The Arnold Family Singers

The first time they did this was a little bit better - but this is the version I recorded - oh well!

Grady is playing his piece for his piano recital in a few months - still working on it! Alice is singing - trying to keep up as well as she can. Pryor, well, Pryor is contributing in the best way he knows how - comic relief!

Grady's Cub Scout Jamboree Camping Trip

Well - if these are not pictures of happiness - I don't know what are!!

Stephen and Grady are with 10,000 Boy Scouts from the region to celebrate 100 years of Boy Scouts. They left this morning and get back tomorrow some time. Stephen just sent me these pictures - and I think they are worth 1000 words - or maybe 10,000!

Alice in the Murrysville Art Show

Alice has been taking an "Art Camp" this summer by a local former art teacher. She has been working on clay pieces for the month of July. Her teacher told the class about the Murrysville Art Show open to anyone in the community.

She entered three pieces in the "3-Dimensional" student division and won 3rd place for one of her pieces! When we went to look at it today to show Daddy, they gave her the "prize" - a two dollar bill!!! I thought the prize would be the ribbon. HA!! She was very excited!

In this video clip above, Alice explains her piece in detail and her other two pieces.

Grady's First Piano Recital

We had a very big afternoon today! We all went to a nearby church where Grady performed in his first recital. He knew his piece well. He said he was a little nervous beforehand.

Once he got on stage, he was all business! In fact, if you notice at the end, he was just sitting on the bench as if he were going to play another song. Beforehand, we had talked about how he was going to walk down the aisle and start playing as soon as his teacher finished announcing him. However, we neglected to mention he needed to get up as soon as his piece was over! HA! He was ready for more!

Alice's Postcard Project

If you remember from this time last year, it's that time again.

Alice's first grade class is doing a social studies project examining the world around us. "The project is designed to provide the students with an awareness and appreciation of other places in the United States and the world." Grady will get to read the postcards to fellow classmates and plot the locations on the class map. They can be sent from any place. There is no deadline.

If anyone would be willing to send a postcard I think Alice would love it. If you know of someone living in another country that would be really fun too.

Send to:
Mrs. Rich
Newlonsburg Elementary School
3170 School Road
Murrysville, PA 15668

Thanks so much! I hope to get pictures/videos of our trip online in the next couple of weeks.

Alice - the song writer

After St. Patrick's Day, Alice wrote this song. She made up the words and tune. You can see on the sheet that she colored a picture on both sides as well.

So adorable!!

Alice Update

News Update:

So Alice ate her first chocolate cupcake (or chocolate anything) tonight because she made them today. Should I be weirdly glad that she likes something I'm so passionate about, or sad because now she might steal my chocolate? Who knows? She may hate it again tomorrow!

Christmas

We got matching pjs - but couldn't get Pryor to get in the picture. Oh well! They are comfy and look cute.
I think this is the only picture of all of us from Christmas. We had such a great one this year. It went by too quickly!
Here's a picture of "My best Christmas of my life." I don't think I'm going to be able to convert the video I took - but it was awesome for those of us who were there. Alice had been asking for these and Santa brought them!! She screamed after she opened them up and rolled on the ground with them. Sheer happiness!
Alice and Grady were very "helpful" with Pryor. He was the last to wake up - about an hour after the other two woke up. Let me rephrase that: they were not allowed to come out of their room until 7:00 AM. About the time they were finished with their stockings, he came down.

Soon after he was finished, Grandmother & Granddaddy made it to GrandPatti & Papa's house. We all had a great time opening up our wonderful presents. This was a fabulous Christmas!

Like Mother, Like Daughter

Can you even believe how cute this is?!?!? We went to Macy's a few weeks ago and found this coat for Alice that perfectly matches mine! I think one thing that makes the whole thing even better - it was only $10!
There must be something on the lens of our camera - the bottom of the image is a little fuzzy. That's on all of these pictures - oh well! When we have worn these coats at the same time - we get rave reviews! I'm glad she wants to dress like me. We'll see how long that lasts!!

Making Christmas Cookies

We had such a fabulous Christmas vacation, I thought I'd relive it all by posting some great pictures. I have some awesome ones from the family Christmas pageant, but I'll save that for a later post.

We traveled first to Jefferson City for our break. One activity I knew I wanted to do while we were there was to make cookies and decorate them with icing. I couldn't have handled it without my mom!!
As is often the case, the recipe we made was sticky, so we had a very difficult time with the dough and transferring the shapes onto the cookie sheet. I also wanted to make sure that we had enough cookies - so we doubled the recipe! We had enough!! HA!
Grady and Alice really got into decorating the cookies. They both were pretty good at handling the cookie cutters. The icing of the cookies was even better! Both children really enjoyed and got into the different colors and making designs. It was a really fun project!

Pryor decorated maybe one cookie, but he was happiest cutting up paper. This is his new favorite activity! The trick is just to make sure that the paper he is cutting up isn't important!