Sean out of line to go potty.  It takes awhile to get to the bathroom.  While we're in the bathroom, I fill up the empty water bottles I grabbed out of our car in the hopes we might run into a drinking fountain, Sean takes a drink and doesn't screw the lid on properly which I don't realize until my bag is wet and dripping on me, meanwhile, it takes us so long to get back from the bathroom, that the nice people saving my place in line almost had to go to the back of the line since I wasn't there to take my kids through!  But I make it just in time, so thank goodness for that.  (And we'll thank goodness that Sean told me he had to go potty instead of having an accident on the train.)  

The train was cool; Dallin & Daphne liked it, and what I saw of it was cool. (In between struggling with holding Hayden and keeping Sean within arms reach to prevent Dallin & Daphne from freaking out again.)  The train cars held displays about the making of the movie, portraits of cast members, costumes, old Charles Dickens museum stuff, and some special effects stuff.  We got to morph our faces into characters from the movie which the kids thought was funny.  But essentially, it was geared for kids older than Sean & Hayden.

After the train, we went over to this big air conditioned tent so we could watch the sneak preview of the movie on the 3D screen, with our 3D glasses.  But Sean had a breakdown as we were getting ready to get in another line.  I say, "Fine we'll go home."  Dallin & Daphne are so disappointed and are saying, "Sean!  He's always messing up everything!"  (And I think I was guilty of saying something like, "Good grief, I can't take him anywhere!") Both statements felt very true today.  Well, he pulled it together, we got into the theater in short order and saw the preview.  The kids liked it, and the movie looks pretty cool.

Then we went and got some gelato at Sweet Berry which is right by the Amtrak station.  It was pricey so I got two for us to share instead of one for everyone.  So of course they were squabbling about whether the ice cream was closer to Dallin or Daphne, and Sean had another breakdown when the ice cream was gone, and I had had enough adventure for one day!

To top it all off, I didn't even bring the camera, so I have no proof that I actually took everybody out on that family bonding experience.  But, Dallin & Daphne saved the day with some original illustrations of our experience, and happily, I think it was mostly positive, (if a little stressful,) from their perspective.

This is Daphne's

She drew a picture of us getting our 3D glasses for the movie in the bottom right corner, the train across the top, and the bottom left corner is us sharing our ice cream.  I'm glad that we are all smiling in her pictures.  If I drew a picture we wouldn't all be smiling.

The next two are Dallin's

Above, we are getting our 3D glasses for the movie.

Below, it's us waiting in line by the Christmas Carol Train, and you can see the gelato shop behind it-- it has the ice cream signs sticking out from it.  (spelled: ickrem)  Again, I'm pleased to point out that in Dallin's pictures we are all smiling!  So maybe it won't be such a bad memory for them.  :)  I should have them illustrate all our adventures.

Dragons

I was talking to my friend, Adrianne, one day and she mentioned that she tries to do a couple of themes with her kids over the summer. "Themes?" I asked, "What do you mean?" She said they pick a theme like pirates, or fairies, and they read books, make crafts and treats, and maybe watch a movie all related to their theme. I thought that sounded pretty fun, but a lot of work.  Adrianne is pretty amazing.  So last week was our first week out of school, and I took everybody to the library. On a whim, at the library I thought, maybe we'll try a theme. It ended up being Dragons.

We checked out "A Friend for Dragon" by Dav Pilkey, "There's NO Such Thing as a Dragon" by Jack Kent (this one was pretty cute,) and "The Knight and the Dragon" by Tomie dePaola (which we've read before, but it's always a favorite.)

I printed a bunch of dragon coloring pages off the internet and the kids colored them, cut them out and made stick puppets out of them. We also worked on making a homemade Dragon pinata. That was pretty adventuresome of me, I thought, since I really don't have a clue on how you make one. 

(To see the finished product, keep scrolling down.)  Once we'd made the pinata, we had to throw a party because that's what pinata's are for, right?

So the kids made dragon party invitations, and I told them they could each choose a family to invite to share the party.  (Since this was kind of spur of the moment, I wasn't sure exactly what we'd even do at a dragon party.) 

Well, the kids ended up taking the invitations to our ward's Park Day, and anybody who was at the park got an invitation.  Which is fine--just a little bigger than I'd originally thought.  So we had an amazing Dragon Party with over 20 kids here!  Thank goodness it was actually fun.

In case you're wondering, here's what you do at a Dragon party:

1. Make dragon masks

2. Do a "Dragon Warrior" Obstacle Course: Run with high knees through the rungs of a ladder laying down on the ground, throw a beanbag through the tire swing, jump over a wading pool filled with water, army crawl under a PVC pipe, and kung-fu kick a sleeping bag suspended from the upstairs balcony.  When the Obstacle Course is complete, you receive your Dragon scroll which tells you which team you're on for the Dragon skits.

3. Each team gets 5 minutes to come up with a Dragon skit, and then we watch them all.  They were GREAT!

4. We also did these dragon boat races in the wading pool.  We made "dragon" boats out of water bottles cut in half and each team had to blow theirs across the pool--first one across won. (I was improvising, okay?--honestly, I didn't find very many dragon party ideas on the internet.)  I didn't ask the kids what their favorite part was, but I suspect it was the pinata.

5. Break open the pinata.  Here it is.  Didn't look much like a Dragon--more like a crocodile with wings.  

Still, it held up for an entire round and a half before they finally got the candy out of it.

All in all, more successful than I thought it would be, and loads of fun.  

We're so glad we got to have so many friends share it with us! 

And I can't wait to do another theme . . . next summer.  :) 

Land of the Free Because of the Brave

Each time we have a National Holiday when flags are flown, we count how many flags we see flying in our neighborhood as we drive around..  Until recently, we didn't have a flag so I always felt a little left out.  But this year in anticipation of Memorial Day, we finally got a flag, so now we can add ourselves to the numbers!  

I have often been guilty of forgetting the reason we celebrate Memorial Day and just revel in the day off without a care except what shall we BBQ?  But this year, I gave a lot of thought to the brave men and women who have given their lives to defend our country's freedom.  I am grateful for their courage, valor, and sacrifice for this great nation.  I really am proud to be an American and to live in this land of liberty and opportunity.  

Of course, we celebrated the day with a couple of BBQ's.  Here is one we went to at our friends, the Breinholts.  At this one all the kids made hats and things out of newspaper and had flags and noisemakers and went on parade around the cul-de-sac.  It was AWESOME!

Marching in the parade

Below is our random assault on one of their neighbors.  (I hope they are good friends with these guys.)  The kids popped these loud popper things that I guess were the cannons and blew their horns and yelled, all the while Chuck (who happens to be our bishop) was playing "Mary Had Little Lamb" on his wooden fife.  Or flute, or whatever it was.  I think that might have been the best part.  The neighbors said we'd better watch out because they retaliate with water guns.  But they must have had a change of heart because no counter-attack was made.  It was a super time!  Thanks for all the fun, guys!

End-of-School Picnics

Our internet has been sketchy lately, so I am behind in my posts.  Also, we're really busy and in the midst of Children's Music Theater, so I may not get my act together for awhile, but here are some updates.

This is the last Wednesday of school.  Dallin's class had a picnic at the neighboring park and Daphne had a little performance at the school with all the kindergartners at the same time.  So I had to split my time between the two.  I went to Dallin's for a bit and then headed over to the school to watch Daphne's performance.  

Dallin with his funny friend "McKeaver"

Dallin & his teacher Mrs. Altweis.  He just loved her!

Daphne getting ready to sing

Daphne and her teachers Mrs. Shoemaker, and Mrs. Hamlet

They are such a great team, and Daphne had a great first year of school with them.

Here they are singing this funny "Singin' in the Rain" song. 

Mrs. Pinkston the music teacher was great with these guys.  They sang five songs and sang the words very clearly and did cute actions.  Dallin & Daphne would both teach me songs that they'd learned from Mrs. Pinkston, when they got home, so I could tell they really enjoyed Music Time.

Here's a video clip of Daphne's performance--it's really short because Hayden kept running amuck and I had to stop and catch him.

I can't believe the school year is over already!  I'm willing to bet that time accelerates.  If I blink I'll probably miss our whole summer!  I am glad to have the kids home.  It's fun to just play and be together during the days.  Sean & Hayden love having Dallin and Daphne home too!

I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you.

That's what Arthur says to me sometimes when I'm asking too many questions about his work.  

Just kidding.
But you're reading now, aren't you? 

Truthfully, he is so brilliant, that I don't really understand most of what he does and therefore don't even know what kind of questions to ask to elicit that response.  But he does have a security clearance and works behind a security clearance gate, and can't even get onto the base with out his special photo I.D. badge, and a retinal scan.  (Okay, not the retinal scan.)

So we all felt pretty special going to the Labs with him this past weekend for "Family Day at Sandia National Laboratories."  We all got special "badges," except Hayden.  The lady passing out the special badges said he probably didn't need one; she doubted he was a spy.  (Wahaha . . . Fooled her!)  

There was a full-blown wind storm going on that day, so walking to the various buildings was tiresome, and I have a new understanding of the good wish, "May the wind be ever at your back."  It really makes a difference!

Since the places we visited were all behind the security gates, this is the only place we were allowed a camera, and thus the only picture from our adventure.  Take note of our special security badges.  :)

We had a great time visiting Arthur's work place, and for the first time in the six years he's worked there, I got to see his office, and look at the stuff he works on.  We even put on special lab jackets to keep the static electricity down.  The kids favorite part was looking at stuff under the microscope.  (We got a close up look of Hayden's pacifer . . . hmm, don't think we really wanted to see that, actually.)  Arthur took us to see the rockets that he helped design the the flight computers for and we watched a video of one of them being launched.

There was tons of other stuff that we didn't get around to;  you really could spend all day there, if you weren't towing four little ones along.   Anyway, fun times, but here's to less wind for next time!