Art

Zach's preschool did an art appreciation unit last month. They talked about various things like how art is made up of colors, shapes and lines. They talked about how art can make you feel. They even used a variety of tools to create different kinds of art.

Here's one piece of artwork that they looked at, it's by Jackson Pollock. They then tried to create their own version of splatter paining. Zach loved doing this one!

Andy Warhol was another artist they talked about.

They got to recreate this type of painting too. As you can tell Zach is not a big fan of coloring.

They were shown a painting by Pablo Picasso, Bouquet of Flowers.

Here's Zach's version of it.

I know they were also shown a Vincent Van Gogh painting but I'm not sure what it was or if this is Zach's version of it or not.

I mean, it's Zach's painting, that I'm sure of. Just not sure if it's a copy of a Van Gogh.

With this last one they created "cloud" pictures by spooning paint on paper and then folding and pressing. They were asked to name the shape and Zach's was titled, "A person with a moustache." He may not like to color and do art but he is creative with his titles!

Soccer...yet again

Here's a few pictures from her game yesterday.

I just like her expression in this picture. I think she was trying to block the ball with her body and I guess she wasn't sure if she was going to get hit or not! Here's a happier picture of her. They're battling to get the ball. Look closely at this next picture. The ball is right at Lauren's left foot and that's the goalie of the other team to the left of the picture. Lauren scored right after I took this. if I had my camera on the right setting I might have gotten her goal but at least I got the "before" moment. I'll try to remember to have my camera on the sports setting from now on! I was wondering why there was such a delay after taking a picture. She scored the 6th goal and had an assist on the 1st goal. Her team ended up winning with a score of 6-0.

Kristin Cooks and Zachary Builds

Cooking
I got in trouble for not putting Kristin's dinner on my blog. The problem is that I have two cameras, the nicer one that has a long zoom but is bulky and the older/not so nice one that I keep in my purse because it's small. Sometimes it takes me awhile to download the pictures from the purse one because I don't take it out. So anyway, Kristin cooked us dinner two weeks ago. She made chicken piccata... ...and chocolate pudding cake for dessert. (Sorry, no pictures of that one.) Both were absolutely delicious. She got the recipes from a nintendo DS cartridge she got for Christmas. It has all kinds of recipes on it. When it was time to make it her DS even talked her through each step. It was pretty neat. Before she settled on the pudding cake one of the desserts she was thinking of making was Bananas Foster. I asked her to read through the directions because I was pretty sure you had to set that on fire and sure enough she said you had to flambe it. No way was I going to let her flambe so I had her pick something else. I can't believe they had that kind of recipe for kids to do not to mention that the recipe called for rum. I guess Santa should have prescreened that gift before giving it! Awesome job with the dinner Kristin!

Building
Last Saturday Zach went to another Lowe's Build and Grow programs, this time he built a sports pinball. I took him since Paul wanted to do some stuff around the house. Here he is showing his daddy what he made:

Not a very exciting project and it doesn't really work that well but he did enjoy building it. Plus now I get to sew yet another patch on his apron.

This weeks soccer games...

Lauren had two home games this week. They were both competitive games so Lauren ended up staying in and playing the whole time. In the first game they ended up tying and since it was a conference game they had to go into overtime. It was 10 minutes and still no one scored so they had to play a second 10 minute overtime.

In the 99th minute (of 100) one of Lauren's teammates scores to win the game!

Would you believe that the second game this week also went into double overtime? Lauren's team was winning the game (1-0) until the last couple of minutes when their opponent scores to tie it up. They play the first overtime and no one scores... onto the second overtime and still no one scores. They left it at a tie. I'm not quite sure why they don't go into shoot outs but they don't.

So they won one and tied one this week. Right now their record is 2-1-1. Lauren sure got her exercise this week, almost 200 minutes of playing time. I hope she rests up, she has three games next week...

Talent Show

Megan performed in the talent show again this year. Last year she sang, this year she danced. Here she is with two of her friends dancing to "Dynamite" by Taio Cruz:

I hadn't seen their performance until tonight. They did pretty good considering they had absolutely no practices! They were selling carnations for $2 before the show so I bought her one and gave it to her when she finished performing. This was my baby's last elementary school talent show. :(

Oh but talent shows aren't done for us. Zach starts school there next year so we'll have to think of something cute he can do. The audience loves the little ones and since he's not only little, he's cute too, I'm sure he'll get lots of "ahhhs" no matter what he does.

2nd Soccer Game of the Season

Lauren's team played again tonight, they played against a really, really good team. I, of course, was hoping that they would win but would have been happy as long as they didn't get creamed! The other team scored first and at halftime it was 1-0. It wasn't long into the second half though before Lauren's team got the chance for a penalty kick that led to them scoring to tie up the game. Lauren was the one to be pushed and get the foul called against the other team.

She was fine and until she saw that picture she had no idea who had pushed her. It was the daughter of one of Paul's softball friends, she is an amazing player. At least Lauren got taken down by one of the best.

She took the bus to the game with the rest of the soccer players. You can always tell when it's an away game because her hair always gets done. I just had to take a picture.

Here's one of Lauren's corner kicks. Until this year she has never done corner kicks before. That's something new she's had to learn and she's getting better at them.

With 10 minutes left to go in the game the other team scores and that's how the game ended with a score of 2-1. It's a bummer they lost but I was still happy with such a close score. If Lauren's team ever learns to pass the ball better they will be an incredible team.

Went shopping today...

...and bought a car! It was kind of an impulse buy since we were just looking but we got offered such an incredible deal that we would have been stupid not to take it. Lauren can get her license in 3 months and we really don't want her driving either the minivan or Pilot, way too big for her and we're not really liking the idea that she could ride around with 6 or 7 of her friends! So a smaller car was in our future anyway. Here's a picture of our new 2011 Ford Focus once we got it home: I said it was an impulse buy because we truly weren't looking to buy a car today, just in the near future. That's not to say that we didn't do a little bit of homework last night by checking out various cars online. We even went to a couple of dealerships yesterday to physically see the cars and sit inside them. We went out again today "just looking." Since this car gets much better gas mileage than either of our cars Paul said he's going to drive it to work the next few months and I'll take it in the evenings when I'm picking kids up from their various activities. Someone's got to use until Lauren can right? It is a fun little car to drive and I've already enjoyed picking the girls up from youth group tonight in it. Lauren just wishes she could drive it. For now all she can do is sit in the driver seat and pose for this picture: I can't believe that in a few months my baby will be driving. For everyone reading this that wants to remain safe, you have until the end of June and then stay off the road!

Lauren's 1st Soccer Game (Sophomore Year)

Last Wednesday was her high school's first game. Unfortunately it was an away game but fortunately it wasn't very far away and I was able to go. I only got there about 2 minutes late but already her team had scored to make the score 1-0. The next goal Lauren got an assist, here she is with a smile on her face running back to the center. It was such a cold day with off and on rain. It wasn't raining when the game started but about half way throught the first half a cold drizzle started coming down. I think they were the only game not cancelled in the whole state! I was cold but at least I had 3 shirts, a jacket, 2 socks and warm fuzzy boots on. Lauren looked absolutely miserable.

She said she forgot her Under Armour shirt at home. I bet she won't make that mistake again!

She got the ball several times and made some great passes but never got the chance to score.

Her team ended up winning 5-0. Now if they can just keep up their winning streak.

Odyssey of the Mind

Two years ago I wrote about the Odyssey of the Mind competition where both Kristin and Megan competed (on separate teams.) This year it was just Megan competing. They did the competition a little differently this year. In the past there was only a state wide competition and all first place teams advanced to "Worlds." The competition has grown so much that this year they broke the state into two regions and the top 3 teams from each problem and division in both regions went to the state competition. Megan competed in our regional competition last Saturday.

Does anyone know what Odyssey of the Mind is? I sure didn't until a couple years ago. It's an educational program that provides creative problem solving opportunities for students from kindergarten through college. Team members have to apply their creativity to solve one of five different problems. They then bring their solutions to the competition and perform them in front of a panel of judges. (I took most of this from the main page at odysseyofthemind.com!)

The long-term problem that Megan's team chose to solve was called Full Circle. Here's what they had to come up with: "The problem is to create and present a humorous performance where something changes form or appearance at least three times and eventually undergoes a final change where it returns to its original form and appearance. The team will signal the audience each time there is a change. The performance will include a very silly character, a very serious character, a song and dance, and a surprise ending."

They had to write a script incorporating all the above things, they had to build their props and they had to come up with costumes. All of this had to be done on their own with no "outside assistance" and only a coach to guide them with open-ended questions.

So...after all that background info, here they are performing their version of Full Circle:

You would think the day would be over after they performed their long-term problem but no, they then had to go do a "spontaneous." That is an on-the-spot problem that they have to solve right then. Parents are not allowed to see this, we're not even allowed in the building! I couldn't even ask her about until we were home because the kids are not allowed to talk about it for fear of another team overhearing it. The spontaneous this year was something about naming things that don't change and the example Megan said they used was "Thursday always comes before Friday." The kids take turns and name as many as they can in a set time period, something like 2 minutes. The more creative the answers the more points that are scored.

After the spontaneous problem we then waited until the awards ceremony. Us moms that were there pretty much knew that the girls were not going to place in the top 3. Their problem, Full Circle, was very popular with 20 teams performing in their division. I'm not saying that the girls didn't do a great job, they did, but in reality they needed a few more practices and more time to prepare their props. I do think their skit was good and there was lots of humor in it. Plus I really liked the one girls' hair! Some of the girls were disappointed that they didn't win, one even cried. Megan was getting over being sick (she missed school on the Wed and Thur before the event) so she didn't really seem to care too much. I think she was just wanting to go home!

Winter Festival

Megan's school held their winter festival on Friday. This was the third date for it, the first one was cancelled due to snow and the second one was cancelled due to lack of volunteers. If they had waited another week it could have been a spring festival instead.

So I preordered our tickets and off Megan, Zach and I went to the school. (Kristin didn't want to go and Paul and Lauren weren't home yet.) We head straight for the gym where there were several different games the kids could play. Little carnival like games such as knocking down a stack of cans with a ball, picking the right key to unlock a treasure chest, etc... Each game cost either 1 or 2 tickets to play and everyone got a small prize whether they won or not. Zach liked the "lollipop pick" game. You pick a lollipop off of the board and if there's a dot on the end you got a little extra prize. Of course you get to keep the lollipops, that's probably why he liked that game the best!

In the gym there was also the rock climbing wall that you could pay 2 tickets to climb. I think we should invest in one of these for our house because Zach loved it!
You can't tell from the picture but he did a really good job at climbing. At one point he climbed about twice his height. Plus once the kids had their helmets on they could spend as much time as they wanted on it. Once again, I really think we need one at home!

In the cafeteria they had bingo going on, lots of different baskets that were being raffled off and of course food. Zach and I had some pizza and juice/soda for our dinner. I have no idea what Megan ate, I gave her some tickets and she mostly hung out with her friends all night.

The only thing I can comment on about Megan is with the cake walk. They always hold the cake walk in the library and Megan very early in the evening won a cake. She was standing on her lucky number 8 when she won. (She wanted me to mention that.)

Zach did the cake walk at the same time as Megan but didn't win either time he did it. We go back to it after eating our pizza and the second time doing it his number was picked. He was standing on lucky number 7. They both chose their own cakes, neither of which I would have picked if it was my choice (which they pointed out it wasn't). I really tried getting them both to pick something different (like a Serpes bakery cake and a store bought carrot cake) but they were both very insistent on those. Megan chose hers because it had a lot of icing and Zach chose his because it had sprinkles. They both had a piece of their cake when they got home and both of them said they were good. Oh well, guess I didn't need to eat cake anyway!

So for $20 in tickets we ended up with a nice night out with dinner and 2 desserts. Megan graduates from the elementary school this year but Zach starts next year. I guess we have 6 more years of festivals to go. Oh, and by the way, my kids have never won a raffle basket in all the years we have been there which goes all the way back to when Lauren was in kindergarten. Maybe Zach will be the lucky one next year (or hopefully within the next 6 years).

Talent Showcase

Megan performed in her first talent showcase tonight that was held at Klondike Kate's. She performed a monologue called, "Most Curious Phenomenon," it was about a 6-year-old giving a report in school about Valentine's Day.

Here is her acting coach introducing her: (sorry...all the videos have static)

I taped her performance in 2 segments. Here's the first part:

Here's the second:

In case you can't hear it, she says, "The End" and everyone in the audience claps. She's not done her monologue though. She's pretending that her teacher asks a question and says, "What does AD stand for? Uh...after dinner???"

She was supposed to perform again but this time do a scene with another girl but unfortunately her scene partner didn't show up. Hopefully they can do that in a future showcase.

What a nice night Megan, Lauren and I had tonight. Not only did we have lots of entertainment we also had a nice dinner too. Megan, you did a great job!

#48 car

The last Lowe's Build and Grow was a race car. If you pull it back and let go it races on its own.
He was racing the car all over the house the other night. It took me forever to get his picture with his car.

The next couple of build and grows aren't that exciting. One's a mini basketball game and the other one is a fortune teller. We'll see if they wind up on here or not, they don't seem particularly blogworthy but who knows.

Kristin's Band Concert

Last night Kristin had her 2nd band concert of the year. Lucky for me it was just band (no orchestra or chorus) so the concert was fairly interesting, plus it went quick. The 6th grade band performed first and they were really good considering it was the first time they had ever been on stage. The Symphonic Band, also called the 7th and 8th grade band, went next. Kristin was supposed to sit in the third seat of the row she's in. The girl that is sitting there was supposed to have been on the end but she forgot her music. She asked Kristin to switch seats with her so she could share music with the kid in the 4th seat. (Not all clarinets played the same parts so they didn't all have the same music.) So lucky Kristin, she got an end seat.

Here's Kristin playing a little of the first song they did, Stilmeadow Overture.

A student teacher directed that song and it was probably the best song that the band played out of all 3 of the songs they did. It was a rather long song too.

The second song was Two English Dances (Shepherd's Hey and Country Gardens).

The third and last song was called Mystere. During the weeks leading up to the concert Kristin kept telling me how hard the song was to play and that it was 3 pages long. It didn't seem that long but I guess she's used to things repeating over and over, not constantly changing.

She told me afterwards that she didn't even play half the song! She was playing in the above video, I even showed it to her and she said she was definitely playing at the end. Well, she faked the other parts pretty well because I had no idea. Though I guess she had to fake it since she was sitting on the end. Lucky her!

An Exciting Day at Preschool

The preschool had the Juggling Hoffmans come perform near the end of our day. Since all the kids in my class were with their parents I got to sit with Zach.
In case you don't know who The Juggling Hoffmans are they are a local couple that do different juggling acts like this:

They act silly and use audience participation to keep kids watching. Zach sure did a lot of giggling throughout the whole show. His friend Megan even got picked to help out with one of the acts.
They performed for exactly 30 minutes and then that was the end of our preschool day. The kids all seemed to like it and it was a nice break from a normal day at school.

Yet another snow day...

Megan and Kristin were both off last Friday (it was an optional conference day for parents). Then all the girls were off yesterday for President's Day. We haven't had a snow day for 2 weeks now, well, until today. I'm not sure why they didn't have at least a 2-hr delay instead. I guess the school district wants to see the kids go to school until the end of June!

I didn't take a single picture of the snow this time. I'm over it. (Of course I wasn't home since I had to go to work, we only had an hour delay.) Instead here's a picture that still has a little snow from the previous storm, this was taken last Friday.Since Megan was off from school last Friday she came into work with me. There was still a little bit of snow on the playground but we went out anyway since the kids haven't been out there in a really long time. They needed to run! Now after today we have to wait for the snow to melt off again. Fun.

Yet another activity...
As you know Lauren does karate. The woman that runs All Stars has been wanting Lauren to join for over a year now. To join All Stars you have to be invited, which Lauren was, but after attending the informational meeting last year we decided for Lauren not to join at that time. It was just a lot of time commitment at the karate studio and soccer season was starting in just a couple of weeks. They were very understanding and gave her an open invitation to join in at anytime. So...fast forward to now and... ...she's now an All Star. The karate studio is willing to let her do it when she can and they understand that she probably won't be able to do it much (if at all) during soccer season. So what does joining All Stars mean for Lauren? Not only does she have to attend her two instructional classes each week she also has to help teach one class every week plus attend the weekly meeting. The good thing about it is she's been doubling up. She's been assistant teaching a tot class and then right afterwards goes to her own class. So far it hasn't been that bad but then again it's only been a few weeks! Even though this gives me even more running around to do I keep reminding myself that she needed a new uniform anyway. :)

Valentine's Day

I always try to give the kids a little something. Lauren and I were at Toys R Us a few weeks ago getting a gag type gift for one of her friends when we got mesmerized by the Sing-a-ma-jigs. So we picked out 4 that we liked and I put them away for Valentine's Day.

I think Lauren loved them the best.
I added a $1 box of candy to it with a few Hershey miniatures, put everything in a 50 cent heart basket and voila!

They can either sing or chatter by themselves but when you put them together they harmonize. Too cute!

Indoor Soccer

Lauren's high school soccer team played indoor soccer this winter. There were actually two teams, the freshman and sophomore's on one and the juniors and seniors on another. Both teams played in the same division but in different brackets of that division. So during the whole season they never played each other, that is until the semifinals. Lauren's team ended in first place for their bracket and the other team ended the season in second place for their bracket. So that made made the two play each other in the semifinals.

What a good game that was too! The younger team (Lauren's) kicked butt and ended up winning and going on to the finals. The finals were this past Tuesday and yes, they won that too! Woohoo! Everyone got shirts that said Champions on it (Lauren's in the back row all the way to the left):
They keep games moving at that soccer club and Lauren was all embarrassed with me because they couldn't start the next game because I was taking this picture. Oh boohoo. Isn't that what my job is? To embarrass her?

Playing Catch Up

Snow and Ice (and lots of it)
During the month of January we had at least one snow storm per week. The poor kids missed so much school that they'll probably end up going until the end of June! No, it wasn't that bad but it was pretty bad. One of the last storms we had was actually part ice storm. The roads quickly got salted and were good to drive on but our driveway was another issue. Zach had fun ice skating one morning before we went to school...Yeah, he's not really ice skating is he? That's because I told him to stand still while I took his picture. I didn't want him falling and breaking anything!

Spirit Week
In preschool they had spirit week and each day was a theme. One of the days was sport jersey day so here's Zach and I wearing our Flyers and Eagles gear.

We also hat day, stuffed animal day, school colors day and even mismatch day. Zach was absent for mismatch day due to a stomach bug. That one would have been fun to do with him.

Zach's hair
I posted a few weeks ago about Zach cutting his hair. Well it had grown out some and didn't look quite so bad and then he cut it again, in the same spot. So...off we go to get his hair cut and about the only thing they could do was to buzz it, like this...He definitely has to wear a hat now when he goes outside!

Happy 11th Birthday Megan!

I can't believe that my little girl is 11, before I know it she'll be a teenager like her sisters. We started off her day by going over to Lowe's for one of their Build and Grow workshops. This project was building a heart shaped music box but the place was already full when we got there and there were no more hammers left. We waited about 5 minutes but then decided to just take them home to build. They still haven't built them, maybe that's a project for tomorrow.

We then went over to Perkins for a birthday breakfast. We mentioned to our waitress that it was Megan's birthday and she brought her a chocolate chip muffin with a candle in it and a bunch of waiters/waitresses sang happy birthday to her.After Perkins her and I did a quick trip to the mall. She has been wanting new long sleeved shirts so she found 3 that she liked plus another pair of skinny jeans. I also got her some earrings, flip flop slippers and a few accessories from Justice.

We didn't go out to dinner at a restaurant for Megan's birthday because our church was having a Valentines dinner that the youth were doing. Lauren and Kristin (and they even included Megan since it was her birthday) helped serve and of course Paul and I just had to go for dinner. This year they even had childcare so Zach came with us too. This is the second year that Paul and I have gone and they really do a nice job with it. The lights are off and candles are at every table. There are valentine decorations around, hershey kisses on the table and they even have printed menus. They always have two entrees to choose from and this year I got the seafood newburg served over toast points and Paul got the beef tenderloin. Both came with green beans, a baked potato and a roll and everything was delicious! Congrats to the chef on that dinner! Oh yeah, the youth did a great job with waiting on us too.

So then we brought Megan and Zach back home with us (Lauren and Kristin stayed for a youth lock-in) and it was finally present time. I had gotten her a new bikini, towel, flip flops and sunglasses that matched so now she's ready for summer.

She also got 2 new sweatshirts, new pajamas, "M" earrings, a water bottle with a strap and some new nail polish.

We call Megan "peep" so Paul had gotten her some Peeps, you know, the candy kind. Then when Megan and I were shopping in Justice at the mall I saw a stuffed Peep and just had to get it for her. Here's our peep with her peeps.

Finally...the end of the day and we got to enjoy cake. Megan picked out a cheesecake so we put the candles in that and she blew them out and made a wish.

Hope you had a great birthday Megan!