Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Easter

Our Easter Bunny likes to come to our house and have a little fun. He hides clues all over the house and has the kids go from clue to clue to find eggs. Eventually the clues lead them to their hidden Easter baskets. The kids know not to go downstairs when they wake up, they have to wait for everyone to get up first. The Easter Bunny tapes a note on the front door and that's also where the first clue is. Some of the clues this year led the kids to the freezer, to Kristin's candy machine, Zach's dresser, outside on the deck...
The last clue before finding their Easter baskets was hidden in the dining room. Along with each clue were 4 eggs with a treat inside. The eggs in the dining room just so happened to be golden in color so the Easter Bunny hid them on the chandelier. Lauren eventually found them after much prompting. Can you see them up there?
The kids found their baskets hidden in our bathroom. I think the Easter Bunny is beginning to have a hard time finding new places to hide the baskets! So here's the crew with their baskets plus their bag of eggs.
Now the fun begins. Kristin had a jelly bean pooping chicken in her basket. Plus potty putty. Yep, I know, sounds strange but that is so Kristin.
I didn't post pictures but they all got a Wii game and a DVD. Zachary got a bunch of Cars things and a stuffed Tigger. Lauren's DVD was Twilight, she'd been wanting that. Megan got Bendaroos, something she'd been wanting since before Christmas. Even Paul and I got a small basket. Way to go Easter Bunny!

We barely had enough time to get ready for church. The Easter Bunny had way too many clues this year and it took longer than I thought. But we managed to get everyone dressed and here's the girls after church at my parents house.
Megan wore the dress that Grandmom and PopPop gave her for her birthday. I very luckily found the same dress for Kristin, there was only one left and it just happened to be her size. On Good Friday I took Lauren to the mall and literally within 30 minutes found the dress for her. So I really got lucky with them coordinating this year. It's so hard to do that the older they get. I just put Zach in a suit, he didn't necessarily coordinate but he's a boy so it didn't matter. Here's all of them at Grandmom and PopPop's house.
So we had a very busy day but it was a lot of fun. On a side note, at church I found out that I had won the jelly bean guess contest from the Easter egg hunt the day before. I had guessed 897 jelly beans and there were 895 in the jar. Wow! I never win anything so I was super excited. Here's what I won:
It's a big ceramic teapot with tulips inside, a yellow bunny and though it's not pictured there were lots of different chocolate candies surrounding it. Plus I got to keep the jelly beans. Not sure what I'm going to do with that teapot, it's cute, I guess eventually I'll plant something in it. If anyone needs a giant teacup in the meantime let me know, I've got one you can borrow!

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Another egg hunt

This one was at our church today at 2:00. Even though this one took place inside because it was raining it was probably the best one out of all of them. There were 2 crafts and a game the kids were kept busy with. Plus there was face painting and a visit from the Easter Bunny, not to mention the egg hunts. For the egg hunts they had placed a tarp in the nursery and then covered it with hay and on top of the hay laid a ton of colorful eggs. The kids were in egg heaven with each of them easily filling their baskets to overflowing. Now that's an egg hunt!

Here's one of the crafts. They made a little basket by using a cup and pipe cleaner then filled it with colorful grass and placed a peep on top.

Here's Zach getting his bunny face painted on.
Zach during the egg hunt. He eventually got tired of putting his eggs in the basket and started opening them right there. There were more than enough to go around.
Finally a picture of all the kids posing with the Easter Bunny.

Friday, April 10, 2009

Friday night fun

Since Easter will be here soon I figured we'd better dye our eggs tonight. So after dinner Paul set up all the different colored dye and we let the kids decorate their eggs.





I had hard boiled 31 eggs so we each had 5 to decorate. I think I ended up decorating 2 of mine because Zach just wanted to keep going and going and going. I finally had to draw the line, the girls were taking their time and he just made his eggs one color so his didn't take as long. He didn't want to see them doing something when he wasn't. I'm really surprised that nothing got spilled, even Zach was careful!

So now we have a whole bunch of colorful eggs. Here's one that Paul made, he was very proud of it!

We no sooner get done decorating them when Megan and Kristin are both asking when they could eat them. Can we just enjoy them for a day or two? I hardly ever hard boil eggs (except at Easter) so I guess they got a little excited.

Monday, April 6, 2009

More Weekend Activities

Williamsburg
Last week Lauren went to Williamsburg for 3 days/2 nights with her school. I kept meaning to ask her if she took any other pictures with her cell phone before posting this but oh well. I know she didn't take a camera with her and they weren't supposed to use their cell phones on the tours. Here's the one picture she sent me while she was there:
This was taken in the hotel room on their first night there. They dressed up and went to a nice dinner then were taken to a dance where they learned how they danced in Colonial times.

On the way to Williamsburg they had to go over the Chesapeake Bay Bridge Tunnel. I got lots of text messages as she was going over it, she didn't like it! I heard from her a lot on the first day, a little on the second day, and hardly at all on the third day. They did have a really busy schedule with lots of tours. Hopefully she learned something.

Our Saturday Night Fun
First Paul goes out and buys some wine for us, our wine rack was looking a little skimpy. While at the store he taste tested one particular bottle that was a little higher priced then what he normally would spend but he decided to get it anyway. So with a nice bottle of wine in the house I went out and got us some filet mignon for him to grill and we had a nice dinner at home. But the night gets better...

Megan was planning to do a fashion show that evening and was selling tickets. Paul splurged and got him and I the "good" seats for 50 cents each. The good seats were the recliners in the family room. For 25 cents we could have sat in one of the kitchen chairs! Lauren wasn't home yet (she was in Dover for the Science Olympiad), Kristin was the announcer and Zach was free. See what a couple of 40-year-olds with 4 kids do on a Saturday night? We had a fabulous dinner and had the best seats in the house at the fashion show. Doesn't get much better than that right? :)

Of course Megan had a ball doing it too. Here she is strutting her stuff:

How could a fashion show end without a little surprise? These are the pictures I'm going to keep and show to his wife and kids someday!

2nd Soccer Game of the Season
Lauren had another away game yesterday, this one was all the way down by the beach, a little over 2 hours away. Her team totally dominated and ended up winning 3-0. They should have won by a lot more, they had tons of scoring chances. Here's Lauren fighting for the ball:
Two games down, four to go. I can't believe how well the her team is playing this spring. They're talking to each other, passing the ball and just working really well together as a team. Huge difference from the fall season! Hope they keep this up.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Lots of egg hunts!

We went two egg hunts today.

The first was at a local church where Kristin and Megan went to preschool, the same church that playzone is located in. That one was from 12:00 - 2:00 and they had crafts, a puppet show, lunch and then finally the egg hunt. Here's Kristin helping Zach make a craft:
And here's Zach outside during the egg hunt. He loved it. Lots and lots of kid his age there.

Megan and Kristin were both in different age groups so they started on their own and when Zach was done I met up with them while Paul emptied all of Zach's eggs. Megan's group had a fair amount of kids but Kristin's group only had about 6. Lucky for her, she could get more eggs! She really did get lucky by finding a prize egg, second place.
Her second place prize was a bag with a huge thing of Nerds in it and a $10 gift card to Border's. Wow! Perfect for her.

Our second egg hunt was the one in the neighborhood and that one was at 4:00. This time Megan and Kristin were together in a group and Zach was in the baby one (ages 2 and under). It was Megan's turn to win a prize this time. She had a golden ticket inside one of her eggs and didn't even know it until Paul pointed it out. She picked out this Spongebob basket for her prize, very appropriate for her.
It was nice that both girls won something. Zach just enjoyed putting the eggs in his basket and opening them up. He doesn't know any better yet!
Before leaving we had to get the kids pictures taken with the Easter Bunny.
Thankfully it was a nice day, a little windy, but at least it was sunny.

Friday, April 3, 2009

Rainy Day Fun

For some reason today Zach didn't want to play with any of his usual toys. It was a challenge for me keep coming up with something new to do. We first did a craft. I had found in the basement these little plastic butterfly and tulip cut outs. I first thought about gluing them to paper but figured that would just be a mess plus frustrating to Zach, I'm sure they would all get stuck to his fingers. So instead I had him put them on the sticky side of contact paper. He actually seemed to enjoy this art project. When he was done I just put another piece of contact paper on top and then made a frame out of construction paper. It's now hanging on our door.
When that was done he was still antsy so we made a fort in the living room. I brought the kitchen chairs into the family room and grabbed a sheet and voila! Instant fort. I put a pillow under it hoping he would lay there and watch a little tv to give me a break but no that was not to be. His favorite thing was standing under it and pulling the sheet down. After the third time I put it back up I told him the next time it came down that was it. Ten seconds later it was down. That was it for the fort.
Oh, he did take a picture of me (well sort of) sitting by the fort. His first picture! What was I thinking? Now he's going to want to take pictures all the time.

Here's my little monster boy. What a demanding little thing he was today. We did end up having a lot of fun though. We also colored in a coloring book, he doesn't really like to color much, and bounced and kicked a ball back and forth, that he loved.

See how long his hair is in the above picture? I don't have a really good picture of his shaggy hair, especially the back, but it was getting long. I can't even remember when his last haircut was, now that's bad! When Paul called me to tell me he was leaving work and was going to stop to get his (that is Paul's) hair cut I asked him if I could meet him somewhere so he could get Zach's cut too. So I met Paul down the street from the barbershop and Zach finally got a good hair cut. I'll have to post pictures later, the ones I took of him came out kind of dark. Well he was sitting in front of a dark background when I took them and his hair just kind of blends in with it. He looks soooo much better! When Paul brought him home and Zach came running through the door I swear he looked older. My baby's growing up!

Thursday, April 2, 2009

Our morning surprise

Or maybe I should say scare! The morning started out like any other school morning. Lauren went outside to wait for her bus while I stayed inside waiting for her bus. About a minute before the bus came Lauren came rushing in the door, slammed it shut and yelled that there was a weasel trying to get her. I was like "what?" Sure enough I open the door a crack and there's an animal sitting on the step staring at me. It totally freaked me out.

"Paul, minor emergency, a weasel looking thing is trying to get your daughter!" It seemed to take forever for him to get downstairs, in the meantime Lauren missed her bus, it came during all the initial confusion. The problem now was that my car was in the garage where this thing was that was chasing Lauren around. Lauren was not interested in seeing it again so she stayed inside. Paul first grabbed a baseball bat from the basement and guess what I grabbed? My camera. :) We (Paul first of course) went out the front door and around to the garage and yep, there it was. Though I'm not that familiar with them it looked to me to be a ferret.


My car was the farthest away from it so as the ferret was checking out the kids toys along the wall I made a mad dash to get in my car. After backing it out of the garage and driving to the end of the driveway I motioned for Lauren to come out of the house. I drove her to school and when I came back Paul still hadn't gotten it out of the garage. He came up with the idea of trying to get it in the cat carrier that I have. The ferret seemed to like one of the soft bats that the kids have so Paul took that (by now he had switched a broom for the baseball bat) and lured the ferret into the carrier with it. With the help of the broom the ferret was caged!

Now what the heck to do with a caged ferret? The local vets were of no help and the SPCA didn't want it. They did give me the number to Ferret Rescue though. Wow, I never would have thought there was such a place. The woman who answered was so helpful and nice. What ended up happening was that I was put in touch with a woman that lives just a few miles from me. She was willing to come pick the ferret up at my house but since I had an errand to do that was taking me right by where she lived I offered to drop it off to her.

So Zach and I dropped off our new little friend. That woman just kept thanking me for bringing it to her. She took the ferret out of my carrier and said that she thought it was probably less than a year old and it had champagne coloring, apparently that's a good color for ferrets. With her holding it it did look cute, didn't look so cute this morning in the garage! If someone in the neighborhood posts that they lost a ferret I'll let them know where it is, the person at Ferret Rescue didn't think that would happen though. She said lots of people will get a ferret and when they realize how much work they are they conveniently "lose" them. So sad. At least it's at a good home right now.

So there you go, our exciting ferret story. Never a dull moment around this house!

Monday, March 30, 2009

The Weekend is Over!

I made it, I survived. It was an extremely long weekend but now the best thing is it's over. When Zach takes a nap today, I'm taking one too!

Saturday
Lauren's team played at 8:30, 11:00 and 5:15. She had to be at the field by 7:45 so that was the first of the early mornings. We had originally planned to all go as a family and stay for the first 2 games and come home between the 2nd and 3rd games. But that all changed when Paul got up sick very early (1:00 am!) Saturday morning. He had some kind of stomach bug I guess, it didn't last long but no way was he going to be able to go spend a day at a soccer field! So after being awake from 1:00 on I took Lauren to her games by myself.

The first game was excellent, the girls played great and had probably a dozen scoring chances. The problem was the goalie from the other team was just so darned good. It was amazing some of the saves she made. So that game ended with a score of 0-0. Okay, a tie, better than losing right?

The 11:00 game was also a good game to watch, lots of excitement, the girls were playing great. They were playing a really good team from New Jersey and at the half they were tied 3-3. Unfortunately with 5 minutes to go in the game the other team scored not once, but twice to end with a 3-5 score, a loss for Lauren's team. Still everyone was okay with that since the other team was a much better team and Lauren's team didn't do that bad.

Here are a few of the pictures from the second game:

Lauren's teammate staying out of the way of a ball she kicked.

We had a nice break between the 2nd and 3rd games, almost too long. I once again headed back to the field and this time she was on the turf field. They won that game with a score of 5-1, another good game to watch.
The weather that day started out raining but it stopped before her first game. Very dreary looking all day though and lots of mud everywhere. I think we did luck out though with the weather, it could have been worse, it could have been like Sunday...

Sunday
It poured overnight so now it was even more muddy than before plus there was a drizzle/mist most of the morning. I saw a couple of showers off and on but it didn't bother us since we were under a pavilion. I wouldn't have wanted to play in that though, nor be a spectator. It did eventually warm up and get sunny though.

Today was our day to do our volunteering. In this tournament the girls played on Saturday and the boys played on Sunday. So basically the boys teams cover the girls day and the girls take over everything on the boys day. Lauren and I were scheduled to work the concession stand at the field closest to our house from 7:00 - 2:00. We got there right at 7:00, helped set up and then watched as everyone began arriving. Lauren was given the job of pouring the coffee and hot chocolate so she was quite busy first thing in the morning. I didn't do much until the grill got started around 10:00, my job was to take the hamburgers and hot dogs off the grill, wrap them, and then hand them off. I will tell you that from 10:30 to about 1:30 the time flew! Since they were so busy I decided that at 2:00 I would take Lauren and a couple of her friends back to the house to get changed for the game and then come back to help out some more. The girls then were carpooled to the game, I stayed and helped till the end and was home by 5:00.

I told Lauren to call me when her game ended and guess what? She scored the first goal of the game! She hasn't scored in years, of course it's hard to score if you're on defense most of the time. They've just recently begun putting her back to being a forward. (She used to play forward years ago.)She got the goal after another one of her teammates took a shot and it hit the crossbar, Lauren got the rebound. They ended up winning 2-0 against a team of 16-year-olds. They're playing up this year, in the senior division.

So that was a good ending to the day and great start to the season. Hope they keep up the winning streak!

Friday, March 27, 2009

Spring is Here!

Well at least inside my house after the kids made spring decorations for me today. Outside it's still kind of cold, maybe next week the spring weather will be here.

The girls have off from school today so I put them to work making art projects. We made project after project after project. Even as I type this Megan is still in there fooling with the craft stuff. We started out finger painting paper eggs. Megan and Kristin were all into it and then there was Zach just staring at his egg with the paint on it, his hands under the table. He wanted no part of putting his hands in the paint. Kristin showed him how to do it but he kept saying "no." I had to go get him a paintbrush to get him to do anything!

Here Kristin is showing him what to do, do you notice that his hands are nowhere near?

Once I gave him a paintbrush he was all into it, his two eggs are the ones to the right.
I was getting a little adventurous with the next project. After not wanting to touch the paint I was expecting him to not like this one either but he surprised me and loved it. I painted his hand with red paint then his forearm with green to make a flower print on paper. He just laughed as I painted him. His "flowers" are the ones on the bottom. Kristin's is on top and Megan's is in the middle. They painted their hands/arms by themselves, I just had to help Zach.

We did another hand print project that we turned into sheep. Megan made one first then wanted to help Zach do his. I didn't have to worry about glue everywhere since Megan wouldn't let him have the bottle! Probably a good thing. He did fluff the cotton balls before placing them on his sheep. He even put his googly eyes on by himself.
The finished sheep. It's a little obvious that Megan's is on the left (the bigger one) and Zach's is on the right.
I was really into hand prints today, here's another project we did. Easter lilies, it's a hand print rolled into a cone and then you curl the fingers down. Once I traced his hand I pretty much did Zach's for him. Megan did her own. Here's our combined flowers in a vase.
Megan did another project that I didn't take a picture of. It's an egg tree. She drew a tree trunk out of brown paper then decorated small paper eggs that she glued to the branches. It's cute.

Then the last thing she's working on are paper flowers glued to a popsicle stick and she's going to put faces in the middle of the flower when she's done. Here she is working on that.
So I got quite a few spring decorations now and at least Megan was occupied all morning.

Pajama Day
As a fundraiser for the PTA Kristin and Megan's school had pajama day yesterday. Anyone that wanted to pay $1 could wear their pajamas to school. I hate when the school does that, I'm not a big fan of "pajama day". Now bring back "wacky hair day," that one's fun.

Megan posing in the car. It was a rainy day so I drove them to the bus stop. Don't want their pajamas getting all soaked. :)


Soccer Stuff
There's a big soccer tournament this weekend that Lauren's in. She gets to play on Saturday and then volunteer all day Sunday (and so do I, volunteer that is, not play). Her age group (both the boys and the girls teams) get to run it this year but at least after doing all that work they get a share of the money from it. This is supposedly the "travel year" for them. So the money we get will help pay for her team to travel somewhere with probably everything paid for. That part will be nice. This is just going to be a long weekend for us. I've never wished a weekend to go by quickly before but I'm hoping Monday gets here soon!

Wednesday, March 18, 2009

Enjoying the beautiful day

A taste of spring today! We just had to get outside for awhile and enjoy it. Zach has been wanting to ride his tricycle that was given to him but it's just been too cold to stay out long. So today he spent plenty of time on that bike. Here he is sporting his new "Cars" helmet he got for Christmas. No more hand-me down ladybug helmet for the big man.
He's not very good at pedalling yet so we'll have to work on that. Megan and I tried to help him out the best we could. He didn't put much effort into it though, I think he liked being pushed.
Megan loves riding her bike. She goes so fast I had to get a picture of her just starting off. She's spent alot of time the past few weeks out riding her bike. It's the first thing she asks to do after school once her homework's done.
I dug out all the Easter stuff today, you know, decorations, the kids baskets, all those plastic eggs that keep multiplying every year. So on the day after St. Patrick's Day we had our first egg hunt. By the time all the local egg hunts happen Zach should be pretty good at it by then.

Hope this spring weather is here to stay!

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

And the winner is...

...Kristin! She came home from school yesterday wearing her medal from Odyssey of the Mind. She was very proud (as she should be!) so I had to post a picture.

A lot of hard work went into getting that medal. At the awards ceremony we had all pitched in to get her coach a gift card to a local restaurant and presented it to her. Today Kristin came home with a thank you note that was from her Odyssey coach. Her coach had mentioned several times over the course of the practices how much the kids loved using duct tape. They used it for everything! Well the thank you note was made from strips of duct tape and she wrote on it with a sharpie marker. Too funny! I'm hoping she coaches again next year, she's great at it.

Play Zone fun
We went to Play Zone today like we usually do on Tuesdays and Zach was the only one there. He had the whole place to himself and he didn't know what to do. To be quite honest I think he was a little bored, he's used to chasing someone around. His friends Annie and G that usually come were sick, I think Zach missed them!

I remembered to bring my camera today, figures it was just him. He's always loved this mirror. He used to be able to stand there with plenty of room, now he has to bend over to keep from hitting his head.
We have to enjoy our Play Zone days since they're coming to an end soon. Play Zone is located in a local church and the church is being renovated so Play Zone will be closing after this month. Not sure how long it's going to take, hopefully only a couple of months.

Monday, March 16, 2009

Kum Ba Yah

The children were scheduled to sing this past Sunday and wouldn't you know that Kristin woke up sick that morning. She had a fever and felt sick to her stomach so she stayed home while I took Megan to church. There were only 4 kids singing but Megan sang really loud, you can hear her singing on the video.

Whatever Kristin had it only lasted one day, she woke up fine Monday morning which was a good thing, I could send her to school! One of these days she's going to be playing her clarinet for one of the songs, she's practicing and is getting better but she still has a little ways to go before playing publicly.

Saturday, March 7, 2009

Odyssey of the Mind

Megan and Kristin both participated in the Odyssey of the Mind competition that was held at the University of Delaware today. If you don't know what Odyssey of the Mind is you'd better look it up since I'm not sure I can explain it right. :) I'll try my best though. The kids are on teams with a coach and they have to choose a problem (there's 5 to choose from) and interpret and perform it. They formed their teams shortly after Thanksgiving and have been meeting and planning since then. My two girls were on separate teams so they really kept me busy getting them to their meetings and picking them up. The last 2 to 3 weeks have been especially busy since they were trying to finalize everything.

Anyway, back to the whole idea of today. The kids on the team have to do everything themselves, from writing the script to designing the scenery to making their costumes. And I mean EVERYTHING, there is to be no "outside assistance" from anyone, they only have their coach for guidance, even she can't tell them what they should do. We as parents couldn't even comment when we saw their props, it is so hard not to say, "wow, that looks really good" or "what are you going to do with that empty spot over there?" We had to keep our mouths shut! Very hard for me to do.

So Megan's team was the first to perform today. Their problem was, "The Lost Labor of Heracles" and they were to reenact one of the 12 labors as well as make up a Lost Labor that was forgotten in history. There's more to it but that's the gist of it. Here's my gal waiting with her team to go on.

Another thing they had to do themselves was to move and set up the scenery. Here's a little blurb of them moving everything on stage. Megan's in the pink pajama top.

Here's just a portion of their play, I only included the beginning because that was where Megan said most of her lines and the very end. I'm sorry, you won't get to see the main part of the play, it was really neat but too long to put on here.


Here's Megan's team after their performance. What a great group of girls.
Then it was Kristin's teams turn. Her team chose to do "Teach Yer Creature" as their problem. This was to be a humorous performance about a mechanical creature that learns lessons, one that is purposely taught to it and one that it accidentally learns.

Here's my Kristin helping move the props from the storage area to the staging area. She is a doctor's assistant in her skit.

We could help them get everything to the staging area but then it was hands off for us parents, the kids had to take it from there. So here's Kristin helping to set up the props. Her team didn't have nearly as many as Megan's team.

I only included the set-up videos because I was really impressed with what the kids did. I'm sure it's not as impressive on these short little clips but them having to do everything themselves and learning to problem solve on the spot when something fell down was neat to see.

Then of course here's part of her play. I put two clips together, one where Kristin is acting and the other, well just watch and see.

In case you didn't catch it the polar bear accidentally learns to fart. Yes, I said fart. The kids had a fart machine inside the polar bear and one of them is holding the remote. The things kids come up with! It was pretty funny and they got a lot of laughs from the judges. Afterwards the kids said that the judges wanted to hear it again! Oh, speaking of judges, they all wear funny hats, not sure exactly why, but that's what you see in the videos. It's a cute idea but not for all the parents with their video cameras!

Here they are after performing.
I won't go into it but not only do they do their "Long Term problem" each team has to do "Spontaneous." Parents cannot watch Spontaneous though, we're not even allowed in the building. The scores from both events are what's used to determine the winners in each category.

Which now brings me to the awards ceremony. Even though Megan's team did an awesome job they didn't place in the top 3 for their group. Megan was a little upset about that (and so were her teammates) but they were the youngest age team in their group, they went up against 4th and 5th grade teams. So maybe next year she'll have her shot at winning. Kristin's team on the other hand won 2nd place! They were so thrilled!



You go Kristin! The team got a trophy and each teammate was supposed to get a medal but because they tied with another team for second place they now have to wait for them. The other team was given the medals and I assume they now have to wait for their trophy.

Kristin was smiling non-stop the whole way home and Megan was crying! What a fun trip that was. Congratulations Kristin! And Megan you'll kick butt next year, I just know it.

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Bananas

This will be my shortest post yet but I just had to get this on tape. Listen to how Zachary says "banana."

Nothing else needs to be said about that one!

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Band Concert

Lauren had her 2nd band concert of the year tonight, only one more to go and she'll be done band forever. She doesn't want to play in the band when she gets to high school which I think is a shame since she's pretty good. If she played a smaller instrument (she plays the saxophone) I think she might continue. She just doesn't want to lug it back and forth to school with her.

Anyway, the concert was both bands tonight, the 6th grade band and the Symphonic Band which are 7th and 8th graders. The 6th grade band went first and they were okay but the Symphonic Band sounded really good. Lauren said they messed up on their second song but I couldn't tell, sounded good to me. You can just barely make her out in the picture. I got lucky where I was sitting since I could see her between the people in front of me. Usually she ends up way on the other side or I can't see her because of the music stand.

This video is definitely not one of the band's better moments. It was hard to get much of it because people kept moving their heads in the way. This was from the first song they did. I wanted to try to get some from the other two songs but the boy sitting next to her either leaned forward or she leaned backwards because you couldn't see her as well during those.

Really, the concert was much better than that little clip. Oh well, at least I got her playing.