Violin news

As of yesterday, Sam is officially a "Twinkler", i.e. learning his Twinkle variations. He's been in "pre-Twinkle" for about a year, and he's very excited about finally playing Twinkle.

In other news, Andrew is about to get a new violin. He's grown out of the 1/4 size that he's been playing. We have a 1/2 size, but it needs new strings, possibly a new bow, and a shoulder rest. We'll have to make a trip to the violin store (here's where we go - www.applebaumviolin.com) sometime this week to get him set up. Andrew is about halfway through book 2, and sounds really great. Teacher Patty is having him do some things that I think are pretty difficult, like playing some of his old songs up or down one note (transposing). But, since Andrew doesn't really know what transposing is, he just figures it out and thinks it's no big deal.

How I Spent My Weekend....

I spent a weekend away, hanging out with the Haslim girls (and Bill) in California! Baby Rebecca couldn't be sweeter, and Sarah just wants to "go, go, go!". She's full of energy and fun. Krista and I snuck out for an evening of shopping and, in her words, "wow, a civilized dinner."

The boys at home were fine, though Andrew was wearing the same shirt today that he was wearing when I left on Friday. He's kind of oblivious about certain things. They ate out a lot, and went to a hockey game last night. Now that the Seahawks are done, we're all going to be rooting for the Packers with Sam this coming week!

Ready for the game

Sam will be happy on Saturday regardless of the outcome!

Stats

Sam had his 5 year check-up today. He is 3'9" tall and weighs 49.75 lbs. At the same age, Andrew was 3'8" tall and 45 lbs. Sam had 2 shots, and was completely traumatized (I felt bad for the nurse, though I'm sure she sees it all the time). Sam's dr. noticed that he has a lot of muscle. I told her she should see him hit a baseball!

Both boys had a good day back at school. Andrew did a worksheet where he wrote 3 sentences about 2007 and 3 sentences about 2008. The first sentence about the new year is "Uncle Art is getting married." I thought that was nice. He's also looking forward to "seeing my cousins" and "having my birthday".

Stir Crazy

We've ventured out the past couple of days to avoid going crazy around the house. Swimming on Sunday and bowling yesterday helped break up the last couple of days of winter break. School starts again tomorrow (hooray!).

Yes, Sam has worn his new Hasselbeck jersey almost every day since Christmas. But, it could be worse. We saw in the CNN crawl line that a boy wore his Brett Favre jersey every day for 4 years until he got to go to a Packers game this past weekend. The amazing thing is that we can relate to this.

Happy New Year to all!