Catch-up

My Christmas present to myself was tickets for all of us to go see The Piano Guys in concert in Boise.  I'd been wanting to go to their concert for awhile but the timing wasn't right or they weren't close enough.  This time it worked out!  Getting to the concert was an experience.  We forgot our tickets (luckily we weren't that far away), almost hit our neighbor's dog (I think I ran over his leash when he darted out--scared me to death!), and Eli managed to poop his pants.  We had to stop at a dollar store to buy him some new clothes on the way.  Yikes!  Thankfully, we got there in time.

Waiting for the concert to start:

It was awesome!  We loved it.  Eli was a bit difficult to manage (I took a chance having him come knowing how much he loves the Piano Guys' videos) but it was doable.  The other kids were just riveted and it was fun to watch.  It was a great first concert experience for our family!

The kids' school had a spelling bee soon after Christmas break.  They started with class spelling bees and both girls won theirs!  Then, it was on to grade-level spelling bees.  This one made me more nervous, especially for Lizzy in 5th grade, but they both won their grades as well!  After that it was the school spelling bee.: 

Since they had done grade-level ones this year (they didn't do that the year before) it was kind of a weird spelling bee since they were really  young kids there.  They started with easy words and never really made it past those before it was over.  Nerves definitely got to most of the kids.  Sadly, Elizabeth got out on a word she knew--"junior"--she just accidentally said 'g' instead of 'j'.  She knew right when she said it but couldn't go back.  She got 3rd place.  Then it was down to a smart little 2nd grade  boy (who is very advanced and goes to Lizzy's class for math) and Natalie and she won 1st place!  We were so proud of both of them for making it so far, although a little disappointed that we couldn't watch them go head to head on all the hard words they had studied.  

The winners:

With their proud brothers:

Poor Eli had a fever but neither Joe or I were going to miss the bee! :)

Then, it was time to study for the regional spelling bee for Natalie (1st and 2nd went on).  The winner of the regional bee would advance to the National Spelling Bee!  Natalie wanted it pretty bad (and Joe, too--we really wanted a trip to Washington DC!).  They got up at 6:15 almost every morning to study her words together.  It was impressive to watch.  Natalie really worked hard.

The day of the bee arrived and we were all nervous for her.  Her teacher came to support her.  Her very first word scared all of us--"tatami".  I didn't know how to spell it.  But, she got it right!  She told us later than she thought she meant to see 'e' at the end instead of 'i' but an 'i' came out!  Some of the beginning words were really hard and some were not as bad.  Sadly, we didn't write down her words and now we've forgotten most of them.  I remember that she had "prosecute"and "bombardment".  She made it to the top ten and they took break.  At that point, she was definitely the youngest one up there.  After that, they were words that weren't from the lists they'd given them, to test their actual spelling skills and not just their memorization ability.  The group kept whittling down and we realized Natalie had a good chance.  Then, when it was just 5 kids left, she got out on "disapprobation".  Two of the other kids got out right after her so technically she tied for 3rd place.  One boy emerged as the winner and it was over.  It was a really fun, nerve-wracking night.  

Later, these pictures were published on an online local news site (with this one as the cover picture!):

Here she is again in the background:

They were pretty much all middle-schoolers left.  The boy who won was a 7th grader. She held her own for being a 4th-grader!

The plus side to losing was that the spelling studying was over and we could go back to normal life.  Still, it was fun while it lasted.

Of course Natalie got her promised ice cream cone afterward:

That might have helped some.

Some of her cheering section:

Another fun event in February was Shari's Lungiversary Party.  The actual anniversary of her new lungs was in January but some family stuff came up and we kept needing to postpone it and we weren't sure if it would happen.  I was so glad we went forward with it because it was so much fun!  Hopefully Shari felt really loved to.  That was our goal. It was great to have almost all the family together, too.  

We made this sign and let the kids color it:

I especially love Becca's cartoon lungs. :)

We had taco salads and ice cream and planned some lung-related activities.

Balloon-blowing races:

I loved that Shari was out there with us.  None of us adults last long, though.

A few kids made some blow-art:

And most of all, we had karaoke:

Joe was cracking us all up while we were setting up and sang a nice number for Shari when she arrived.  He should probably enter some kind of karaoke contest.  He's talented in the art of lounge singing. :)

We were all impressed with this group who sang not one but two songs!

The Hall sisters!

Some other karaoke highlights:

All of us girls had a blast singing "Fight Song" together.

We also played basketball and just generally had a good time.

We're hoping for many more lungiversaries with this awesome woman we all love:

We've also had a lot of little things from the last couple of months...

Proof that Eli had a blast at his babysitter's house while I'm at work:

He has broken my heart at times when I drop off being clingy and crying but it generally only lasts a few minutes. Luckily he's in a good stretch now and he goes in really well.

He and Gracie do lots of fun things together:

Teaching occasionally has it's rewarding moments (more on that in a future post).  Here were some sweet notes left for me at the end of the 2nd trimester:

I thought that @kin was pretty clever.

I also have a super talented artist who I let decorate a clipboard that is attached to one of my class calculators:

Amazing, right?  He's a sweet kid.

It was science fair time at the kids' school.  I was a bit relieved when Elizabeth said she wasn't going to do one.  Natalie and her friend Hailey did one together, though.  It started out a bit disorganized but they managed to pull it together pretty well.  They studied how to prevent shaken sodas from exploding.

Natalie also had her recorder concert, including some numbers on the drums that her class played:

Elizabeth did another session of swim team:

(She's in the blue)

She improved her times every meet again.  If she would stick with it she'd be really good.

I was a fun mom one morning and dyed our pancakes green for St. Patrick's Day.  Of course I had to document it:

Sometimes I let the kids jump around the house:

I also took the kids to the park one day it was finally warmer.  I'd let Nate talk me into buying a Millenium Falcon kite at Costco and he'd been asking every day when we could use it and we finally did:

It was still freezing and I couldn't get warm.  My fingers still occasionally do this bad circulation thing that happened a lot in high school and I got a picture to document it:

In return for my attempts to be a good mom, I get sweet notes like this one:

It's been a good few months.