First Trumpet Concert Ever!

Max's first trumpet concert ever.  The piece is called "Popcorn Prelude." 

I'm going to be posting more here while we're in Denmark.  Hopefully, I can give you all a little slice of Copenhagen life!

Max's birthday!

 Max had a quiet birthday, with one good buddy over for dinner and cake.  Here he displays a Nanoblock penguin building set....he loves penguins in case you don't know!

 I predict there will be many more Lego sets of this type in his near future.

 Arrrrrrgh!!  Something tells me maybe cousin V wanted Max to have this pirate getup??

 Mark can make anything out of cake....even when it's not cake!  Ice cream Lego men.

Max and his good buddy H.  It was a nice, Max-paced birthday.  Tomorrow we'll go see The Hobbit as another part of the birthday celebration.  We also took a cake to the tae kwon do holiday party, and everyone sang to him there.

First movie trailer

The two Ms amused themselves mightily making this trailer.  One of Maggie's first movies on her new school Macbook!

Brown Belt!

Max earned his brown belt in tae kwon do last week.  He was very proud (as he should be).  I am continually impressed by his memory in tkd.  I always ask him to help me with the forms because he remembers them all!  Our instructor, Mr. Gibson, said some very nice things to Max (as he always does) when he was tying on his new belt.  He told Max that he was very impressed with his seriousness and focus, and that Max would be successful in whatever he wanted to try with those skills.  Mr. Gibson also told Max it would be cool if he waited for Maggie and I to catch up, and we all tested for our temporary black belts together.  I kinda think it would be cool for Max to be the first in the family to be a black belt!! 

Project Share

Max had to do a research project for his ELP class (Extended Learning or something like that), and he chose Machu Picchu.  Now I want to go there!  He had to give an oral presentation in front of several other students at the regional Project Share.  He did a great job!  I was so impressed!  He actually looked people in the eye, and he fielded a few questions.  Plus he had a good time at the learning sessions he chose: robots, electricity, and fish printing.  Nice job, Max!

Andantino

From M4's violin recital yesterday.  His teacher is accompanying him.  He did a great job!! I am so proud of his progress...sometimes it's hard to tell from practice how he's doing, so to hear him at recital in comparison to the other kids is fun.  Many of the other kids are much more advanced, so I hope it's inspiring him to see his future!

M3 also ran her first 5K with dad yesterday.  Of course, they did it at some pace I could not maintain for three miles.  She's thinking about running cross-country next year. 

Also, I signed up for a 20K June 2.  It will be my 43rd birthday present to myself.

Don't Step In

From M4's concert.  They did a musical about bullying.  M4 has decided he's a nerd, by the way, because "nerds are smart."  That's my boy!

Another one bites the dust...

Well, the boy has now officially entered the ranks of the myopic.  These are his new glasses.  It's a bad pic, but they are cute and lime green!  And he is cute in them!  Plus he was thrilled to be able to see things that are far away.  The other good news is that his weird uneven pupil problem seems stable.  I'll try to play catch up a bit on this here blog with some of the activities that are keeping us so busy!  But this is a start anyway.

Now he's 9...

It's hard to believe, but M4 has turned nine.  His last year of single digits.  He was very keen on indoor-glow-in-the-dark-mini-golf.  Fortunately, Des Moines has such a place.  It also has a variety of lame arcade games and some appropriately greasy pizza.  (Just an aside, but what happened to cool video games?  Are they all on Xbox and Wii, etc.?  B/c there were pretty much only driving games and shooting games at this place.  Where was Galaga for crying out loud??  What's that you say?  Galaga is not a cool video game?  Oh....OK.)  But the glow-in-the-dark mini-golf was really cool, and we had a great time! 

 

 The cake maker worked his magic again...you'll note that the dinosaurs are playing golf.  As he himself suggested, we really need an album of Mark's cakes.  He has made so many amazing cakes!

 Tyrannosaurus attacks!

 But also is shown some love.

The gorilla was cool, too!

The crew...M4's best buds.

Violin recital!

Yesterday, Nov. 5.

Haircut!

Well, M4 had a bit of a conundrum: he wanted to grow his hair long to wear in a ponytail braid like his best bud (whose hair has never been cut since he was born).  But once M4's hair got long enough to at least put back in the ponytail, he didn't want to do it because he was afraid people would make fun of him.  :-(  We talked about it a bit, and eventually I told him he needed to make a decision: would he go ahead with the ponytail or would he get his hair cut?  Because it was constantly in his eyes (he had to get reading glasses recently...I don't know if the hair had anything to do with it?).  So we looked at some surfer dude pictures on the Google, and he agreed (and even seemed excited) to get his hair cut in a long shorter cut.

Unfortunately the barber, god bless him, did not copy the picture we brought too well, and he cut it too short.  M4 was pretty upset all afternoon.  But after several conversations about how his hair grows quickly, and after a large dinner, he seemed to perk up quite a bit.  Phew!  It is at least nice for me to be able to see his sweet face better.

What would you do with a million dollars?

"If I made a million dollers I spend it on a bunch of kittens or cats!  I love cats so that's why I would spend it on kittens.  Well I would problably use it on kitty treats.  I would maybe would spend it on 4 kitty beds.  It dosent relly matter what I would spend it on.  So relly anything would be fine for me." - M4

Spring Concerts

This makes me laugh. M4 is in the blue vest.



(I posted this before, but Blogger has been having some "issues" I think. ARgh!)

You never know...

...what sort of fun could be had with an oddly-shaped box. (P.S. He has had his hair trimmed since this photo.)
(M4...not the cat.)

Hardship...

M4 so hates shopping for clothes that he informed me the other day, while being subjected to trying on pants, that he doesn't want to buy any clothes, he only wants to "make them himself." Well, I guess he would never have to leave the house then!

Birthday boy!

M4's birthday was last Friday, and we had Giza in house! Well, at least here are the mummies and their buddies:
There were definite opinions on who wanted to be a wrapper and who wanted to be a wrapee. The procedure:

Of course, cakemaster Mark came up with a beautiful pyramid cake with hieroglyphics and all! He really is multi-talented.Junior archeologists excavating a site filled with Egyptian artifacts.

A good time was had by all. Really, it was a whole birthday weekend made extra special by Grandma and Grandpa's visit. We ate cake all weekend! Woot!

New endeavor...

M4 asked about violin lessons somewhat out of the blue. So of course I wanted to take advantage of his interest! He has only had two lessons so far, but he looks kinda cute with a quarter size violin:
The tae kwon do is not new, but I don't know if I've posted any pictures? And this was a good flying side kick I caught. Both Ms have been taking for a while. They have their yellow belts now. I'm tempted to join them!

Super Hippie

M4 is currently writing a comic strip about a character named Super Hippie. He is a blue hamster who packs a magic wand and a very large gun. In his headband.

I don't know why...

...I love this photo so much. I just do! M3, cousin V, and M4 in Cali.

Taste of Freedom!

Yay!! M4 has finally conquered his fears and started riding his bike without training wheels!! He has gone round the block several times without stopping and has gotten only a few scrapes. He is very determined. Not only is it freedom for him, but it is freedom for me!! He was getting darn heavy on the Trail-A-Bike!