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!

Halloween in December??

I am finished with Christmas things, and don't want to pack for our trip yet. One last post...
Our neighbor, Yoshiko Sonoda, used to tie obis (the sash around Alice's kimono above) professionally - for festivals and what not. She gave this one to Alice!! It was amazing to watch her work. She had a thin piece of cardboard in the front to start. She tied it at 11 AM so Alice could go to a birthday party, and it lasted all day and into the night!These pictures don't do the obi (sash) justice. Alice looked beautiful! She loved wearing the Japanese shoes (although she almost didn't wear them when Yoshiko said they were men's shoes! We told Alice no one else at the birthday party would know that! Since the top was navy - that's what made it a men's versus a women's shoe.)
A smiley cookie (local restaurant - Eat N Park - their signature is the smiley sugar cookie - he has smiley body tattoos on his hands - they were too big for his cheeks), girl from Japan and Bob the Builder.

These are our jack o' lanterns. Daddy let them pick which design they wanted us to cut. If I had been there - I would not have let Alice pick out such a difficult one. Needless to say, I was stuck trying to cut out the spider legs!! It was ridiculously hard - but it did turn out well. Stephen got the easy ghost in the window. Next year we are doing a basic smiley face!!


I tried to capture on video the joy of Pryor and his enthusiasm running from house to house. Check out the above movie.

I am blown away at how much candy and other stuff they got for Halloween!


They can't possibly eat it all. Even with my parents here and all of us eating the candy for a week, we still had enough stuff left over to bring down for all the big cousins to eat at Thanksgiving! That's a lot of candy!

Breakfast with Santa?

I don't really think I need any explanation here. The video and pictures speak for themselves. I'll put them in chronological order:


Above is the video I took as we were getting the children ready to sit on Santa's lap. Pryor screamed last year and he wasn't so sure on this day...

You can see in front of me, Pryor sliding off of Grady's lap. Except that Grady was still holding onto him and his shirt, so his entire stomach is showing!
Trying to talk some sense into him...
Wouldn't even face the camera with me holding him!!!
This was as good as it was going to get. Oh well, there's always next year!

New Teachers

We had Open House this last week and got to meet Grady's and Alice's teachers.
Mrs. Jockel has been teaching for many years and is a former Marine. She had the children do a sound off as they lined up for the door. If I had realized what they were going to do - I would have videoed it! It was pretty cute!
Mrs. Rich has been a great teacher for Alice so far. She works closely with the other first grade teacher (whom Grady had last year) so she is having a similar experience to Grady. He is *always* pointing out that he has already studied/learned/seen whatever Alice talks about first grade. Ah, siblings!
They had a book fair at the open house and you would have thought it was Christmas! The children were so excited about going to the book fair. In fact, Alice was in such expectation that she couldn't sleep the night before and was up at 6:45 AM that morning. I felt like telling them that we could get books at the book store any time they wanted - but didn't want to ruin their fun.

Westmoreland County Fair

We went to the Westmoreland County fair and had a fabulous time! There was a huge field filled with all sorts of tractors and equipment. The children had a field day!
Alice was just as anxious as the boys to sit in the seats. Unfortunately, the horns still worked. So it would get *very* noisy if a child figured out how to blow the horn!
Pryor thought he had died and gone to heaven! We had to peal him away from this area to go explore the rest of the fair. We came back to the tractors at the end, and literally had to carry him to the car. He was not happy to leave!
The children's tent had several activities, one of them being "milk a cow." My parents took me to the Illinois state fair when I was young and I remember when milking a cow meant touching a live cow! This "cow" at least had real milk.
Stephen and Grady put together a "treasure box." We thought we'd be there for ever but it only took them about fifteen minutes. Grady was so excited to do this! Especially with his Daddy!
Here is the terrible twosome having at this project. Of course Pryor wanted to "help." We could only "milk the cow" for so long! HA! I love this picture because the way they were sitting really highlights their casts. Of course this was a week and a half ago when they still had the casts on. Ah, those were the good old days! HA HA!

A Hiking we will go

We are finding it difficult to arrange activities for three children when two are in casts!! A week and a half ago we did go hiking - hence the above picture from Duff park. We had an excellent time and the children loved throwing and skipping rocks in the creek. Well, that means that they got dirty. It's fine when children get dirty - not so much when the CASTS get dirty!! I have begun my daily struggle to keep their cast arms from being STINKY! I am almost at my wits end and really looking forward to casts coming off and school starting! Can you hear me screaming, because I'm screaming! T-minus one week for casts off, and one week-one day for the start of school. Whooo hoooo!

Twins

Well, I know now what it feels like to be "different." People have been staring at us everywhere we go! We went to McDonald's for lunch today - and all 4 tables facing the windows were staring at us while we walked up to the door. Once inside - I must have told the story to 6 or 7 people. This one man wasn't satisfied with my pat, one liner. He must have have asked me 5 or 6 questions!

I wanted to take a picture of both green casts - before something else happened! Good grief!

2 Boys, 2 Casts

Well, if you can believe it, I arrived home from our 2 month summer odyssey with Grady in an arm cast, and just tonight (5 days later) got back from the ER with Pryor in an arm cast. GOOD GRIEF!!

I have been hanging around the house yesterday and today because of Grady and his arm. Finally this afternoon, we headed off to the library but first made a quick trip to the playground. Big mistake! The children had a wonderful time, and right when we were getting ready to go, Pryor fell off some equipment and landed on his left arm. I could tell by the way he was holding his arm that it wasn't good.

We left straight away for the doctors office. Of course it was almost 5 PM by this point and they thought he needed a cast, so they sent me down to the ER of Children's Hospital. (The children's doctor's office doesn't put casts on anyway.) Fortunately, Stephen was nearby and I was able to leave Grady and Alice with him.

I was incredibly impressed with Children's (since I had so much experience from the ER a few days ago) and got in pretty easily. Got x-rays right away and saw the orthopedist fairly quickly (in hospital time.) He saw a hairline fracture in the arm, but not what was really hurting Pryor more towards his wrist. The Dr. said since Pryor is so young, the wrist is more cartilage and they are unable to see breaks there. The arm is broken in both places.

So, he put a full cast on the arm, up the elbow, since young ones can pull off a half cast. His cast is green - and I know when Grady wakes up tomorrow he'll be jealous (since his is just white.) We go to the orthopedist tomorrow for Grady, so he may be getting a new cast too!

Pittsburgh Pirates

Grady's pack was the color guard for the Pirate's baseball game this past Sunday. If you squint and look hard, you might be able to see which Wolf Cub hat is Grady's in the picture above!! If you see the Dad in the back with the brown(ish) hat, Grady is in front of him and looking sort of backwards (he's looking at the jumbo tron.)
In this picture above (a shot of the jumbo tron itself,) Grady is the second boy on the left from the navy flag (in the back row.)
We decided to all go as a family and had a picnic down on the river before the game. We were supposed to show up outside the stadium an hour before the game, but luckily we heard good advice not to show up quite that early. As it was, Grady and the other boys were going crazy waiting for the game to start. It was supposed to start at 1:05 - and it didn't even come close to starting on time. The game itself didn't start till about 1:40.
All in all, we had a wonderful time. Even Pryor did well sitting and watching an incredibly boring game. One of the highlights (besides the food) was a Pittsburgh home run in the first inning. The fireworks surprised us all!

Memorial Day Pool Party

As if being in and watching a parade aren't enough to do on any given day, we were invited and decided to attend our friend's neighborhood pool party and picnic.
It was a gorgeous day but I think the high was in the mid-seventies. More than once, the children got out of the pool with cold lips! We had a great time with our friends and their neighbors.
The food line was already open when we got there at 4:30. Of course Grady, seeing the food, decided to bypass the pool at first in favor of dinner. I think both he and Pryor had (basically) two dinners - one when we got there and one an hour or so later. The congo squares I brought were gone in less than an hour!
The baby pool, like most pools, has a filter system with a cover by the side of the pool. I think Pryor played here for over a half an hour! He'd look in there, open the cover, take out the toys and put the cover back on. Stephen took the above picture while he was watching the toys in the filter! HA! Who needs to actually play with toys when you can look at them instead?

Memorial Day

Well, I am rapidly approaching the current day in my long backlog of photos! Phew! Just in time to get backlogged again during the summer!

Grady, as a Wolf cub, participated in the Export Memorial Day parade. He had an excellent time! We dropped off Grady and Stephen at the American Legion at 10:15 AM for a 10:45 parade. Well, evidently the school marching band (in FIVE school buses) didn't show up till 10:45! Oh well!

Meanwhile, Alice, Pryor and I are chomping at the bit for some to see! Finally the parade started and in a few minutes it was over. HA!
The Boy Scouts were one of the last groups to pass by. I took the above shot while they were still far away. You can see Stephen in a red shirt/navy hat behind these boys and Grady with a yellow hat and scarf just in front of him. I tried to get a video of them passing by but couldn't get it to work!
I gave the camera to Stephen and he took the above picture. Grady is in the middle - again with the yellow hat and scarf.
Unfortunately, I can't crop this picture as I'd love to get rid of my arm and leg off the side of an otherwise adorable picture! My photo software has a glitch and I can't crop photos. Technology!

Grady loved walking in the parade. Lots of people lined the street. It was a pretty big deal! Scouting has been a great activity for him this year.

Powered Up! Cookout

The church had a picnic at a farm for our last Powered Up! event. They had hayrides and even individual horse rides. The picture above is when the farmer took out the wagon to unlock the fence for the hayrides. I guess this is the pre-hayride. We didn't mind.
They had a barn with many horses. Pryor even handed one of the horses hay off the ground and she ate it. He loved that!Grady was the only one of our children to get on a horse. To his credit, he wanted to wait in the horse line for a ride in stead of going ahead and getting dinner. Unfortunately, shortly after his ride, they ended the horse rides. Alice and Pryor got dinner instead!

We already miss Powered Up! and look forward to it starting again in the fall.

A Big Thank You!

Thank you to my family who donated to Grady & Alice's school Walk-a-thon fund raiser. I do not know how much they raised individually, but the school as a whole raised almost $5200.

Grady won "most money" raised in his class and Alice won the donation from "furthest away." He received 2 Pittsburgh Pirate tickets to a game of our choice!! I didn't find out about Alice till I just read the newsletter - so I don't know if she won anything or not. I would guess not since she didn't talk about it!

They love school and this has been a great year for us. This morning I had to leave to run errands right after dropping them off at the bus stop. It was a glorious morning, so they wanted to walk. So Pryor and I drove while Grady & Alice walked. They got a bit of a head start since I had to go get the car. When I caught up to them - I saw they were holding hands. Just precious!!

Happy Mother's Day

Well, I'm sorry I haven't posted anything in a while. Still don't have all my computer stuff worked out yet - but I will get onto that project now that my Bible study is over.

Grady came home with a little book he had made at school where the teacher gives them a prompt and they finish the sentence and draw a picture. This is the CUTEST thing and I just had to share. I wish I had a scanner and could show you the pics. Here goes: (typos and misspellings included)

My favorite thing to do with my Mom is doing a action packed spider-man 3 puzzle. It has a hundred pieces.

I love when my mom cooks scrumptous, delicous, marvelous brownies. She has a secret recipe.

I make my mom happiest when I keep a secret and wait to tell my family. They jump for joy. My mom is so happy. She wants to cry. (This is from December when his tooth fell out but he waited an hour to tell the rest of the family till we were all together. It did make me cloud up that he was that thoughtful about it.)

My mom looks prettiest when she wears a dress. She looks stunning. She wears earrings and a necklace too. (He tried telling which dress he was talking about - but said I wore it with jeans. Not sure what he's talking about... but I'd like to figure it out!!)

The last page is a photograph of him with a bouquet of flowers. It is just precious!!

Powered Up!

On Thursday nights, our church has a program called Powered Up for K-5th graders. At one of the last meetings they gave the children a rocket kit. The kit was a pinewood derby (like from the boy scouts) rocket kit and fairly complicated. We had 2 weeks in which to complete it and it took us almost the whole time! We had to use wood glue and sand it down - it was a lengthy process. Of course it was right up Grady's alley!

Stephen went for the "launch" night. The "engine" was a rubber band and a propeller. They had set up strings where the rockets could race. The children had a fabulous time!!

Grady's Creation

For Christmas, Grady got Keva blocks which are just uniform planks of wood. They are designed such that you can do almost anything with them. Grady made the above "creation" and you can see how some of the block stick out. Those are being held by the weight of the blocks above them. The blocks come with a book full of pictures of all different things you can make.

While Stephen wanted to take a picture of Grady's "creation" because it was neat, he also thought it was memorable for what Grady put near it. See above! HA! Not sure that Pryor can read, but you can't blame Grady for trying!

School Christmas Program

Monday afternoon, Stephen and I joined about 500 other parents and family for Newlonsburg Elementary's Holiday of Lights Celebration. We were not able to enter the school earlier than thirty minutes before the show. I got there 25 minutes early and got one of the last parking places along the road! Crazy! Stephen parked at a church across the way.

Alice was in the back row! Although I was only in the second row of the gym, I still had a hard time zooming in enough. She has the red bow in the back. She got to raise the sign for, "R for reindeer." Of course, her favorite song was the Hanukkah song they sang - but I didn't record that!

Grady loved this song, "Mary Had A Baby", and sang it at home. He, too, is in the back row almost in the same place as Alice, wearing a red sweatshirt. They are "signing" the song as well as singing it. We were at a Tiger Cub event and singing Christmas carols last week. The boys started singing this song. Even though none of them go to our school, they all knew the words! It was precious!