My Little Motzart!

Jonathan and his Teacher Lynn Tredeau. http://www.takenotepianostudio.com/

She has three recital nights this week! This is only one third of her students.

Six months from now she will have a larger recital in an audiatorium with ALL her students and that is when all who want to is welcome to come and listen.

Last night we enjoyed listening to Jonathan play at his recital!
Jonathan you make your parents very proud!!! You aw and amaze us!

Snow again?!?

So we had another "No School day" because of the snow! The powers to be decided to take another Summer day from us. As you can see in the pictures below the streets are bare and wet and school district could of easily gone two hours late in stead of taking the whole day off. We did get an impressive three to four inches but it warmed up pretty quick and the roads were bare and wet with in a couple of hours.

I did kick the kids out to walk the dogs and let them play in the snow! Didn't last long even thought the dogs had their winter jackets on they got to cold and decided they would rather be in where it is warm.

Cricket after a few minutes decided that this coat she had on was silly and the cold snow kept sticking to her and Olivers fur. It was too cold for both of them.

They did have fun in the morning in their Pj's putting together Lego's. They could do that all day if they were able but I managed to get them all to clean and vacuum their rooms and do homework with the incentive, a trip to the dollar store which as you can see Jared so proudly shows off his weapon of choice!

Black Light Bunco!

This last weekend our neighbors got together as we often do for Bunco! This time it was 12 Ladies. Most times it is 16 wild ladies! But since we were doing something a little different we had to keep it to 12 only this time. We have over 50 women on a Bunco list that sign up to play each scheduled play. I doubt that you can tell but I took these pictures under the darkness of Black lights! But you can't really tell. My cameras flash lite everything up!

All these shots are before we got rolling! It was so much fun because the score cards and dice glowed and nails glowed! Everything white or reflective glowed.

I have so much fun with all these ladies!

Youth Group Retreat in the Mountains

Emily got to go on a Youth Retreat with our neighbors Youth Group she has been involved with. She left up to Crystal Mountain for five days and Four nights with over 30 youth over winter break! She had a blast! Here she is packed up and ready to head out the door.
Here is Michell the Youth leader for Mt Vineyard Community Church!
Not only did she have a great time but she was also fortunate she wasn't home during that time because she would of most certainly caught the flu plague that has been going through the house here. Instead she caught the Holy Spirit instead! Praise God!

It's a Plague!

Okay ~ I must be starting to feel better because of how ornery and frustrated I feel that my poor family has had to deal with for the last four Weeks is virus bugs!! and not the cute red with black spots kind, the ones that are highly contagious and don't care if you had the flu shot or not!

And Some how Carle and Emily have been able to avoid the bugs. Probably because they are gone constantly for Softball practice. Or they are just the chossen ones of the family.

I sent my last sick kid back to school today and now I am trying to recover from my illness. Everyone I know can commiserate because they are getting this awful sickness!

Least I got to go to my very fun Black Light Bunco before I got sick. But I haven't seen everyone since then so hopefully they are doing okay? I actually walked to the bus stop this morning with the boys. It was painful just seeing the sunlight again after several days under the covers. Everyone at the bus stop has had their own bug battles and sickness story's. I think Carol is on the right track it's a plague!

Lions and Tigers and Zazu??

THE LION KING BROADWAYS PERFORMANCE!

The car drive $20

Parking $10

Dinner at the cheese cake factory $100

Aw and wonder on my kids faces - Priceless!

Truly Priceless!

What an amazing time we had! My kids had never experienced a theater production quite like this! Our seats were fabulous and each of us had binoculars to look through! But really we were close enough to see all the detail of the dramatic scenery and special effects and the extraordinary costumes with out the help. The music and character voices did not disappoint!

Towards the end the two youngest were struggling to keeping their eyes open but when I asked them if they remembered the ending and to my surprise they did in detail.

ZAZU

The comedy and colorful costumes!

The characters and the balled.

The dramatic scenes with the tribal rhythmic music!

My kids were so excited about seeing the show afterwords they all said thaqt they wanted to watch the cartoon version the next day at home.

Listen to the music! It's exactly how it sounded at the performance!

This and that!!

Well this last two weeks have been interesting. Health wise Jared has been very sick! Total of missed days up to now has been 9 days of school. He has a sever case of Bronchitis and we put him on Antibiotics yesterday as well as a inhaler. The inhaler really helped him breath better but the Antibiotic caused him to break out in hives all over his face, back, stomach and arms.
Now I have him on Clariton to help with the allergic reaction and we had to wait till tomorrow for him to get the new antibiotic. According the Bartells they don't normally carry this other antibiotic so they have to special order it and it won't be in till 11 am tomorrow morning. So my plan is to go ahead and send him to school since he is not contagious and pick him back up at lunch time for him to come home have lunch and take a nap. Least this way he will get some school tomorrow. The doctor thought he should be out another couple of days but I don't think half days will kill him at this point.

So today, not only did I have to take him back to the doctor I had to have a biopsy done on my thyroid because they found nodules there during a routine exam. Nothing to worry about they are most likely bi nine, this is just the routine to have you have a biopsy to go thru. I originally went in to have my sinuses looked at because I have chronic sinus infections and I just couldn't take it anymore. While I was having everyone "look under the hood", so to speak, I also went to the sleep clinic because I haven't been feeling rested and some friends of mine told me I stopped breathing at night so I just thought it was just part of getting "Old".

Well they diagnosed me with apnea after I did the sleep study. Lovely. I'm hoping that my thyroid issue will get me out of having to ware the lovely CPAP mask to alleviate Apnea at night. It's great to have my thyroid give me more options for solutions because there is a surgery they can do for apnea but not until the insurance has made you try the mask first. My thyroid possibly giving me some trouble gives me (the doctors) more options to alleviate and fix my sleeping disorder!! Yeah!

So after I went to my biopsy (which by the way was super uncomfortable and hurt like....) They promised it was no big deal and I'd be done in fifteen minutes with a band aid on my neck and out the door! I compared it to just getting a blood draw!
What they didn't say that I would get all swollen and hurt like some one had slugged me in the jaw, it would hurt to swallow and even all the way up to me ear on one side would hurt. Just take IB for three days is what they said! it's done and I'm so glad!

And then there is Emily who has been pretty tired from her conditioning for Softball! (by the way there is nothing soft about it! They are working them pretty hard! The 16U coach was there Monday night and got a look at Emily's pitching and is very excited to have Emily up and coming as the High school pitcher. Carle said that at the tournaments you will see at the tournaments a lot of coaches inquiring to him (Carle) about Emily and wanting to have her on their team. I didn't know I had such a talented Girl!!

Jared is missing all the first Basket ball games with his team these last two weeks. He is very sad about that because he has waited all year for basketball season to start up. Such a bummer. Tonight they have another game he is missing and he will probably miss Thursday game as well.

Jonathan has been working on his songs for his piano recital this coming Feb 27th. It's a small recital just family. but in the Spring his teacher is planning a big recital for all here students and everyone is invited! So you will hear about that one for sure! He is getting so confident while playing and that is so nice to see his growth!

And as far as Nathan I keep getting rave reviews of how Nathan is impressing them at school and doing so well academically. He really likes school. except for a few social issues which are a continual work in progress he really is doing great!

Carle has no worries so far with work so things are smooth sailing in that area. "knock on wood" . And next week while the kids are off for Presidents week, we are all looking forward to seeing the LION KING on stage at the Paramount! So excited for that!

I've found Facebook thanks to Chris K. or should I say it has found me! I really don't get it but I'm trying to be a good sport about it. It's just kind of scary when all these people from your past start coming out of the woodwork! You open the flood gate by starting a profile and there is no real way to stop it. Your kind of stuck. I found a funny video on U-tube on how to commit Facebook suicide! Pretty funny but oh the lengths you have to go thru just to do it. Check it out if you have a chance. So don't' sent the guys in the white jackets yet! I'll keep my profile and stick with it a little longer. "Really I'm fine" giggle

And Finally I guess I should get to the weather around here. It has begun snowing again here in and around the Seattle area. As I've been typing this it has slowly started covering the grass and ground anywhere it can stick and has been pretty constantly coming down. I think now it feels almost common to have snow falling out of the ski. Not like when we saw the first flakes in November and got excited to see actual snow. It's starting to become part of the landscape around here which is quite strange to think. Most years we would hope to get a glimpse of snow with out seeing any all winter and this year it just keeps coming. It's like we live in a snow globe! Well this is the update for now!

I took him up there for THAT!

All week has been Jared's Sick week. Sick with a temp and cough. Kept him home two days and then Wednesday I sent him to school because he seemed well enough for school until the nurse calls me said he had a 101 temp. Uggg you can't win. You look like a terrible mom for keeping him home and then you look bad because you sent a sick kid to school.

Today was class pictures so I took Jared up to the school just to have his class picture taken. Reminded him to smile and what does he do. Starts making all these goofy smiles for the camera. (yeah this kid is sick) If I could of I would of reached out across the room and strangled him! But I sat there helplessly mortified and did the only thing I could do was send piercing eye look at him that did nothing but made all the other kids afraid of me but my own.
I swear out of four pictures taken there is one of him not smiling and three of him clowning around smiling. Ugggg I took him up there for that!