Music, Musik, Musica

No matter what language you say it in, our girls love music! At any given point on a Sunday afternoon you can hear an array of music pouring from the open windows of our house. It's not always orderly, and not always in perfect key or pitch, but it often sounds quite good. Possibly because I have never had any ability in this area {and even more likely because I am their mom}, it just amazes me and I love to listen.

Over Mother's Day weekend, Alyssa competed with our church in her first Fine Arts Festival. A group of at least twenty churches from Wisconsin and Northern Michigan met and had a whirlwind day of competition in just about every area of fine arts you can imagine. Below is a video of our church's youth choir singing. It is just a cell phone video and hard to make out individuals, but she is in the front row, the third from the left.



Alyssa also competed in a solo event {this was the first year they offered a junior division in vocal solo events, otherwise she would have had to wait until 9th grade to compete}. I was so, so proud of her! She has certainly sung for a larger audience before, but never in such a high pressure situation where there were judges critiquing her voice. She got some really wonderful and helpful feedback. I have a cell phone video of that as well, but it is pretty bad quality. I think she will be singing the same song during a Sunday night service coming up soon at church and I am hopeful that will be a better opportunity to get a good video of her singing. She also asked me if she could write a post about her Fine Arts Festival experience, so I will try to have her post that and a clip of her singing at the same time.

And here is a clip of Emma's recent piano concert. I remember the weekend when she finally got the song from the Wizard of Oz. She had been practicing it for a couple weeks, and was so happy when she got the correct tempo down.

The week after her recital she was so proud to show me her piano report card. She worked really hard at reading music this year and playing what she calls "real" songs. I get such a kick out of how much the girls love anything musical and I am thankful for all the different opportunities they have at church and school to explore these kind of activities!

From Earlier this Month

I haven't posted in a while so I have lots of pictures I'd like to put up and not a great idea of where to start, but this seemed as good a place as any :-)
Dave was out of town for the first week of May. He was in Chicago the first half of the week, then Seattle later in the week. Sunday evening we dropped him off at the train so he could get to Chicago, and as soon as we got back to our house I heard the toilet running unexpectedly. After further inspection I realized it was a rather simple repair of attaching a fallen chain in the back of the toilet to the little bar part that it needs to be secured to in order for the toilet to flush. The only complication was that we have an awkward counter top that extends all the way back across the lid of the toilet, so even once I took the lid off, I had only about 2 inches of open space to fix it. I also determined that the chain part that needed to be re-attached had been sucked up into the suction part of the toilet, so it was stuck. I knew I was getting a good start to the week as I stood fishing in the back of the toilet with a bent coat hanger. Dave rarely travels for work, and it struck me as funny how exactly one half of the toilets in our house decided to stop flushing during the first hour of his absence.
Overall the week went very well {once I fixed the toilet}, we were busy as usual, but everything went well. The girls are so good and helpful, I am a very blessed mama!!
Alyssa had her first track meet. She took second place in her heat, but due to some confusion/mistakes with timing in one of the heats we have no idea how she placed overall.

This is a terrible picture from my cell phone but too cute to skip sharing. Last summer our gym moved into a new facility and the coaches have been encouraging the girls to really take pride in this cool new place we have. The girls have a job to do at the end of each practice, and the jobs rotate so they aren't always doing the same job. I looked out into the hallway the other night and Emma looked so tiny trying to vacuum. I don't think she's ever done this chore at home, although I know she would if I asked her to.

The Friday night that Dave was gone, Alyssa was at a Newsboys concert with some friends and Emma was at practice, so I took Rebekah on a "date" to Target and Chipotle. We had so much fun!
She was enjoying her dinner when this young couple came in with their baby. The baby was sleeping in her bucket car seat carrier and the dad was carefully situating the baby at their table while Rebekah looked on in fascination. She kept watching intently so I mentioned that the baby's dad was taking good care of her, wasn't he? She agreed then with a serious nod she asked, "Did he bring that baby here for us? Can we have her?" I explained that those are not usually the kind of transactions that go down at Chipotle, and no, we would not be leaving with a new addition to the family.

This is the face she said the baby was making. Maybe it was just Rebekah's interest in their baby, but the young couple seemed to like Rebekah a lot too.

Dave had a chance to visit Pike's Market before he caught his flight out of Seattle on Saturday. He said this whole wall was tulips as far down the row as he could see, and that they looked so nice and colorful.

Knowing tulips are my absolute favorite flower, he brought me home a bouquet and we enjoyed their beautiful brightness all week after he returned. I felt sad when some of the larger petals started falling off and wilting.

I have always wanted to go see the guys throw the fish at the market. Maybe the next time Dave goes to Seattle for work I can go with him?! And visit some friends ~ Hi Michelle :-)!

Emma the Climber

I have heard a rumor that there are some children who enjoy playing in the sand, going down the slides and swinging on the swings when they go to the park. Emma is not one of those kids.
Emma has the inclination to climb {even when there are perfectly good stairs right there for her use},
leap over,

or balance on anything and everything in view. She does it at the kitchen table, on the couch and her bunkbed, just to name a few of her unsuspecting jungle gyms. Playgrounds are a little slice of heaven for her.
I realize this is a rather obscure Lilo and Stitch reference, but there is a part in the movie where Captain Gantu describes Stitch {and I am paraphrasing} as being programmed for total destruction, he will wreck havoc and go around stealing everyone's left shoe.

It is like Emma's "programming" was something more along the lines of she will find heights exciting and climb with fervor to the highest places. Upon finding the perfect place to perch, Emma will sit there pensively surveying her surroundings.
I'll admit, it used to make me nervous to watch her climb all over the place like this, and I still have my moments where I want to ask her to just come down already. But now I am training myself to relax, accept her monkey climbing tendencies, take out my camera and try to see what she's seeing.

Spring Soccer

Spring Soccer started this week. Rebekah had a blast playing her version of the sport. Most of her play looked like a one child entertainment skit.
Practicing her jumps in a field clearly overrun by dandelions.
And now her best running man moves.
Her coach was impressed with her affinity for push ups. He asked for suggestions during warm ups, and Rebekah chose push ups. She later completed no fewer than five additional sets during the practice, randomly dropping out of the game at her own choosing.

The question here was who wants to be goalie? See how she's standing on her tippy toes? She's being strategic in her tactics, trying to make herself appear as tall and opposing as the coach's other option. Her friend Gabe was sent to guard the net.
Now she's break dancing. We have no idea where she learned all these crazy cool dance skills :-)

No practice is complete without this all important soccer skill: The Bridge. Quick, everyone, bridge up! We'll send mass confusion among our opponents when we simultaneously form a bridge across the field ~ or they'll score a goal really quickly ~ that could probably happen too!
The end of practice chase through the dandelions. They were kicking white dandelion fuzz everywhere, it looked like a storm.
About five seconds after I took this photo she said, "Phew, I am tired." Which made sense, she was like the little energizer bunny out there, if only she could channel that energy into playing soccer as opposed to all her other silly antics. I love this sweet girl and her playful unpredictability.

Easter Weekend

I'm posting so late about Easter because I wanted to mail some cards with Easter photos to our families and I know it is something small and maybe even a bit silly, but every once in a while I like pictures to arrive in their mailboxes that they have not yet seen on the blog.
We welcomed the start of Spring Break on Good Friday and after service we asked the girls' friend, Halle to come over and dye Easter eggs with us. The girls made a beautiful rainbow of eggs. I love them all!








I get strangely sentimental about cracking colored Easter eggs to make egg salad. I had a hard time deciding which eggs to use first.


Saturday morning we went to a pancake breakfast and egg hunt at our local Pick N Save store.

Rebekah raked in the prizes during the egg hunt.

I think she may have had a little extra help from this teenage carrot who thought Rebekah was a cutie. There were three teen helpers at the store dressed as carrots, and Emma was very concerned about their outfits. They posed for photos with the Easter Bunny {who she hardly took any notice of the freakishly huge rabbit at all} but apparently dressing as a human size carrot was crossing the line of acceptable Easter attire for Emma.

The older girls scouring the isle for eggs.

After breakfast, we met my parents at the Field Museum (The girls had marked this day on the calendar weeks earlier, they were so excited!):







The girls tried to line their faces up with the models inside the window to see what they would have looked like as an Ancient Egyptian.

Alyssa's hat was a little in the way, but she was the only one tall enough to line it up correctly.


More designer eggs back at G & G's.

And we got an early jump start celebrating Emma's birthday.

The girls on Easter morning before church.



And after church, three totally different children...the literal and figurative gloves were off as they raced for eggs in G & G's yard.

The triumphant finder of the last egg.

The girls took turns sledding in the basement. This was almost the most adventuresome sledding they got to do this year.

This picture exemplifies Emma's laid back nature...Rebekah is taking a nose dive off the saucer and Emma is reclined on the sofa in the background, relaxing and smiling. If this was occurring the other way around and Emma was pulling the sled while Alyssa was within view of her baby sister about to fall there would be a wild, state of alarm, cartoonish image of Alyssa suspended in mid air as she pounced to make the rescue. Rebekah was fine, she caught herself.

This sweet lamb cake was possibly evidence of poor planning on our part. When Culver's was closed after church on Easter Sunday {who knew, right!?} we were unable to get Emma the ice cream cake we had planned for singing her birthday song. So this poor little lamb cake that my mom had previously gotten for dessert had to stand in as a double.

I have to admit that lighting candles on the symbolic Easter lamb cake didn't seem like the best way to end the Easter weekend. Although I'm not sure that eating it and possibly having arguments about who got to eat the head, and who got the whip cream bottom is any better, so of course, none of those things happened :-)

Butterfly Fly Away and Some Spring Planting

Last Friday Rebekah took to caring for a dead butterfly. I tried to gently explain that it was already dead, but she wouldn't hear it. At one point, Emma took a quick glance at her sister's new friend and told her in no uncertain terms that the butterfly was dead, but then she took a closer look...
As Emma investigated the butterfly's health, she surprisingly declared it alive too, when only seconds earlier she had been aware of the truth. I think as the girls leaned in close to get a better look the delicate wings fluttered when they breathed on it. When we picked Alyssa up from school that day, she locked confused eyes with me as her sisters doted on a dead butterfly, but even she was later convinced she had seen it move.

Poor, sweet girl had a dead butterfly all along but that didn't stop her from trying to nurse it back to health for a good part of the weekend. She kept it in a box on the windowsill by her bed and checked on it frequently.
While Alyssa was busy with homework {I think it was a project about India on this day, but she has had so much stuff lately it all runs together} and Dave was cutting the grass, the little girls planted some pansies in the flower boxes of their little playhouse. I loved Rebekah's watering technique, and she was so happy to do this because they have been learning a lot about flowers and planting in school lately.
The Fizzy Lemonberry Pansies.
Emma watered our newly planted blueberries. She also helped me plant some Dinnerplate Dahlias. I'm so excited about them, they look like they are going to be beautiful! I'll post a picture if they bloom nicely.
Alyssa finished her work in time to throw down some Alyssum seeds for what we hope will turn out to be some pretty yellow ground cover over by our raspberries.
With net in hand, Rebekah looks for live butterflies.
These lilacs are some of my favorite things that grow in the yard. They always bloom rather suddenly and have such a strong, but sweet fragrance. They remind me of my aunt and cousins and going with them to the Lilac Day Parade and Lilacia Park in Lombard when I was growing up.