Tonight was J's first band concert. I'm really proud of them---they sounded pretty good! Enjoy this slide show from my webshots account. ;-) If you go to my webshots, you should see the captions I spent some time writing. Might be more interesting!
Also, I am planning on getting that other blog of mine---Project 363----back up and running in April, a picture a day. I really enjoy doing it so I'll be back at it soon. I have some March stuff I should post----well, just go by and see it this weekend!
This week's theme is high. Our town is not a big city, so this is one of the highest buildings around. It's on the campus of Texas A&M, Rudder Tower.
I was in Rudder Auditorium on Thursday night with J. We saw a show with MSC OPAS called Blast! It was sort of like a marching band show on stage. More like a DCI Drum and Bugle Corps show. Lots of brass and percussion, with a lot of what I'd call Colorguard. If you like marching band, you should see the clip!
It was quite a high when their show finale was a song I had marched to my junior year of high school.
My hubby suggested this picture for the theme of high----it's a good one! Our dog Angel could jump really high. She just jumped like that from a standing position!
I hope you enjoyed the highlights of our life here. Please leve a comment!
Next week's theme is glass. Come back next Saturday!!
Appetizer What does the color dark green make you think of?
a forest
Soup How many cousins do you have?
My sister and I have 5 cousins---two on my Mom's side and three on my Dad's side. It's kinda unusual, but we don't really have many second cousins, because my Mom has NO cousins. None! Her mother was an only child, and her Dad's three siblings never married and never had children.
Salad On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being highest, how honest are you?
I like to think I'm a 10, but I have to admit, maybe it's an 8. I'm being honest here. wink wink
Main Course Name something that is truly free.
Laughter comes to mind. You have to be open to finding your own free laughter, but life is funny! If you have a negative outlook on life, you might not find free laughter. But even the poorest people laugh.
Dessert Using the letters in the word SPRING, write a sentence. Sorry, people rightfully ignore nasty girls. (When might I say this?)
I lost my camera, but found my camera! Life is looking up again! ;-) Easter festivities for me always start at my workplace with dyeing of eggs and the Easter Party and Hunt. This first picture is one of my better ones, capturing the ambiance of the event.
The parents are all standing around with their cameras and helping their own kid find eggs (12 was our goal this year), and then the kids are frantically trying to get as many as they can. The eggs are not really hidden, but it's fun. :-)
We had to delay a lot of our at home activities because of LTC. This is a church of Christ UIL-type event where the kids work on all kinds of projects and activities and then get graded on them. They get awarded gold, silver or bronze awards. They are not graded against each other, just on their own performance and effort.
J did Bible Class Teaching (a pre-convention project), Drama, and Chorus.
B did Service Challenge (a pre-convention project) and Bible Bowl. With BB you get graded on individual score (B got a gold!!) and your team score.
But our adventure started on Friday---we left town for Houston about noon-thirty. When we got to our Hilton Hotel, they didn't have the rooms we wanted, so we ended up in a King room with a rollaway for our family of 4. Not ideal, but B can sleep with Lar and I in the king bed. The guys room----4 teens and a young chaperone---were in an adjoining suite. J is lounging on the fold-out couch in there with a Wii in his hand.
Ah! But there was ONLY the fold out couch in there, along with a dining area and a view and little kitchen. One bed for 2 and nothing else! we needed room for 5 guys. This was a very nice room! But it was not what we needed, still! So we were moved to another room, and for our trouble, we got free breakfast and "evening orderves" which we couldn't eat because we had activities for the kids at that time. Our room was exactly like the other one, but we wanted our room near the other room.
Here is B going out the window of the suite---not really! That's the convention center in the background there. This was on floor 18?
This evening, the first event for us was the chorus. I don't know our score yet---they're getting mailed to the church. Here is our group, though. The guy in the blue shirt is their coach--he's our young chaperone! :-) The kids are in 10th, 4th, 6th, and 10th grades. Only the guy on the right can sing a "part" so far----I am hoping someone will help Jamie learn to sing tenor, but the coach here says Jamie already has a Bass range. Huh!! imagine that!
Also Friday night was Bible Bowl. We had 2 High schoolers who were happy to have B on their team, but B got registered as a 3rd grader, so they lost her for their team. B had to join up with another team from another congregation, one from Austin area, I think.
Here she is with her block. She had to point the correct answer towards the judge for each question.
Here is her team. That boy is cheesing it up for me isn't he? B was in the back. They sit in teams of four, one at each table. They do two rounds. B's age group did 35 questions each round. This year's theme was I Samuel. She got 30 out of 35 in the first round, the one that counted for her individual score. 29-35 was a gold award. We sat at the back, watching her cube from the wrong side, and watching the judge sitting at the front of her row. The judge would hold up a card telling how many on the team got the answer right. Only a few times did we see a zero!
After B got done at about 9:00, we took her back to the room. I wanted to get her on to bed. Larry watched basketball, and the rest of the kids went to a big devo. One of the teen guys came back and watched bball with us ( men's college hoops!) and J played games in the "guys" room. Curfew came, we got our son back, sent the other guy to his room across the hall, and it was lights out.
I must say, it was very comfortable, especially considering B was between Lar and I. The pillows worked for me! I usually wake up a lot, but I slept pretty well.
Up again at 6:30 to shower and eat that free breakfast. It was kinda fancy, and again, in a room with a nice view. The food wasn't fancy, but the room was nice with couches to relax upon and big flat-screen TVs.
Our drama was set to go at 8:30 a.m. The older girl in our group wrote it. The theme was "Here Am I" like Samuel said to God once he knew he was being called. I made a video. :-) For it to upload on webshots, it had to be less than 5 minutes, so I am uploading the 4:59 video. It cuts off only the wrap-up part----where they each say something like "God calls us, too, and you should follow Him where he leads."
Here's our drama group. We took 8 kids with us this year, and a few more kids did pre-convention events. 7 of those kids were in the skit---just B wasn't! Lar helped to coach.
We were all done with events after that. B and I looked through all the bulletin boards, scrapbooks, art projects (both 3-D and 2-D) and children's books. There are so many ways the kids could express themselves. I love that.
Here are our Easter pictures. We took them right after church. We did every possible combination of family members you can imagine. I didn't pull out the tripod!
Do you like the dress? B and I went in a dressing room with about 8 dresses and came out with this one. She is so slender, some of the ones in her size are too big around. The ones in a size smaller were too short for her. She has grown up this year, but not "out." The little sundresses were gaping in front and back on some of them! This one was nice. Green seems to be "the" color this year.
How tall will J get?? Is he done growing for a while?? We did an egg hunt for the kids in the living room. I hid 37 eggs (I think) and they found 35. Hmmm . . . did I miscount or will we find some later? None of them were boiled eggs!! We dyed eggs Sunday afternoon also. Those went to the refrigerator for eating!
Beautiful egg, B!! Even I have to get in on it. I boiled 3 dozen, and we ended up with 11 each to dye. Today B got her results on her TAKS test---she got a "commended performance," which means she scored well and will get to go on to 4th grade! ;-) Like I was worried. She missed two in all. Very good!!
B and I will both be answering the questions today. It's a Good friday Holiday! ;-) I think we are going to make some more People Chow this morning before we go to CTLTC in Houston today.
Appetizer Given the choice, would you prefer to live in the country or in the city?
I would rather live in the country. The city is noisier and more unsafe----scarier to me. You can always drive to a city if you want to enjoy the good stuff about it.
B says she'd rather live in the country, too.
Soup Who is the cutest kid you know?
B says she's the cutest kid she knows.
I was going to say my new little Korean student is the cutest kid I know. B is pressuring me to say it's her, though.
Salad Fill in the blank: I couldn’t believe it when I heard ___________.
B: I couldn't believe it when I heard a first grader boy say he loves me and my friend and my other friend.
Me: I couldn't believe it when I heard Princess Diana died. That was so long ago---I just can't think this morning.
Main Course If you could star in a commercial for one of your favorite products, which one would you want to advertise?
B: Extreme Butter Popcorn---or socks
Me: Kodak products---I just love my little camera.
Dessert What type(s) of vitamins and/or supplements do you take on a regular basis?
1. Ahhhh, it's so nice to be starting spring break!!
2. One of my favourite things on my desk or bureau is the Cranium Page-a-Day calendar. It's fun!
3. Japanese Cherry Blossoms are so pretty decorating Japanese poems.
4. My side of the bed is my favorite place to sit and read.
5. My homemade chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk are delicious!
6. I love to watch grand sweeping scenery in movies.
7. And as for the weekend, Friday night I watched Monk and fell asleep early, Saturday my plans include getting the kids to clean up their rooms (it's working!) and sorting through some "piles" of my own, and Sunday I'll go to church in the morning, have potluck lunch afterwards in the Annex, take a nap (maybe), and get Jamie where he needs to go for LTC practice tomorrow afternoon. Whew!
I saw this meme on first of all Leslie's blog The Pedalogue, and then on Melli's blog Insanity Prevails. Just looked like fun!
Today's theme is different. I think no one is more different from everyone else than my son, J. He's his own unique person!
This picture is from his very different production, Godspell, Jr., last summer. The costumes were very different than what he usually wears in a show. There he is on the top row, with a purple collar, right behind Jesus. :-)
Now will someone please tell me where my camera is? I had it and took pictures at the Girl Scout meeting on Wednesday afternoon. Then we rushed over to get J from his school, we went home (and I didn't get all my stuff in from the car at that point), then we got back in the car to go to church, then we went home and I brought everything in. Ug. I am afraid I laid it on top of the car when I was getting in after the GS meeting and drove off with it up there. I think I am just playing htis "worst case scenario" in my head over and over because I worry too much!
And yesterday we had snow. And I had no camera to capture it with! (Well, I took 3 pictures with my phone.) Fortunately, J's band concert got postponed, because I really wanted to use the camera to film a little video. BooHoo!
Anyway, enough of my troubles! Go by TNChick and see more different photos from around the world.
Please leave me a comment! (Especially if you know where the camera is!)
You know when you chase a link from someone's website and then click a few more--suddenly you're someplace else and 15 minutes have slipped away! This is what just happened to me.
I'm in TX and I did go vote this past Tuesday. For the first time I can remember, I went to the polls for a primary, and the outcome wasn't already decided for me and everyone else in the state. (It was almost decided for me on the Republican side, though.) I really don't like the way the primaries are set up----All the early states get to decide who's going to be our candidates. Both Larry and I had other candidates we would have rather have voted for, but they bowed out before we even got a chance to support them!
I just wonder if we'd had the chance to vote earlier, if different people would have been the final frontrunners. Texas is a big state, and if we all leaned one way, it would make a big difference. I think we're the third most populous state!
We (the whole family, J included) took a survey on ABC.com earlier in the race and got our top three picks. We had some similar candidates, but we are not completely alike.
Here's a short survey. If you do it, I'd love to know who comes out on top for you. :-)
Who You Should Vote For
John McCain: 53% Mike Huckabee: 53% Barack Obama: 40% Hillary Clinton: 40% Ron Paul: 33%
Who you agree with on the war in Iraq: Mike Huckabee and John McCain
Who you agree with on the economy: Hillary Clinton
Who you agree with on health care: Barack Obama
Who you agree with on taxes: Mike Huckabee
Who you agree with on abortion: Mike Huckabee and John McCain
Who you agree with on gay rights: Ron Paul and John McCain
Appetizer If you could be any current celebrity for one whole week, who would you want to be? I want to be someone who is dearly loved already, but has time to do what she wants now without working too hard (unless she wants to)! Someone like Julie Andrews, but younger than her?
Soup On a scale of 1-10 (with 10 being highest), how much do you enjoy talking on the phone? It depends! Some calls are a 1 and some are 10s! ;-)
Salad Name a charitable organization to which you have donated (or would like to). I have donated to the Salvation Army---you know those bell ringers at Christmas? I'd donate to the The American Heart Association.
Main Course What is a food you like so much you could eat it every single day for a month? I could eat popcorn every day. But if you mean a meal, I could eat nachos/taco salad every day for a month and never tire of it. Each bite can taste completely different because of the variety of ingredients.
Dessert Have you or anyone in your family had the flu this year? No! Thank you God!
We got snow this morning!!! Can you believe that? This is the last school day before spring break, and we got snow. We never get snow! B was very excited, and she went out in it before we had to leave for school. The flakes at one point were coming down big and fluffy. B said it was like a snow globe. It was already above freezing here, so it didn't stick and school was on at regular time this morning. Before I got home from dropping both kids off at school, it was already switching to a misty rain. It was fun while it lasted!
This week's theme is Party! While this might bring out some pictures that are really wild and crazy, around here, we're more into birthday parties for children.
This first one is B's latest party, when she turned 9. (She's the one standing up.) This was her first sleepover. This second one is when B turned 8. It was a bigger party at the neighborhood park. It's September, so we're sweating out there!
This next one is in the backyard of our old house. She wanted a Lilo and Stitch Party, but at that time there wasn't any "stuff" for it, so we turned it into a luau. B was turning 5 in this one! This was J's Batman Party. Bam! Wiff! Ka-Pow! That was a great party. J was turning 6, I think.
I have lots of pictures at parties, but it's really hard to find one that captures "the" party atmosphere. That's why I like scrapbooks---you can show them all and tell the story, too.
Check out more party photos at TNChick's site. Next week's theme is "different." I have lots of that around here, too! ;-)
This was J's Batman Party. Bam! Wiff! Ka-Pow! That was a great party. J was turning 6, I think. 
