Class Trip

The 5th grade always goes on a field trip to Washington DC...yesterday was Megan's field trip and I went as a chaperone. Our day started at 7:00 which is what time we had to meet at school. The bus left the school around 7:25 and we arrived in DC at 9:45. Our first stop was to see the Washington Monument. I didn't have a group of kids to watch, it was just Megan and I so we formed our own little group to walk around with. Here's Megan with 2 of her friends sitting near the Washington Monument.
Here they are with the monument in the background.

We then started walking towards the Lincoln Memorial...

We stopped at the World War II Memorial on the way. The girls searched till they found their state.

At this point a 4th person joined our little group whom we continued to walk around with all day. It was our little Christmas group with the red and green shirts. The shirts all have the same design but each class wore a different color. That was very helpful in keeping track of them throughout the day. Here's another picture of them by one of the fountains at the WWII Memorial.

We continued walking to the Lincoln Memorial and Megan posed standing in front of Abe.

We didn't stay long since it was very crowded and at that point it was getting hot out. We stopped at a little souvenir shop on the way back to the bus and then met up with the rest of our class to board the bus that took us over to the museums. I think it would have been a lot faster just to walk instead! At least we got to eat our lunch while we sat in traffic.

Our first museum was the Museum of Natural History. We explored all of the first floor but never made it to the second floor because it was time to meet up with our little group. Our group of 5 kids and 4 moms had decided to explore on our own in the museums but we set a time and place to meet before moving on. None of us wanted to get lost in DC!

Our next stop was the American History Museum. We all went and saw The Star-Spangled Banner first before splitting in different directions. Wow, I never new the flag that inspired our national anthem was so big! We also saw Archie Bunker's chair and Michael Jackson's hat but the only other thing I really wanted to see in that museum was Dorothy's ruby slippers.Megan didn't understand why I took a picture of shoes! I can't believe that she's never seen The Wizard of Oz! Guess what we're watching this weekend.

We finished up the museum and then it was time to meet the bus again. I wish we could have gone to the Air and Space Museum but unfortunately it wasn't on the agenda for the day. It was amazing how quickly the day went. While walking back to the bus I got a picture of Megan with the Capitol in the background.

Kristin, that picture is for you! When she went on her DC trip in 5th grade she took about 50 pictures of the Capitol building, from all sides. We joked that she must have really liked it!

We made it back to the bus and headed home which took longer since there was quite a bit of traffic. It was nice to sit down after a long day of walking but I could have done without all the 5th grade chatter! Dang those kids can be loud and mine of course was one of the louder ones. Overall it was a very nice day and I'm glad I got to spend it in DC with my Megan.

He did it again!

Friday afternoon when I thought he was taking a nap he was actually cutting his hair instead. He took two big chunks out of it right in the front. This is the best picture I could get of it.

He cut it so close to his scalp that to even it out it had to be cut even shorter than the last time. The last time they used #2 clippers, this time they had to use #1 clippers.

He looks like a doofus and he doesn't even care!

Sick of Soccer Yet?

I hope not, Lauren's only half way through her season! She played 3 games this week. I already posted about Monday's game. Tuesday's game it rained plus it was an away game and I got there late. Lauren scored and got an assist though! Now for today's game...

What a physical game it was! Lots of pushing and elbowing. She came home with a bruised and swollen ankle but thankfully that was it. I can't even tell you how many times I saw her head the ball today too. Here's one: I love her expression! Here she is pushing down her opponent to get the ball. I'm not sure if she got a penalty called against her or not for this one.

I'm not sure why all 4 of them were huddled by the ball, interesting picture though.

Lauren said her and #10 kept going at it with the pushing. In this particular picture Lauren managed to steal the ball from her, turn it and pass it to one of her teammates.

This one's funny, it looks like that girl is trying to punch her!

#9 was fast! Of course Lauren had to be with her.

If someone doesn't get out of Lauren's way she just goes over them!

Like I said, it was a very rough and physical game. On a good note Lauren's team ended up winning with a score of 3-1. The bad news. The girl in blue on the ground in the picture above slide tackled one of Lauren's teammates and her teammate tore her ACL. Lauren said she heard a popping sound and I could even hear the girl screaming from the stands. I get chills just writing this. She was a really good player too and now has a long recovery with possible surgery. It's amazing how quick things can happen on a soccer field. (And how thankful I am that Lauren came home with only a bruised ankle.)

Zach

TREE
Zach has been wanting to climb a tree that he sees every day when we walk into preschool but it's been yucky and rainy the last couple of days. I told him that as soon as the weather was nice that he could do it one day after school. Well yesterday was a beautiful day and he finally got his chance. I'm just glad he didn't go any higher than what you see in the picture. It looks like a cool tree to climb but I sure didn't want to go up after him!

SHIRT
Today he's wearing this shirt: In case you can't see it it says, "Sister for sale $1.00 or best offer." I couldn't resist buying this for him when I found it on clearance. I wonder if he'll get any offers...and for which sister?

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!