Do the Puyallup

We "did" the fair today, America's 6th largest and the 8th largest in the world (really, it was in the Seattle Times). Fortunately, the kids aren't big enough yet to do any of the scary rides, where you might have to have a parent go with you. :) It was fun to watch the "Extreme Scream" and "Slingshot", though. After we did some games, rides and dined on Krusty Pups (fair corn dogs, yummy), the boys played some fiddle music with their violin studio at one of the stages.

We have a 2nd grader!

Yesterday was the first day of school, and Andrew's settling into the routine already. He has the same teacher as last year (she is "looping" with the class), Ms. McCann. So far, the start of the school year has gone really well. Stay tuned for Sam's first day, September 10th.

Correction

All right, baseball fans. Complaints have surfaced that I messed up in the "Sam's turn" post, mistakenly assigning #9 to Joe Dimaggio. Not to worry, Sam is not scarred for life. He does indeed know that #9 could only belong to Ted Williams. In my defense, we did find out that Dimaggio wore #9 for the first year he played, then switched to #5.

P.S. Misha, we were reading the Red Sox kids' book tonight, and Sam learned #8 (Yaz) and #27 (Fisk). You would be proud.

Mom's turn

I got new publicity photos taken recently. My friend Janeanne and I are traveling to NY in October to do a couple of recitals, so we had some pictures taken for that. While we did those, I had some taken just for me. Our photographer (and Janeanne's neighbor) was wonderful and patient with me, a somewhat uncomfortable subject. I'm happy how they turned out, and glad to have pictures with such a beautiful background (Janeanne's backyard).

End of summer fun

Here are the boys last week in Idaho. We had fun on our final road trip of the summer....now we're getting ready for school to start. Andrew's soccer team started this week, and they are playing in a tournament tomorrow. We bought some school supplies this week, and are trying to get back to the going-to-bed-at-a-reasonable-hour routine!

Sam's turn

This blog has been all about Andrew lately, so here's a Sam update. Sam attended a sports camp last week, and loved it. He played basketball, soccer, baseball and lots of games like dinosaur tag. Sam loves anything athletic. He's gotten pretty good at throwing a ball up for himself to hit (he calls it his "one-man baseball game"), and he throws pop flys for himself too. Sam's reward for good behavior is 20 baseball hits, with Mom or Dad pitching (he prefers Dad because he is better at keeping it in the strike zone).

Sam also continues to show a knack for remembering uniform numbers. We sometimes play a game where we name random numbers, and he tells us what player wears that number. Dad has been schooling Sam in baseball history, so he now will name Joltin' Joe Dimaggio for #9, Babe Ruth for #3, etc. Last night we were watching the Mariners, and #6 hit a home run. I said, "Oh, was that Adam Jones (rookie, and recent call-up)?" Sam replied, "No, he's #10. That was one of the Jose's." And, he was right. The Mariners have 3 guys named Jose, and that was Guillen. Pretty funny.

Andrew's Book 1 recital

On Tuesday evening, Andrew played his first solo

recital. He played all of the songs in Suzuki Book 1 (16 total) for a group of friends who gathered in our home. For the occasion, he had written a story, and the songs were incorporated into the story. Andrew's friend Ben read the story at the performance. The story featured a music-loving shark who didn't have enough food and ended up eating the "Happy Farmer" (by R. Schumann) in the end!

After he played we had ice cream sundaes, toppings picked by Andrew and Sam. Then the kids went out and played baseball. I was thinking that more concerts should end that way....with ice cream and a ball game!