And so school begins...

Alia on the first day of school.  No seminary yet.

 Elena on the first day.  She's our earliest (non-seminary) bus rider.

 Tanner on the first day.  He's up early enough to sometimes get his clarinet practiced before school!

March Band Concerts

Alia has switched from trumpet to french horn and has a new seat in the band....on the right!  Once the band sits down, though, she is hard to see!  She had a couple of solos and did fine!

Tanner performs with the middle school beginning band and does a good job with his clarinet!

Busy, Busy...birthdays, blues, programs

Elena had a music program at school.  She got to play the bells as well as sing and play a shaker.

Tanner had a birthday!  He requested all sorts of yummy foods for dinner--macaroni and cheese, meat balls, pizza...and then he was sick!  Poor kid!  We had to drag him out of bed to enjoy his birthday meal!  He got better quickly and had leftovers the next day, which he said tasted much better than the few things he ate previously!  

Happy Birthday!

Getting in on the fun

Our neighbor works at Tanner's school.  The staff responded to the ALS ice bucket challenge, and Sherri asked Tanner to do the honors of dumping the bucket on her.  I love the first photo of the water cascading around her and her reaction in the second photo is amazing!  And, do you think Tanner enjoyed this?  Yup!  Check out the smile on his face in both photos!  Not to mention the fact that he talked about it at dinner and made us look up the youtube video the next morning!

Happy Birthday, Handsome!

This handsome boy came bouncing downstairs today.  It's his birthday.  He's excited!  It's the first time in a long while that his birthday has come on a Saturday.  He celebrated by having tons of screen time, eating pizza, chocolate cake, and ice cream.  He spent extra time yesterday getting ready for today--piano practice, homework, bedroom tidying...all done on Friday!

Happy Birthday, Handsome!

New School Year

It has begun...

Three children, three schools this year again. The new thing is that we have three bus riders.  Elena was a little nervous the first day, but things have gone just fine.

Here's to a good year!

Birthday Boy

 Tanner turned 10 this month.  He was so excited about his birthday this year!  At school the dancing, singing, mechanical hamster got placed on his desk and it sang "Happy Birthday" to him.  Then the live rat (in a bucket--cage cleaning time) got to hang out on his desk and it pooped while there...and that was really funny for some reason!  Must be 10 year old boy humor, encouraged by his oft-times sophomoric Mom and Dad.

Dinner was pizza and macaroni & cheese.  Alia decorated the cake.   Grandma & Grandpa P. joined us for dessert.  It was a good day!

 The cake was designed by Tanner and Alia, but decorated by Alia.  We purchased some gel tints for cake decorating--wow! do they make intense colors!  So much better than regular food coloring!

Happy Birthday, Handsome! 

Christmastime--candy houses

 This year was a challenge.  Mom and Dad are trying very hard to meet their goals for loosing weight.  But, we liked our new tradition of making graham cracker houses and decorating them with candy.  What to do, what to do?

We decided to buy frosting dyes (not just our regular food coloring ones that we use for our cookie icing) and just a few candies and make most of our decorations from frosting.

House construction went well.  The buttercream frosting we used set up quickly as construction cement.  Coloring the frosting was a blast--the new colors are wonderfully vibrant!  And then the decorating began!

Chimneys and pathways were created.

Trees and team logos (not necessarily connected) came into being!

Much icing was used!






Here are some of the final creations:

This is a nativity scene by Alia.

This beautifully edged path way and home was made by Elena.






Tanner also has a nativity display with Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus just to the right of his tootsie roll pathway.
The kids (and grownups) enjoyed making and eating their creations.  We made them on Christmas Eve.  We ate them until after lunch on Christmas day.  Now all that is left is a pile of foil wrapped cardboard! 

Artists!

Tanner and Elena both had art work on display at the Carnegie Museum this week!

Tanner's golden collection is all "junk" (he's pointing to the piece by his group).  Elena's art teacher pointed out that she spent a great deal of care focusing on her dragon.

Tanner had swimming lessons with his elementary school class last week. He's on the end in the red & orange trunks.












Unfortunately, my photos are mostly of the back of his head.

Here he is working on his arm strokes.




















Here he is paying attention to his teacher.
















And, whew! A face! Here he is getting situated on the wall for the next activity.

His group worked on swimming like dolphins (face in the water) and various arm strokes. He did great!

Good work, handsome fish!

Thanks to all who came for Tanner's baptism.

I am often amazed to watch my children grow. Sometimes it seems that they will always struggle with x, y, or z.

And then they grow. And x, y, or z are no longer challenges. Q, P, and T come and are difficult, but x, y, & z are done.

Tanner has grown this last year. His patience has increased. His sense of responsibility has increased. He is amazing!

We've had another birthday. Tanner chose a "sprinkles" cake (white cake with sprinkles) with chocolate frosting, with sprinkles. It was yummy!


















The Sunday after the birthday we had a visitor who brought lots of "hand-me-over" gifts. Thank you, Aunt Marilyn!

New Year celebrations at our house are low key. We stayed up late working on a puzzle (the kids were in bed around 9:30pm; the 'dults were in bed around 11pm). Then we got up and made rolls, worked on the puzzle, ate yummy buffet food, and relaxed.















Before the end of the day, the puzzle was done, the food was eaten, and the football game lost. Ahh. New Year's day!

May this New Year be one of Joy for you and yours!

:)

It's Christmas time! The kids all helped decorate the tree. We parents did the traditional, "You have too many balls in that one spot...spread them out!" comments, but only once or twice. The kids enjoy rediscovering the ornaments they have made over the years and putting them on the tree.








Another Christmas tradition: frosted cookies--YUMM! This year none of the kids needed direct parental supervision. Granted, Elena's cookies had more sugary sprinkles than anyone else's, but she enjoyed the art/process!


Merry Christmas!

It used to be that we lived in a condo where all the leaves were vacuumed up by the lawn care company. Back then, we would pack the kids and rakes in the car and drive to a local park to rake leaves into a pile so it felt like fall.

Now, the leaves fall and we rake them at home. One tree's leaves fall much earlier than the others and the kids have already spent a handful of hours raking the leaves into play spaces. Now the big maples are starting to loose their leaves. Dad went out and helped make this big pile. Later on, the kids and Dad all put their hoods up and crawled into the pile. :)

Look who won the pumpkin jar!!!

There was a "guess the number of pumpkin candies in the jar" game at the Halloween party we went to on Friday. We got a call on Saturday to let us know that Elena was the winner (she guessed 200 pumpkins)! Congratulations, Elena! She loves these candy pumpkins!


Alia's class is swimming this week. Elena & Mom got to watch her on Monday. She is growing more fish-like every year! Hooray for swimmer Alia! (She's on the far left in the photo.)

Halloween came early at our house. Pumpkins were carved on Monday. Costumes were donned on Friday. Alia was a medival princess, Tanner was Harry Potter, and Elena was Ginny Weasley. We had a party where Alia got to tell one of the "spooky stories". Saturday was our local trick or treating night and I went out with the kids while Martin manned the door at home.

First Day of the 2010-2011 School Year.

Here's the traditional pose in front of the door. We took some other, more silly shots, of them walking out the door and in the garden, but this is the best one to see their faces!


The whole family joined the kids at the bus stop today. Martin will be the one regularly on bus stop duty for our family (we ran into some minor trouble last year and discovered that the presence of an adult helped significantly). This year we were pleased to note there were three new kids at the bus stop! It was fun to see all five kids start talking with each other and making friends.

Tanner went to a birthday party with a Star Wars theme. In fact all the kids were invited to bring their own light sabers.

Tanner went a step further. He requested that we make "battle lightsabers" that you can use to duel as his gift for his friend.

We priced the materials and discovered, "why make two for two dollars when you can make four for two-forty".

So, now we own a pair of dueling light sabers. The photo with the boys is staged. The photo with Alia is live.

Happy Home Haircuts

One needed his cut.
One wanted hers cut for school.
One wanted hers cut like her big sister's (not to mention her friend just got a trim too!).

Any guesses as to who is who?